On Monday July 18th, I went in and had another hcg level drawn. I was trying to stay positive despite all of the worry. I ran a few errands and headed home. Once I was home, I used the bathroom and there was blood when I wiped. Not spotting anymore, but blood. I started to lose it. Tony happened to be at home working that day and I curled up on the couch beside him, just feeling frantic and out of control. I refreshed my phone about every five minutes hoping for a new hcg result to post. Finally, there it was. My level the Friday before was 186. My new level, three days later was 91. It had plummeted. I felt numb. And then the tears started and didn’t stop. Tony held me and comforted me. He fought back tears himself. We both just kept saying “not again…” “this is not happening again.” I tried to trust more this time- to put it all in God’s hands, and this is what happened. I cried until it felt like there weren’t any more tears.
For a couple of hours, we were the only two who knew that our baby was not going to make it. Tony did the only thing that he felt would help. He ordered our favorite pizza and planned to pick up that, and a giant slice of chocolate cake from the South Bend Chocolate Factory for dinner. I reached out to some of my support people with the news. While he was out, I received a call from my nurse. I could hear the timidness in her voice when she asked for me. I told her that I’d already seen the result, and I already had cried. She told me how sorry she was, and that their team had really been rooting for me. What she said next completely floored me. She told me that no matter when the miscarriage started, even in the middle of the night, that I could call the office emergency line and they would call in a prescription for the pain. She told me that I should not have to go through intense physical pain while dealing with such overwhelming emotional pain. I couldn’t even get my former OBGYN practice to tell me if I would have bleeding or pain, and this practice offers to call in pain medication? It was a relief, because I was dreading going through that pain again. She also told me that in 2-3 weeks I would have a sit down with my physician to do a miscarriage follow up and discuss a plan. At that moment, I started to cry. There was nothing else that she could have said that day that would give me so much consolation. I would get to sit down with the doctor in 2 weeks and discuss this? I would get to pick his brain about why he thought this was happening to me for the second time in 6 months? How amazing is this practice? I felt so blessed. At the end of the phone call, Tony came home with food, and we got lost in a movie and an enormous amount of calories. I was ready to take on the pain. It happened within two days of spotting with my first miscarriage. Surely it would happen in the next day or so.
But it didn’t. I called in sick to work that next day and bought myself two more days off work in case it happened. But it didn’t happen. Days went by. I was mentally and now physically prepared for this miscarriage. What was taking so long? I tried to stay positive, but I couldn’t help but be angry. I not only have to lose another baby, but now I have to wait for the miscarriage to start? I took a pregnancy test every few days and an annoyingly faint line would show up, mocking me. It’s still there. It’s still not over. On July 23rd, while I was working, it finally started. I grabbed baby heel warmers and taped them over my ovaries, and I took 4 ibuprofen and made it through. I requested to be on call the next day and was lucky enough to get it. I got to be home with Tony the next day. The bleeding and pain never got to be as intense as my first miscarriage. But it went on for over a week. A little here, and a little there- nothing as intense and brief as my first one. And the pregnancy tests were still positive. It was so frustrating that they were still positive because a very tiny part of me dared to HOPE that maybe I could still be pregnant. Maybe there were two babies and I only lost one of them. I knew that this wasn’t the case but the positive pregnancy tests completely threw me for a loop.
I went to therapy, and yet again I was given some invaluable advice. I told her that I didn’t know how to be HERE. That waiting for this to be over was torturous. That my hopes and dreams had been dashed again and now I was having to wait it out. I was exhausted on all levels and just needed to know how to continue to be here. She encouraged me to pretend as though I could speak to our baby. She asked me what I wanted to say. And I lost it. I said that I was so sorry that I couldn’t keep the baby safe. I was so sad that I would never get to meet our baby. I didn’t know how to go on. And she helped me come up with this to say, anytime that I was feeling impatient. “Thank you for being here. Thank you for spending as much time as you are able to stay with me. Thank you for representing the love that Tony and I share.” I also came to the conclusion that day that I would never get THIS time with THIS baby back. That thought helped me exist through the next couple of weeks that it took before my pregnancy test was finally negative. With another loss came more flowers and cards. And each one meant the world to me again, as once again they were acknowledgements of our loss. Thank you to each one of you.
