My Newest Angel

It doesn't seem like the best idea to start my blog with a post about the worst day of my life, but it is what it is.

Starting at the beginning of this awful story, we found out on September 8 that we were pregnant. On September 18 I started having very heavy bleeding. We got into the doctor two days later and the ultrasound showed the gestational sac, which was good news. I went in for blood test, after blood test, after blood test, after blood test and they showed that my pregnancy hormones and progesterone levels weren't going up like they should have been. I was placed on a progesterone supplement and they stopped any other blood tests because they said that they weren't really giving us any answers about what was wrong or what could be done to help the situation. We started doing ultrasounds every week and at 2nd ultrasound they had trouble finding the yolk in the gestational sac. This was scary but they also said that it could have been because I was so early in my pregnancy (about 5 weeks at this point). At the next ultrasound I got the surprise of my life. They showed me, and let me listen to, my baby's heartbeat! They said that it had probably just started beating that morning. There was something so special about hearing that. I was seeing my baby's heartbeat on the day that it started. I had a baby that was living and growing inside of me and I could not have been more excited and hopeful.

Yesterday I went back for my weekly ultrasound. I was six weeks pregnant and I was crossing my fingers for a heart rate over 100 bpm and a lot of growth for my baby. At this point I was so hopeful that I think I just had pushed any thoughts of something negative out of my mind. Hope is such a scary thing... I was having my ultrasound and about 30 seconds in the woman said, "well, we saw a heartbeat last week... but there isn't one this week. I'm so sorry..." And she patted my leg. At first I told myself that surely she was just saying that she couldn't find it, not that one didn't exist anymore. I asked her if she was saying that she meant there was no heartbeat anymore. She responded, "yes, I'm very sorry." She was so nice and so sympathetic. After I went into the bathroom and cried to the point of no breath left and got dressed she came back into the room and gave me a hug. In retrospect I feel like a mess, but I sobbed into her scrubs. She walked me into an exam room where I waited for my doctor to come in.

When he got in there he gave me a big hug and said, "this sucks", because it really, truly did. I couldn't even speak without crying. I was a big snotty, teary mess and he just continued to talk to me like I was a normal person. He looked so sad for me and he was so kind and took the time to explain to me all of my options. I chose a D&C because I didn't think I could walk around knowing that my baby was no longer living but was still inside me.

The D&C took place this morning. It was so hard to get ready today knowing that I was going to have my baby taken from me and I would never see it grow to be all things that I have been imagining. It would never share a room with its siblings. It would never play with them. I would never get to hold it. I would never get to nurse it. I would never get to look into its eyes, telling it how much I loved it or play with its tiny fingers and toes.

My heart is broken into a million little pieces right now. It helps to hold my baby boy and tell him how much he means to me, but I am still so broken-hearted for the baby that I will never get to hold.

At some point the church will contact me and they will have a ceremony with several families to bury their miscarriage tissue, along with ours, in the cemetery. I will go to this and I'm sure I will cry just like I am crying as I type this.

I am so grateful for all of my twitter friends who have been sending me supportive messages throughout this pregnancy, and now over the past couple of days throughout this horrible, indescribable time in my life. Michael has been so supportive through all of this. I know that he has lost a child too but he understands that this is taking a much larger toll on my heart than it is on him. He is so amazing...

I will always have an angel looking over me and I will always have my baby in my heart but I am struggling so hard right now to accept that I will never have my baby in my arms...