It's been a long time since anyone has posted on this blog and now that I'm more stay-at-home mom than teacher I should have more time to update. This is a post that I've been thinking a lot about writing. It's taboo and I'm sure that there are people out there who are extremely uninterested in reading about this. There are probably those who think that it is inappropriate to talk about it, but here it is.
I had a miscarriage.
Miscarriage has such a negative stigma surrounding it. People don't talk about it. I've read all the statistics. I know that statistically I must have more than one close friend that has experienced this, but when we found out that we had lost our baby I felt very alone, like there was no one I could turn to who understood what we were going through or who had experienced similar loss. I yearned to have someone that I could talk to who had gone through miscarriage, and eventually I did find an old friend who was so kind and willing to share her story with me. I want to share my experience so that when I have friends who are called to go through the trial of miscarriage they will know that I am more than willing to be a listening ear and give any advice that I can.
Dillon and I found out that we were pregnant again at the beginning of February. We were ecstatic because it was taking us longer than expected to conceive baby #2. I always pictured my kids being close together and that window was rapidly becoming very wide in my mind. At 6 weeks I expected to be bombarded with morning sickness. With Autumn I started feeling nauseous exactly at 6 weeks and it never let up for the remaining 8 months. But the sickness didn't come. I would feel occasional queasiness, but nothing to come close to rivaling the gut-wrenching illness I'd experienced with the previous pregnancy. As time went on I started to get nervous that my symptoms weren't coming. Everyone kept telling me that I was just lucky and that all healthy pregnancies are different (which I guess is true) and that I was just not sick on this one. They told me to stop worrying and that everything was fine. I tried to believe them, but there was something in my gut/brain/heart that just told me that I was losing the baby. But I wasn't having any bleeding and no cramping, so it couldn't be a miscarriage right?
We had our first doctor's appointment on March 17. I was 10 weeks along. I was extremely anxious to hear a heartbeat so that I could rest my worried mind. I wanted to believe that everything was ok so badly. But when the doctor pulled the picture of the ultrasound up on the screen, I immediately knew something was wrong. I could see the gestational sac and inside there was nothing. I couldn't see a thing. No heartbeat, no baby. After some searching the doctor found what would have been our next baby, but it was so small it hadn't really had a chance to develop into much. He told us that we were experiencing a miscarriage and that it looked like that baby hadn't made it much past 5 or 6 weeks. I had what's called a missed miscarriage. This is where the baby had stopped growing, but my body didn't realize it. I still was producing pregnancy hormones which was why I hadn't been experiencing the cramping and bleeding and why the miscarriage itself hadn't actually occurred.
The doctor (who was absolutely amazing through this whole thing by the way) told us that we had three options. Option 1 was to wait it out until my body eventually got the hint and miscarried the baby on its own. I knew that this option wasn't for me. It had already been over a month since the baby had stopped growing and I wasn't having even the slightest symptom that my body was ready to go. I knew that it would be too difficult emotionally to wait potentially another month or more still being pregnant, but not being pregnant. I'm just not strong enough emotionally for that kind of confusion. Plus I was already starting to show at this point because the gestational sac was still growing, and it was really difficult for me to look down as my "pregnant" belly knowing that it was just a mirage. Option 2 was to take some medicine that would help encourage my body to miscarry naturally. And Option 3 was to get a D&C which is where the doctor removes everything surgically.
It was very difficult for me to decide what to do. I was so scared that whatever decision I made would be the wrong one. I felt extremely emotionally vulnerable and I was scared that my decision would leave me emotionally scarred. One of my greatest regrets with Autumn's birth is that I wasn't able to deliver her naturally and ended up having to have a C-Section. I know that there wasn't anything I could have done to prevent it, but it's something I think about a lot. So I decided to try to go the most natural route and went for the medication instead of surgery. It was strange taking the medication. Even though I had been given proof (both through ultrasound and blood tests) that my pregnancy had ended, it felt almost as if taking the pill was me making the choice to end it. When I looked up the medication online I discovered that this was a pill that many women use as a means to encourage an elective abortion. That was such a harsh blow to me as I was reading this online. By the way, did you know that miscarriages are referred to as abortions in the medical community? That's a great way to screw women up emotionally.
Well the medication didn't work for me. I thought it had. I took off a couple of days of school and sent Autumn to stay with my mom for the weekend so we could deal with it. And as far as I knew it had worked. I even got to experience labor pains like I never had before (epidural with Autumn). But two weeks later another follow-up ultrasound showed that it was not completed and I would have to try again. The second time around the medication didn't work at all. At this point it had been a month since we had found out that we had miscarried, and it still wasn't over. It seemed to be dragging on and on. They started telling me that it looked like I was going to have to have a D&C. After all I had been through I was not happy with the thought that I was still going to have to undergo the stress (and cost) of surgery just to end up with no baby at the end of it. They decided to let me try a different medication as a last-ditch attempt.
The next Monday was parent teacher conferences. It was a long day and I didn't get home from school until 9:30pm. When I went to lay down for bed I started having chills and body aches. I took my temperature and I had a fever. The doctor had told me that this is a sure sign of infection and if this happened I had to go straight to the emergency room. So we got Autumn up and went to the ER in Logan. It was a long night. We were there for tests and ultrasounds until 4:00am. And I found out that I'm allergic to a certain antibiotic. At least now I know what anaphylactic shock feels like. Poor Autumn hardly slept at all. And poor me had to write lesson plans for the next day while hooked up to IVs, exhausted in a hospital bed in the middle of the night. They finally let me go home to get a few hours of sleep with instructions to come back to the hospital the next day to get a D&C.
It definitely wasn't the route that I wanted to take. In fact it was my last choice, but I had no regrets about it because I had tried my hardest to do it the way that I wanted to, and now I can say that the whole ordeal is over and done. I won't ever forget the experience or sadness of losing a baby, but in many ways I think I was greatly blessed through the whole thing. I found that I was given intense emotional and physical strength.
I also feel very lucky that we lost the pregnancy so early on. Here's where some of you may disagree philosophically with me, but for us there was never a real heartbeat and there wasn't much of a baby that had formed. It made is so much easier for me that way. It feels more like I lost the hope of a baby rather than an actual baby. Maybe this is just what I tell myself to make myself feel better. I can't imagine the deeper level of pain I would have felt if I could see a little face or a little hand on the ultrasound. Or if we had been able to hear a heartbeat that would have later stopped beating.
The hardest part for me now is the fear that it will happen again someday, which is might. But if I'm called upon to experience this hardship again I know that I'll be able to handle it. I feel certain that I felt God with me throughout the experience and that he strengthened me through the Atonement in a way that I had never felt strengthened before. This is a very personal experience for me and I hope you know that I don't take it lightly. I've debated whether or not to share this, but I want others to know that if they ever have a miscarriage there is someone here who is willing to talk. And there's a closure that comes with sharing. I don't want to feel like this is a dirty little secret that I carry with me. Yes, it was terrible and sad. But this experience strengthened my testimony and has made me a stronger person, and that's something I can be grateful for.
