About Me

My photo
Writing about secondary infertility & trying to conceive after multiple losses in Gaman (a Japanese term of Zen Buddhist origin which means "enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity"). Also cooking, Phish, and parenting my beautiful little boy.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Things happened so quickly and I haven't really had time or energy to update on what all happened.

I had the follow up ultrasound on Thursday and Friday found out that there was definitely no heartbeat.  In fact, she said that the report stated that they no longer saw what they had seen in the previous report.  So, this time there was no detection of even a fetal pole any longer.  The midwife explained it as the pregnancy could already be starting to break down.

It was terribly difficult news to hear, but I had known that it was the most likely scenario.  And I had been having cramps and starting to spot the tiniest amount, so the words she said were just confirming what I felt pretty certain to be true.  But I was still feeling the full weight of the news then since up until then there had still been this very, very small chance of hope.

She told me there might be a chance that I could have the D & C done that day.  I told her I wanted to call my husband to find out if it would even be possible for me to have it done that day.  When I called him and had to speak when he answered the phone... that's when I broke down more than I had at any other time.  I could barely speak the words, but I had to - I didn't want to speak the words.  I could feel myself forcing the words from my lips... I don't know how to describe it but it was really like trying to force my mouth to form the sounds to tell him.

After I muddled through the call to him we found out I couldn't have it that day anyway and it would be scheduled for Monday (today) afternoon.

The rest of Friday and Saturday I spent just generally depressed and talking to friends and family a lot.  Either that or lying in bed feeling badly and just waiting to see if anything would happen.

By Saturday evening I was officially starting to bleed and at some point earlier I had started to take 800 mg ibuprofen every six hours.  Even with that I was still in a good amount of pain.

Sunday morning I was having such terrible pain I knew there was no way I could even move and John was basically just getting me stuff all morning.  Water, iced tea, something to eat, heating up my "bed buddy" (a heating rice sock type thing).  Sunday morning progressed to heavier bleeding and just really, really intense cramping, then passing clots.  So, I knew that it was happening.  I don't think it was an emotionally difficult experience for me, probably for a number of reasons.

Big in my mind was that I knew I wasn't going to be able to distinguish an actual fetus.  As I mentioned before, I think it would have been a much more difficult experience emotionally if there had been more development than there was.

But also because I knew what was going to be happening.  I read everything I could about what to expect.  And spoke with others.  And asked the midwife a million questions.  I just knew it was all coming so I think that helped prepare me emotionally and mentally.

Physically it was extremely painful.  I couldn't believe how much pain I was in even with all that ibuprofen in my system.

Honestly, it may sound strange but I just kept thinking of it as a small, small inkling of what labor pains are like.  And I do remember the pain I felt in labor before I had the epidural with Simon at 7 cm.  And it was very, very close to being unbearable.  I was very close to calling the on call doctor and asking for some other prescription pain med to be called in.

But I kept thinking about it being like labor.  And I kept thinking of it like practice for when it (hopefully) happens again.  And I actually was really, really glad my body was doing this on its own.  Because I didn't want to go through surgery.  And I started to think that maybe this would be a good thing, a good sign that when/if I get pregnant again and go through labor that my body WILL respond on it's own and go into labor on its own.  Every time I felt the surge of intense pain I kept thinking, okay, well if you want to have a natural childbirth experience, this is a sliver of the pain that you will have to manage.  And when/if you go through this again, there will be a baby on the other side of it.  So all these thoughts were what was going through my head during the actual experience.

I think my processing the whole thing that way vs. some other way truly helped me emerge from this whole thing much stronger and in a much better place.

I need to end this for the moment as Simon is about to get up, but I have much more to write about what I feel like I learned from all of this.  And lots of questions that linger in my mind.

And it's going to take some time to heal that deep place in my heart that is still grieving behind all the other thoughts and physical portions of the experience.  I had to go to the grocery store today and there was a woman with her daughter who couldn't have been more than 9 months old.  She was absolutely precious and I had the worst time balancing my emotions of how much I just love seeing babies be so cute and happy and how incredibly, horribly sad I was that I felt like I lost my would-be daughter yesterday.  I smiled at her and made happy faces at her.  But all the time was trying to keep the tears from streaming down my face.  She was so cute, she smiled back at me and was obviously engaging with me while her mom put all the groceries on the belt.  I mentally sent her lots of love with all the smiles I could muster, but it was so, so hard not to just start bawling.  So I know it will be difficult to manage these emotions for a while.... but I am determined to allow the happiness take over the sorrow as much as possible... without denying my grief either.

No comments:

Post a Comment