I had planned to start back blogging at the first of the year...but given life's circumstances, I figured now was a better time than ever to get some of my thoughts into writing.
It's been a while since I've written...my last post was right before Radford was born. And here we are...a year later. Ha! Between adjusting to our new house (and figuring out which projects we want to tackle first), Chaz working a crazy work schedule (averaging 15-25 overtime hours a week on top of his normal 40 hour week), life with two littles - one of whom only naps about every 10 days and the other one being a human koala to my hip 90% of the time, training for a 1/2 marathon and attempting to workout everyday (SANS gym), my daily photo collage project, weekly bible study, cooking 90% of our meals at home, and attempting to make sure we don't sit around and watch tv all day, it's been quite a wild ride. For those of you that DO follow my FB photo collage, thanks for enduring too many photos of my children.
2016 was coasting along with no major changes - no career changes, no moving, no babies. Until September. I found out I was pregnant with #3 on September 30th. I had taken a test the week before because I was supposed to start that day and it was negative. I waited a LONG week (knowing I was late) and took another test. WOAH! was my first reaction. Then it was "how am I going to do life with THREE?!?!" (This one and Radford would have been 19 1/2 months apart - exactly what Nora and Rad are!!) Then all the other things you could possibly imagine I thought about...carseat, sleeping arrangements, how to announce, boy or girl, how will this change our family dynamic, will baby be like Nora or Radford or both, etc etc etc. I walked around that day in a excited fog.
That night we surprised Chaz when he came home from work. We had a bag put together with a small pumpkin (because we were going to paint pumpkins as a family and I wanted to have a 5th one for our little blessing), some chocolate and the test. He was SOOOO surprised - as we weren't "trying" for a baby. We just assumed God wanted to give us the gift of another child and that was His timing.
I went for my 1st ultrasound a week and a half later...I was 6 weeks 5 days. They saw the sac, but couldn't find baby. The doctor kept asking me if I was sure of my dating. Yes...I keep up with these types of things. So, they retook my bloodwork to check my HCG levels and asked me to come back a week later for another ultrasound. The hope was that we were off in my dating and we just couldn't see baby yet. Bloodwork came back the next day and my HCG levels were rising...this is a good thing!
One long week later, I went back for another ultrasound and unfortunately she saw the same things again...a growing sac, but no baby. She asked me to do more bloodwork to test my HCG levels again and decided to send me to a radiologist for an official ultrasound. At that point, she briefly talked to me about miscarriage options, etc....which was all a blur because I was just convinced my dating was off, that I was way earlier than I thought and that baby was just growing slowly. I wasn't thinking there wasn't a baby. I FELT pregnant. I was gaining weight, my hormone levels were rising, I was craving weird things, etc.
I prayed and prayed and prayed more than I've ever prayed for anything that next 7 days. At this point I had told MAYBE 5 people I was pregnant...so I didnt really have a group of people I could talk to about what was going on...so The Lord and I had lots of one ended conversations. Whenever we prayed with Nora we prayed for "our little blessing" instead of "baby in mommy's belly" because we hadn't told her yet what was going on.
ANOTHER long week later I went to see the radiologist. She probed around for 20-30 minutes. I couldn't see the screen, but Chaz could. I was trying to read his facial expressions the entire time. His face was blank. At that point I just closed my eyes and talked to God. The ultrasound tech left the room and said she was going to call the doctor and have the doctor call into my room. A few minutes later I was picking up the phone and she was telling me I was experiencing what's called a "blighted ovum miscarriage". Basically the egg and sperm connected and started to grow, but early it never grew into an embryo that would have eventually been baby and was most likely reabsorbed by my body. BUT my body still produced a sac and all the pregnancy hormones. The sac was measuring 7 weeks 4 days but I was actually8 weeks 5 days. So the empty sac had finally stopped growing a week before that appointment. From all my research, a blighted ovum occurs when there is an abnormal chromosome makeup and the body detects defects in baby and aborts it before it can continue to grow. There is no known cause for a blighted ovum.
We both walked out of the radiologist office confused and quiet. I got in the car and completely lost any composure I had. I was hysterical. I had thought if I prayed enough, if I wanted a baby enough then this wouldn't be the end result. I was sitting there believing I was almost 9 weeks pregnant and my uterus was actually EMPTY. I'm not sure which is a worse loss (because I've never experienced the other) but seeing a heart beat, then it stopping, or going in expecting to see a baby and heart beat and realizing it wasn't actually there at all. It's a crazy weird experience and I'm still to this day having a hard time wrapping my brain around why God allowed this to happen to me. I believe in life at conception...SO, there WAS a baby at some point. Whether that baby lived one day or one hour or one week...it was ours and now it's in heaven.
The next step was to decide when/how I wanted to miscarry what was left of "our little blessing". Wait for my body to do it naturally, take medication to induce the miscarriage, or have a D&C. Surgery was not an option I felt comfortable with. We decided to wait a week and see how things went. Nothing happened that week. Anxious and tired of being pregnant but actually not being pregnant anymore, I called the doctor and had the prescription filled for the induction medication. I had planned to take it Friday morning but I just couldn't bring myself to do it...I literally walked past the bottle 37x that morning praying about what I should do. I knew there was no longer a baby in my belly, but I felt like I was ending it's life. What a mixture of emotions you can feel in the moment of taking that medication. Finally around 1pm I took the medication. I would have been 10 weeks the following day.
Let me just say...don't read anything on Google. You will freak yourself out. I had planned for the most horrific experience of my life - I had read about people passing out, blood transfusions because of losing so much blood, etc etc etc. Friday night and all day Saturday were pretty bad. I barely slept, bled a lot, and prayed. Ironically I never cried. I don't know if that was God's gift to that day...but I was calm about the ordeal, letting things happen as they were suppose to happen. Sunday I was SO sore and so exhausted. I felt as I had given birth, yet I had aching arms of no new baby to hold.
That is when I cried. I cried and cried and cried. I cried myself into Monday. Monday I knew I needed to get out of the house. I ran errand with the kids, took them to lunch and tried to smile. Tuesday the same - errands and lunch out of the house. While I was out, I was hit with a wave of contractions - 4 minutes apart for over 30 minutes. I got home and had round 2 of miscarriage. It literally was worse and more painful that Friday/Saturday had been. I freaked out, called the doctor and they put me on "bleeding watch". If it happened again I was to take myself to Labor and Delivery. Thankfully, the worst of it was finally over.
I never EVER wish this upon my worst enemy. Miscarriage is miserable. It will wreck you emotionally, spiritually, physically and mentally. I feel broken. I feel weak. I feel tired. I feel angry. I feel sad. I feel defeated. Coupling this experience on a weekend where Chaz is on call and works 25 hours + daylight saving time change + Nora with a double ear infection + Rad with some unknown virus = my world feeling like its crumbling in on itself. I felt helpless. I felt alone. I just wanted to cry out to every single person I passed "Don't you know what's happening to me right now?!"
But you know what? GOD IS GOOD! And I'm so thankful for all of the Godly women in my life (that knew what was going on) who reached out to me, prayed for me, gave me quotes, let me cry and reminded me that God has a plan...even for "our little blessing". Psalm 139:16 says: "Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Another friend who had just experienced a miscarriage a few weeks prior sent me this that she had written one teary night: "Last night I thanked the Lord for making me your Mom. I realized God's special purpose for you was to have Jesus hold you first. I'll see you soon little one and until then I will forever love you." My sweet SIL, Hilaire, even gave me a devotion book titled "Grieving the Child I Never Knew". I've slowly been working my way through it and it's a beautiful reminder that I'm not alone in this journey.
I don't try to understand God's plan...I just trust that He's sending me in the right direction. Where He has me right now is where He wants me - as a momma to TWO beautiful children who I love more than life itself. In His timing, we will become parents again if He so desires. Until then, I will hold them even more tightly and pray I never take for granted how special they are and what a wonderful gift it is to be their mother. Now when I pray, I pray for "Blessing": my little baby in heaven who got to meet Jesus before meeting me.
And you know what else, the heavy heart wounds I'm feeling now will pass. I will slowly grieve less and less. But I will never forget. Never forget my child, never forget that my strength comes from The Lord and I can endure anything. I am strong. Our family is strong. And boy do I have a beautiful family. I'm so thankful for Chaz - he is my rock. This man saw more tears in a few weeks than he probably had seen in our entire relationship. He held me, prayed for me, expected nothing of me (our house was a wreck, laundry wasn't done, I'm not even sure what we ate for a week, I looked a hot mess from not putting myself together), but he loved me unconditionally. Just as Our Father loves us. What a wonderful picture of marriage being held together by your faith in the Lord and love for one another.
And you know what other blessing I received from this situation? Learning to let go. Let go of control of everything. This was one of the only times in my life that no matter what I did, the outcome was out of my hands. I am a control freak, a planner, OCD, type A, whatever you want to call it. But the past few weeks I have really been challenged to let go of my control of everything. The house has been messier than normal, I've cooked less, clean laundry has sat for weeks not being put away, I've worried less about scheduled nap times, I haven't stressed in general about life. This, I'm SURE, is a gift from The Lord. Chaz and I have had numerous conversations during our almost 5 years together about me learning to let things go, but it's not easy for me. Only when I've been stripped of my control by Him have I been able to surrender that control over other things in my life. It's freeing. Really freeing. I've gone to bed with dishes in the sink, toys everywhere, and pillows not perfectly in their place...and we have survived. I'm learning to focus more on the things that really, in the long run matter way more - quality time with my family.
When you see me out, it's ok to say something about what happened...talking about it seems to help with the healing process. Don't be surprised by the tears though. :)
Thank you in advance for all your love and support.
