Words cannot describe what it's like to look at an image of your baby on an ultrasound screen. Something so tiny and perfect with a beautiful little flicker of a heartbeat. There is no more living proof you need in that moment that God exists. It's hard to look at that baby and think, how could anyone ever doubt his miracles. It was one of the best moments of my life next to marrying my husband and having my daughter.
Fast forward two weeks to the worst moment of my life. Same ultrasound tech, same room, but different words. Words I never hope to hear again in my life. I looked up at the screen and could see the baby but there was no longer a tiny flicker of a heartbeat. I'm not stupid, I obviously knew what that meant but I asked anyway hoping by some miracle of a chance she saw something I didn't. She looked at me and said, "No, we need to call your doctor."
It was like someone had sucked all of the air out of the room. I couldn't breath. I was in shock. They moved us to another room and my husband and I just sat there and held each other in disbelief while the doctor tried to explain and comfort us. We sat there numb hearing bits and pieces of what she was saying between trying to grasp what had just happened. I remember her saying "you don't fit the bill for repeated pregnancy loss". "I don't see anything that points to anything being wrong with either of you, sometimes these things just happen and we don't know why." Then throwing in some statistics like, "only 2% of people have recurrent miscarriage after already having a healthy pregnancy." Suddenly this sarcastic thought ran through my head, "well aren't I the big winner, " I wanted to say. This is not a club I wanted to belong to. This would be the Repeated Pregnancy Loss club- defined as 3 or more consecutive pregnancy losses.
We continued to sit and discuss options and I elected to have a D and C procedure done. This was actually much easier on my body than when I had tried to do it naturally the last time. As far as the physical end of things goes everything has gone really well (it's the emotional side that is torture). My husband was amazing the whole time. It's funny how in the midst of tragedy I fell even more in love with him than before. You want sexy ladies? There was nothing more attractive about my husband than sitting there to hurt right along side of me. That might sound weird but it's hard for guys sometimes to grasp that kind of emotion. He really has been amazing. Although it was hard having to come home and put on a happy face for your 2 and a half year old that doesn't understand why Mommy and Daddy don't feel like playing. It was hard to look at her, but also healing at the same time. Hard because we were so excited for her to have a sibling. She is all about babies right now which makes this process even harder. Not to mention a lot of our friends are pregnant or having their second. It was also healing. It has truly made me realize the miracle and gift that she was to us. She would hug me around my neck so tight and say, "I love you so much mommy" and my heart would melt. She is by far the best thing that has ever happened to us and the best medicine for a broken heart a doctor could ever give.
It has been 4 days since we found out we lost the baby and it hurts a lot. There are brief periods where we forget and share a laugh about something or smile. We have to grieve in shifts so we are able to function and play with our daughter like any normal day. There are times when I find myself thinking I only have to hold it together two more hours until she goes to bed and then I can cry. We talk about it, cry and talk some more. We look at the picture of our ultrasound and wonder what went wrong? Why things had to be this way? I don't know that we will ever have answers and that part is really hard. Feeling like we were powerless to stop it from happening. Your most innate reaction to parenting is to protect your child and we simply couldn't.
Where do we go from here? Good question. Obviously we will have tests run, etc. but the truth is God is the greatest physician and healer we could seek. We are hoping and praying he is not finished expanding our family and will help us find some answers, but ultimately he is were we will get our healing. The only bad thing about healing is that it takes time and I am not a patient person. Grief, unfortunately, does not have a time limit. I would really appreciate if God would instead have a some sort of press conference on this kind of stuff, tell me his personal plan of action and timeline on this sort of thing. My husband reminds me often it doesn't work that way. Instead, I will have to be patient and trust him to bring us through this. We cannot do this on our own, we do it with God. The world isn't going to stop turning because of our tragedy, so we can either sit around and choose to be defeated or we can let God be our strength and put one foot in front of the other. We are going to be OK and I know that for certain because God is good. In the mean time keep us in your thoughts and prayers because we need them.
Update our progress soon....
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