Crash

This is one of those things that I think only people who have lost a baby can get. I mean maybe you say you get it, or can at least sort of see what I'm feeling, but I think it might be hard to understand. So if you haven't lost a baby please read this with only compassion in your heart :-)! So anyway. My best friend had a baby today. I have known her C-section was booked for today. I've talked to her about it and I was prepared for the baby to get here. Yes I'm 100% excited and happy for them. The problem is that it creates sadness in me too. It breaks my heart and makes me want to scream and yell and throw things against a wall. So these conflicting emotions are really hard for some people to get. But you have to see the separation here. My happiness is for them. I'm thrilled their baby arrived safe and sound. The sadness is only for me. It's not about them. It's not about the baby. It's about my loss and my sadness that right now I should have a 2 month old. When their baby was announced I should have been snuggling my baby. They live pretty far away so I can't actually see the baby right now except in pictures. I was actually there for the birth of their first baby though. These feelings are slightly compounded by the fact that my friend wasn't really there for me during the first loss. I still haven't quite figured it all out and I'm working on forgiving her for good. She's really tried to be there for me this time and she has apologized. So on top of my sadness there is also kind of a twinge of crankiness. Does that make sense? Ugh. It's so hard to describe this and sound sane. So I tried to explain to someone how I was feeling. The person I tried to explain it to was having a bad day herself. She says "Well I thought you were happy for them" in a sort of snappy tone. I started to cry and she apologized. She felt really bad about it. She actually reads this blog so I do want you to know that I'm not mad :)! I get that she was having a bad day and that it was more about the bad day than me! So even though the feelings are really separate in theory, it's kind of hard to sort them out in practice. Are there any other mom's of lost babies that know what I mean here or am I just being a selfish jerk??

Well I did my OPK today and it's negative. I'm so glad I caught that surge yesterday otherwise I would have thought I didn't ovulate this month which would have stressed me. So here's to a finger crossing 2WW. Then I have some decisions to make if I do get a BFP. I'll have to figure out if I want to give up all of my Zumba classes or keep going with them. I guess I'm getting a bit ahead of myself but for some reason I have a really good feeling about this month and I'm feeling super positive. I think it's more of an attitude thing than a premonition, but it still feels good. If it's a BFN instead of a BFP then I'll deal with it and we'll try again. Timing is amazing for this month and next though. If we had a BFP now J would just be getting done with school when the baby was born and that would be so great. We would both have the summer off. The next cycle would be similar. We could both be off together. Then the next few cycles after that would sort of suck since it would be around Bear's due date and because for both of us school would just be starting up. Okay fingers crossed everyone. This time I'm posting the news as soon as I know. Last time I sat on my news for a while hoping to hear a HB before we shared the news, but I needed support through the miscarriage and my family was of course there for me again so I'm just going to share when I know this time!!

Ovulation

Okay so I knew I was about to ovulate (or O as the abbreviation goes in the TTC world) so I've been peeing on OPKs like crazy. Today I got a positive OPK at about 9:50a.m. Then again I peed on one at about 2p.m. and it already looks negative again. Was my LH surge that quick? Did I maybe catch an overnight surge or something? Guess I'll check again tomorrow and if it's negative again it's over. Hmmm...Good thing we've been BD for the last few nights and I'll make it happen tonight too :)! Here's a picture. What do you think? Positive on the top and negative on the bottom?

EWCM

There are so many abbreviations in this TTC game. See--I just used one! TTC means trying to conceive. Pretty much anything and everything has an abbreviation. Today I went to the bathroom to use an OPK. Hahaha! I got you! Another abbreviation. So anyway OPK means ovulation predictor kit. So I used one and noticed something interesting. I had a bunch of EWCM. EWCM stands for egg white cervical mucus. In a year of TTC with 2 losses and charting I have never noticed this before. This is the first time in a year. How cool is that? EWCM is important because it provides a good environment for the sperm to go from vagina to uterus and get fertilized. The sperm has to climb through the cervix and the EWCM is the means for that to happen. Obviously I was fertile as I've been pregnant twice, but this EWCM is a positive sign of fertility. It means I'll be ovulating soon and J and I are trying for our third pregnancy. It's so depressing when I think of it like that. I've seriously been pregnant twice with nothing to show for it. Nothing at all. Except some depression and a set of tiny footprints. Ugh. So hoping this is our chance. Please let us be pregnant this month and get a BFP (big fat postive). I think we deserve this universe. PLEASE!!!

Unsure

I'm quite unsure how I'm doing. Most days I'm doing really well. Then I have a day that sucks. Yesterday I stayed in bed nearly all day. I guess one day in bed out of a whole month of days isn't that bad. But these whole days in bed are a new thing for me. I never ever used to do this.

I haven't gotten my period yet after this latest loss. It's getting close to about 30 days from the actual miscarriage. When we lost Bear I bled again about 29 days after. But I guess having a D and E is different than a natural miscarriage. I'm not even sure if I ovulated this cycle. I tried a few sticks just to see, but at first they were all negative and then a few days ago they were almost positive for days to be followed by more negatives. Maybe I missed a surge, but if so it doesn't really matter. No BD means no baby LOL. We are definitely feeling this most recently loss in some very personal and sad ways. I think it puts a lot of fear into the whole process. It was there a little after losing Bear, but we just knew it would be okay in the long run. Here we are in the long run and it's not okay.

I've definitely become "that girl" the one no one wants to talk to for fear she will eventually start talking about her lost babies. I totally get it now. I used to know this girl that talked about her lost baby all the time. She was my boss a while back. I didn't respect her for lots of reasons and honestly got tired of her telling her "dead baby" story over and over. Yeah. I'm an idiot. Seriously that's how I thought back then. What the hell did I know? I was a complete jerk. How much more karmic could all of this be. I'm not saying that's why all of this happened to me, but goodness it sure serves me right doesn't it??? Now I'm her. Others are probably wishing I would stop using the word miscarriage and stuff and stop being depressed all of the time. It's awful. I've turned into someone I used to despise. And just to set the record straight it wasn't just her loss that bothered me. She was just not a good boss and farted right on the front teller line (at a bank) and thought it was funny. She called me a prude when I didn't want to go to an adult book store with her and a gay co-worker. Then on top of all of this she talked about her loss often. I get the loss thing now. I feel some serious regret about my attitude. I never showed her my feelings directly, but surely she picked up on them just as I now pick up these things in others when I talk. I don't stop though. My babies deserve to be talked about. They were part of my life. Just as my former boss's baby was a part of hers.

Here is an official heartfelt apology. Former boss, I was a jerk. I'm so sorry I ever had not nice thoughts about your baby loss story. I am now a baby loss mom of 2 and I understand the devastation. Please accept my apology and empathy for your loss.

Sharing

I'm still feeling a bit down. I've been wanting to write in here all week, but this is my busiest week of the year. I run a campus recreation center on a University campus and the students are coming back this week. I have so many obligations during this week. So I've been busy.

There are a few people on campus that I'm friends with and wanted to share with them my newest sadness, just because I felt they would understand or have some sympathy for me.

Sometimes sharing is a mistake. I told one person and she was really understanding during my last miscarriage. But this time when I told her I had a miscarriage around 6 1/2 weeks she said "Oh we just find out way too early we are pregnant these days.". I was like seriously???? Um 6 1/2 weeks for me was like 2 missed periods since I have 25 day periods. I looked it up and it was 48 days that I was pregnant. So yeah basically 2 missed periods. You don't think I would have figured it out even without a test by then? It just seemed like a really dismissive thing to say.

I think I'll keep it to myself from now on unless someone really seems like they know something is going on with me. I think this sucks though because there is an odd silencing thing going on around miscarriage. People just don't talk about it unless it happens to them or once it happens to them they might share it with someone else it happens to. Why is there a stigma around this? Why are people idiots about knowing what to say?

Miscarriage #2

Yep. That's right. I had another miscarriage. J and I found out we were expecting again on July 13th. We were on vacation and were climbing the highest mountains in New York, Vermont and Maine. We had already climbed Mount Marcy in New York and took a gondola to the top of Mount Mansfield in Vermont and were staying in a hotel in Bangor Maine on our way to the highest mountain in Maine. I brought some cheap internet HPTs with me to test with on vacation since I knew it would be within my testing period.

The morning of July 13th I got up and used first morning urine to test. There was a faint line on my Wondofo test strip. I got excited and took another one. Same faint line. So I woke J up and asked him if he saw a line. He said he did sort of. So it was only about 5a.m. at this time. I waited until 9 (impatiently) to run to a drugstore and get 2 more tests. I got myself an FRER (the gold standard of early tests) and a digital (love seeing the word "pregnant"). Well guess what??? They were both negative. I was 10dpo at this time. We weren't sure what to think. So we decided to let it go and test again.

The next day we were at a campground in Baxter State Park in Maine. When I woke up in the morning I went over to the outhouse and took a Wondofo and a FRER. Both had double lines! I woke J up and showed him. He says "oh so does this mean we aren't pregnant?". I don't think he could see the 2nd line. So I pointed the line out to him and he finally got it. So yep. Pregnant.

That day our plan was to hike Mount Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine. J wondered if I wanted to just stay at the campsite and skip the climbing. I told him that at this point in a pregnancy it will either stick or not and there was nothing I could do to change it. I decided to go hiking. We hiked the mountain and it was very strenuous!

Fast forward a few weeks to last week. August 3rd. We had our very first doctor's appointment at 6 weeks 1 day. I wanted to go early so we could start discussing early testing options like CVS. The doctor gave me a pelvic exam and determined that my uterus was growing like it should. He did not give us an ultrasound saying that it was too early (which irritated me because last time we had an ultrasound that early...why can't doctors be consistent?).

So Thursday, August 4th we were in Cornell brining our dog up there for surgery. After we dropped her off we stopped somewhere for lunch. I headed into the bathroom before ordering and immediately noticed blood on the TP when I wiped. It was kind of pinkish. I ran out of the bathroom and out of the restaurant with J following me. I started to cry and he knew immediately that something was wrong with the pregnancy. We got in the car and I put in a call to my OB/GYN. They were busy so the secretary said she would have them call me back.

That night the OB/GYN did not call me back. The next day the bleeding was still only slight spotting on the TP,and none on a pad. So I tried calling the doctor again and let them know I was a bit irritated that they hadn't returned my call yesterday. The nurse said that her report said I was going to the ER so they weren't worried about me. I was doubly upset because that wasn't the case. She checked with the doctor and they agreed to let us come in for an ultrasound that day.

We saw the doctor Friday morning 8/4 at about 10:30 a.m. When he did the ultrasound we could immediately tell that it didn't look right. There was only a tiny, little sac and the doctor said it was measuring about 5 weeks-no embryo or anything else visible. He talked about how maybe our dates were off and I informed him that I had been charting and knew exactly when I ovulated. He stated that it was mostly likely a miscarriage then. He was going on vacation the next week and scheduled me an ultrasound in one week with a different doctor. He didn't really give me any more info about what it might be like if I miscarried naturally. He did say something about going to the ER if the bleeding or cramping got bad and the ER would help us manage the micarriage. That was the extent of the advice.

So I left his office feeling really awful. J and I were once again broken. Life just won't give us a break. Our dog was in the hospital and we learn our 2nd baby is gone just like the first. We were once again reminded how badly life sucks.

That weekend I continued to bleed lighly, mostly on TP when I wiped. But on Sunday the bleeding started to intensify and started to seep onto a pad. By Monday I was bleeding heavily and in a great deal of pain. Monday afternoon I was sitting in the bathroom for hours at a time while I bled. J started to get worried and decided we needed to go to the ER. So we made the trip up to the hospital where our OB is at (it's about an hour and 15 minutes away). At the ER they did absolutely nothing. We were there for 4 hours. When we finally saw a doctor he said that my bloodwork came back fine. I wasn't anemic and my blood count was normal. He said that the pain was normal and he really wouldn't perscribe anything for it. He was a very compassionate doctor though and shared with us his story of 5 losses.

So we went home that night and I went to bed. The next day, Tuesday, the pain was even worse and the bleeding was awful. I hurt so bad that I was crying and throwing up while sitting on the toilet. J had no idea what to do for me. Later that afternoon the pain subsided a little bit and I was able to sleep for a while. During that episode I called the OB/GYN office and begged them to perscribe me something, as well as my primary care doctor. I was so pissed off that none of them bothered to call me back. Then the next day the OB/GYN called me back and said they would perscribe me some vicodin even though after I described what I had been through, they felt the worst was over. So I went to pick up the vicodin and there were 2 different perscriptions for it because the OB/GYN sent some and my primary care doctor sent some--but hadn't informed me.

I'm just so pissed off about not only the miscarriage, but also about the treatment I've received from the medical community. At the same time we were dealing with this miscarriage we were also dealing with our dog being hurt. Her doctors at Cornell called us 2 and 3 times a day. They made sure we knew what was going on, they kept us informed. While my doctor barely gave a shit that I was in so much pain I was throwing up. What the hell is wrong with this world that veterinary care is better than human care? It really pisses me off.

So what we thought would be our rainbow baby ended up being lost baby #2.