Living With Preggies

   I think the hardest time for me was when my sister-in-law and my brothers girlfriend were pregnant at the same time.  We have a unique living situation.  My whole family went in as partners on this property that we are splitting the land.  Eventually we'll be able to sell off the parcels and split the profits and move on to our own places.  But we've run into several bumps along the way and with the housing market the way it is right now it's just another bump that is causing this whole process to take longer than it was supposed to.   Anyways so we all live together so I've had the two other girls in the family both pregnant.  I've had pregnancy shoved in my face every day.  I don't know why God allows some things to happen and I will be sure to ask Him when I get up to Heaven.    Sometimes I feel so broken and I've tried to not look at their pregnant bellies.  You know when you're trying to conceive whenever any of your friends or family gets pregnant they always say "oh you'll get pregnant soon and we can be pregnant together!".    You don't know how many times that I've thought that and they're pregnancy goes by and then they deliver and alas I'm still not pregnant.   The same thing goes here.  My sister-in-law had her baby and my brother's girlfriend is due in a few weeks and guess what??  I'm NOT pregnant.  Big surprise right?   I try to look at the positive things of my life.  Atleast I don't have to deal with screaming babies or get pooped and pee'd on.   I can sit here on the computer with no interruptions.    I tell myself all those positive things but I know that deep down I want the pregnant belly, I want the crying baby that I can comfort, I want the life of a mom.

Compassion

My mom was telling me about a woman at her church that has suffered from infertility for 5 years with no pregnancies at all. They were at a meeting and the woman said she didn't care if she died because her husband would be fine and move on. She had no kids counting on her. Another woman at the meeting didn't understand her feeling of giving up. She had no compassion for her depression. I was talking with my parents about it. My Dad said that most people think that if someone can't have kids just get over it and move on. I couldn't believe that statement.
Maybe if a doctor told you specifically "You will not be able to have kids" than yeah you could move on. But most of us are told there's no reason for your infertility and you're left thinking every month could be "the" month. I told my Dad it's kind of like having your child kidnapped as opposed to being murdered. If your child is kidnapped you're left with no closure. Every day you wonder if you will have your child back in your life or if you will be left childless. You can't move on. If you're child was murdered than you know your child won't be coming home and you can get that closure and move on.
My miscarriages were hard on me. However, the month after month, year after year of "trying to conceive" is infinitely harder on me. The roller coaster of emotions that you are put through can bring even the toughest of us down.
I myself have driven home from work some nights and thought about driving into a tree to end it all. But always no matter how bad things are if I can make it through that day the next day isn't as bad. Then I can focus on my blessings. At least I have a very strong marriage. I am in love with my husband and if we don't have kids than I'll at least be the very best wife for my husband. I'll be the greatest aunt for my nieces and nephews.
All that I've ever wanted in life is to be a wife and a mother. I had no career aspirations because I wanted to be a stay at home mom. So in order to get out of my depression and not focus so much on "having a baby" I had to find other goals in my life. I'm a graphic designer so I have an idea of starting a website to make unique t-shirt designs for people to upload they're photos into the design. I'm learning how to take photos as a hobby with my husband. That's definitely helped me not be so obsessed with baby making and knowing that I will have a good life even if it doesn't turn out how I planned it.

My Second Pregnancy

As many of you who are also trying to get pregnant will understand you get so excited wondering if you're pregnant that you'll take the test days before your missed period. That's what I did. It had been two years after my last miscarriage and I took a test just to see. It was a faint positive. I couldn't believe it. I went out and bought more tests and they were all positive. With my insurance you have to get a positive test from them before you can make your appointment to see the doctor. So I went and did the urine test at my doctors. When they called me they said I'm sorry you're not pregnant. I started crying. My period didn't come and I still had a lot of wetness down there (which is exactly what I had with my first pregnancy) so I still was sure I was pregnant. I even went out and bought different brands of tests just in case one brand was defective and they all came out positive. So I went back a couple of days later and took another urine test and a blood test. Then I went with my parents to Home Depot and that's when I got the call about the urine test. She said I'm sorry you're not pregnant. I lost it and started crying. I had no doubt that I WAS pregnant but I thought obviously something is wrong with the pregnancy if it wasn't showing up. I found out later that the type of urine tests that my doctor uses will only show a positive for a higher amount of hcg than the home pregnancy tests do. I got a call later that my blood test showed that I WAS in fact pregnant. At that point I got excited. I went out and bought a pack of onesies. I told everyone. My husband didn't want to tell anyone but I said that if this turns out to be a healthy pregnancy I don't want to spend any second of it hiding it from anyone. I know the statistics are low to have two miscarriages in a row so I thought for sure I wasn't going to have one. I wasn't worried at all.

My doctor had made me continue going every other day to get a blood test to see how my hcg numbers were doing. I got a call from the nurse and she said my numbers were going down. At that point I was still hopeful that they would reverse and go back up because I had read online that that had happened to some people. God surely wouldn't make me go through another miscarriage after how long I've been trying and what I've gone through. Another couple days later the nurse called me again and said my numbers dropped again. She said there is no hope for this pregnancy and you will miscarry. I called my mom sobbing asking her why is this happening to me again. My mom was driving up to visit my Grandpa but she turned around so she could be with me.

This time since I was only 6 weeks along it was like a really bad period with horrible horrible cramps. I had the large blood clots. I didn't see a baby come out. So physically this miscarriage was better than the last time.

I had to again go get a rhogam shot for my rh negative. You have to get the shot within 5 days so I had to go while I was miscarrying. I had to wait one hour to get my blood tested. So I'm sitting there squeezing my husband's hand every time the cramp got severe. It's very hard to be in public when you're in SO much pain because you can't writhe around on the floor which is what you want to do. So I finally got my blood test and then they told me to go to the nurse's station and get my shot. So I had to wait another hour for my turn. I'm telling you this was such torture. Now that I think back on it I should have been more demanding and made them see me faster since I was in the middle of miscarrying. They finally call my name and they ask me where's the medicine? I have no idea what they're talking about. She said that the place where I got the blood test should have given me the medicine. So now I have to go back and get the medicine and then go back to the nurses station. I do everything they ask and go back and knock on the nurses door. This other nurse opens the door and tells me that I can't cut in line and I need to wait my turn. I try to explain to her what happened and that the other nurse told me to come knock on the door. She looks at me with a condescending look. Then the other nurse walks by and I say She's the one who told me. So now those two nurses are fighting over who has to give me a shot. One of them wants to go on her lunch break and the other one is just a witch!! I wish I would have yelled and said "Hello!! I'm miscarrying here and I'm in utter pain you guys are being totally unprofessional and inconsiderate just give me my damn shot!!" But of course I'm too nice and don't say anything. Finally the one who wanted to go on her lunch break gives me the shot. So then I can finally go home and have my miscarriage in peace.

The way I dealt with this miscarriage after it happened was I didn't think about it. Maybe that's not the best way but that's what I did.

My First Pregnancy

I remember being really grouchy. I was feeling cramps so I thought my period was here and frankly I was pissed off! I thought I'm not pregnant again and that anger spurred me on to call the fertility clinic and make an appointment. The weekend went by and no period so I took a pregnancy test not expecting it to be positive but it was. I was so excited. I called the clinic back and instead of going in for infertility I was going in for my first prenatal visit.
I went in when I was about 6 weeks along. Everything looked perfect, the doctor saw the heartbeat. Our baby was due on Valentines Day. We got pictures of this little dot that was our baby.
When I was almost 8 weeks I started spotting. Everyone was telling me that was normal. Something in my gut told me this wasn't normal. My doctor couldn't see me until tuesday and she said it was nothing. That spotting was normal. I really was freaking out so I called a doctor with my other health insurance and was able to see him on monday. He saw the heartbeat told me it could have just been a tear that caused the bleeding and gave me more pictures of my baby. I still didn't feel right about it. The spotting didn't stop. The next day I went to my normal doctor and she was quiet for awhile when she was looking for the heartbeat. Then she said there's no heartbeat your going to miscarry and walked out of the room. I remember just feeling stunned. Later on I was really mad at this doctor because I had never gone through a miscarriage. I didn't have any idea what to expect. I'll never forget the elevator ride down. My husband and I didn't talk. I made it all the way to our car before I started to cry.
I went home and my Dad was waiting outside for us. He was anxious to see if everything was alright. I told him there was no more heartbeat and he just hugged me. It was a couple of hours later when I started to get the cramps. These were no period cramps. This was so severe that I was literally bent over for three days. The pain would build and build and I wouldn't be able to talk or anything other than breathe until the pain dropped down again. Then it would build and build again every couple of minutes. My mom finally called my doctor to tell them how much pain I was in and what medicine I can take.
I know this next part might be gross so just skip over if you don't want to read. But I know that I desperately wanted to know exactly what I was going to go through and nobody told me. So here it is.... Besides the pain you also are bleeding like the heavy day on your period, except that you also have huge blood clots that come out of you. You can totally feel them coming out. That part doesn't hurt, it's just something you can feel. So you really want to be home or near a bathroom cause I can't imagine leaving something that big on your pad. I think the huge blood clots lasted like 4 days. So as far as a time line. Tuesday afternoon the horrible cramps and blood clots started. The cramps continued to get worse until thursday when the baby came out. When the baby came out the cramps lessened significantly. Yes I saw my baby. I went to the bathroom and wiped and I looked down and there was my baby. I remember thinking is this really what I'm seeing. If you go online and look up a picture of an 8 week old fetus that is exactly what it looked like. I laid it on a clean piece of toilet paper and took it outside to my husband. He didn't want to see it. The sac came out later that night.
When we first found out we were pregnant we had bought a ficus tree to plant so that it would grow with our baby. My husband suggested we bury the baby under the tree.
I had to go back to the doctor on Friday and they did some blood tests and found out that I was RH negative so I had to get a rhogam shot.
I remember thinking that Valentines Day would never be the same again. I couldn't imagine ever celebrating that day. I think I coped pretty well though. There were some nights when I would cry. This one girl at work obviously hadn't heard that I had miscarried came up to me and said "I heard congratulations are in order!". I had to tell her that I actually miscarried. I know she felt bad and I felt bad for her. That made me cry. I had a major meltdown the closer I got to my due date. They sent me home from work cause I was just sobbing. Going through the due date was the hardest part since the actual miscarriage.
That was four years ago. For the most part I can think about it now and not cry. But sometimes when I remember everything I went through and the emotions that I felt I'll cry. Going through Valentine's Day isn't hard like I had originally thought it would be. It's hard to think that if it would have worked out I would have a 3 year old with me right now.