Hope

Let me start with the most important information: baby is still there. Phew! But we had a rocky few hours before the doctor’s appointment.

I developed another problem on wednesday: wet underwear. I mean really wet (I hope this is not too much information!). I was out shopping for T’s birthday present, when I suddenly notice my trousers felt really wet. Of course I immediately feared the worst. Thinking it might be blood, I rushed to the bathroom in the department store: no blood, just a wet patch on my underwear. After a night of googling ‘wet underwear pregnancy’ (yes, I know, it sounds a bit funny) I was comforted to find that many others have experienced the same thing. But some were saying they had discovered they were leaking amniotic fluid (scary!) whilst others discovered they had become incontinent.

Thursday we went to the doc. My heart was in my throat. He took me straight into the ultrasound room. There on the screen was our little one, looking even more like a baby than last week. But baby was so still, I was scared. “There is the heartbeat” said the doc. But I was inconsolable. “Why isn’t it moving the way it was last time?” I asked. “A third of the time they are still, just like we are, and the rest of the time they move around, just like we do” he explained. “Try laughing and let’s see whether that gets baby moving”. So I did. I laughed. And baby started kicking up a storm! I could see those tiny legs kicking away furiously as if to say: “stop moving my house around!!!” 😉

It was such a wonderful feeling. I can’t even begin to describe how happy I felt. T was over the moon too.

I told the doc about the ‘wet underwear’ incident and was immediately taken in for a litmus test. This involves taking an internal swab (like a pap test) with a piece of indicator paper to test the acidity or alkalinity of the ‘liquid’. If the paper turns yellow (acid), that’s good. If it turns blue (alkaline), then it could be amniotic fluid. Fortunately, the paper turned yellow suggesting it was just normal discharge.

My next ultrasound is scheduled for week 12, when we will have the Nuchal Translucency scan. We are now 10 weeks 6 days (if baby is still ok today). I have to make it through next week without going to the doctor. I am still so scared. Passing this milestone was a huge thing for us. It has given us so much hope. And I am terrified this will be taken away again when we least expect it.

I am happy and hopeful. I hope I don’t get crushed.

PLEASE make it baby! We LOVE you.

xxxx

p.s. I am working on getting those ultrasound pictures scanned and will put them up as soon as I can.

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Worried @ 10 weeks 3 days

I don´t feel pregnant this morning. Ok, hang on, that is not accurate. I feel LESS pregnant this morning. I didn´t have to ´carry´my breasts when I walked down the stairs this morning (they normally hurt when I am not wearing a bra… ) to go to the bathroom and I was able to put on my normal jeans this morning without much trouble. Could this be bad news? I´m scared. I have made an appointment to see the doctor tomorrow afternoon.

This is torture! I just want to be the glowing, happy, pregnant lady instead of this paranoid freak!

Please please please make it baby. Please grow into a beautiful healthy baby for me and T. We love you.

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Buried

I feel like I am being buried. The sadness and the fear get heavier and heavier by the minute. Layer upon layer of sadness are being shoveled on top of me and there is nothing I can do but gasp frantically for air. I want the pain to stop. I don’t want to feel this way. I want to be strong, I want to look beyond, I want to be normal.

I don’t know what all of this means yet, but there has to be some sense to this.

It’s bizarre and unfair that with the benefit of hindsight I now realize that I should not have been so worried , so pessimistic, the first time round. One loss is (unfortunately, absurdly) normal. It is tragic, but it is completely normal.

Two losses, well that is less common. And it scares me.

I wish I could turn back time. I wish I could go back to the time before the losses, before the pain, and somehow stop of all this from happening.

Don’t we all.

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Trying again

It´s been four months now since T and I miscarried. We were told to wait at least 3 months before trying again. So after much debate over what the Dr. meant by 3 months (did he mean 3 cycles?), we decided that the waiting period was up  and it was time to try again. I hoped it would happen much as it did the first time: me blissfully unaware of what my body should be doing  (or not doing as the case may be) and  T just enjoying all the loving.  But something had definitely changed. First of all I found myself  worrying that we were not BD-ing enough. This really drove T crazy! Then I spent all my time analyzing myself to see if I could feel any of the tell-tale pregnancy signs. I kept prodding my breasts to see if they were sore (after all the prodding they certainly started to feel sore…). I even began to feel nauseous. This must be a good sign, I thought. I kept making promises to myself to relax and lead as healthy a life as possible while I waited for testing day to come round. Was this really me? Had I really become this pregnancy obsessed person?

After what seemed like an eternity, it was time to test. My period was 1 day late. Out came the testing kit. My hands were shaking as I unwrapped and performed the test. I didn´t expect it to hit me quite so hard.  I closed my eyes and tried to tell myself that it would all be ok even if the test was negative. I would try harder next month, be healthier, exercise more. One more month would also give my lining more time to heal…

Negative. Yup. Very clearly a negative.

Surely this was not how it was supposed to go! Pregnancy will never be the same for me again. I knew it.

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A silent loss

The grains of sand are soft and warm between my toes as I dig my feet deeper into the ground. “See? This is how you do it,” I say looking over my right shoulder at the girl standing behind me. She is a little older than me, and a family friend, someone I have known all my life. She is the sort of person who has had bad things happen to her. The sort of person you feel could have been different and happier if life had been that little bit kinder to her. She is not like me. She is vulnerable. “You need to make sure you are really grounded, like this,” I say as I adopt a squatting position. “That way when the wave comes in it won’t drag you back with it.” She is listening and nodding but she looks afraid. “And then you run. Run as fast as you can up the hill and away,” I say. The wave comes, it is overwhelming, it is huge, it casts a shadow over and above me and I run, run up the hill, up to some imaginary town with white washed houses, all perfectly rounded, comfortingly shaped. I hear the destructive sound of water crashing down behind me. I am safe. As the waters continue raging down below I realize I have left the girl behind. But it doesn’t matter much anymore. I have made it.

But you see the thing is, I haven’t made it. I know this because when I wake up, a wave of sadness washes over me and I realize for the first of what will be many times that day that Bad Things Do Happen and that this time, the Bad Thing has happened to me.

Five weeks ago I looked up at that big screen and I saw an unmistakable shape. It looked like a baby. A real baby! Then I saw the doctor’s face.

“There was a heartbeat last time” he says looking at me and then at T, my husband. T is waiting to see how I will respond to this deafening fact, searching my face for clues that will tell him how he should react. But I don’t get it. I’m not in denial or anything I just don’t get it. There’s a baby up there on the screen, I can see it. Look.

Ah. Wait.

I don’t see that fluttering movement I saw last time. A silent fluttering so fierce and yet so fragile, it reminded me of a frightened bird. “Yes, there was and there isn’t now,” I say. They look relieved. I have got the message and I am not falling apart. “I am so sorry,” the Doctor says. “So am I,” I say as I reposition myself to get off the chair.

I am still not crying. It takes a while and lots of questions before the reality of it sinks in and the sadness takes my whole body hostage.

The thing is there is no way to make this OK. A typed letter with pictures of pairs of chromosomes arrives in the post. It silently, unquestioningly, explains what went wrong. A trisomy: three of chromosome number 15 instead of the healthy two that should have been. I am now firmly within the statistical bracket for the most common cause of a 1st trimester miscarriage. I should feel better. I should feel heartened and ready to think about the next time. Because it won’t happen the next time, right? You see that’s the thing. I know better than that now.

This time the sea is choppy. It is after a storm and the water looks menacing. I am walking along the boardwalk but the water is very close. In fact it is so close that I feel the sea spray on my face and on my arms. It stings. It is black and it is filled with grit. It rages, it roars. T is walking in front of me with a couple of our friends.  I realize the water is creeping in and before I know it, I find myself ankle deep in this toxic, black, angry sea. T and our friends walk on ahead of me but I feel like I am trying to walk in cement. It is up to my knees now.  The tight ball of panic that has lodged itself in my throat starts to unravel. They are going to leave me behind! I won’t make it! T turns around and reaches out his hand. I take it and there is no more resistance. The sea loosens its grip.

It won’t ever be OK, but somehow, at some point, something, somewhere will make it better.

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