I might cry just writing this entry, so I'm sorry if I give you tears of your own. The day before yesterday while cooking and cleaning for my beautiful F and Lovey C I started what I assumed to be my period. I counted the days since my last one, only 14... strange. If you know much about the female reproductive system you will be aware that most women have a 28 day cycle. Mine is usually 29 but occasionally is more or less than that, so I didn't think about it. I made a wonderful soup, cheeseburger potato soup, it was super yummy, put F to bed, P put C to bed, which is a pretty normal routine, but I had a killer headache and couldn't seem to focus well. I had one the night before, and early that morning and was beginning to think I was going to have migranes the rest of my life.
That evening as I was shutting down the computer and getting ready to go to bed my son C woke up, I felt that familiar little trickle and knew I would need to go to the bathroom very soon, I helped C use the potty, tucked him back into bed and went to my bathroom. (I'm sorry for the gross details to follow please skip the rest of this and the entire next paragraph if you don't want to know). By the time I arrived in my own bathroom I had not only saturated my pad, but also my underwear and pants, and the contents were running down my legs. It was disgusting. I had to wake P who was already sleeping to get me some things.
I changed my clothes and laid down in bed a little concerned about what had just happened and in denial that it would happen again. I managed to sleep a little until I woke up at midnight feeling odd. I ran my hand under my bottom (outside of my clothes) to 'check' and my hand was covered in blood. EWWW... again cleaned myself up and had P get me some things. The sheet was covered, the mattress pad soaked through, the mattress has a red circle.... After cleaning up I called my doctor and while I waited for a return call I played around on facebook. The on-call physician called me back, had me check my eyes for anemia, and then said that I was probably ok to wait until morning but that if I needed to call her again to go ahead and do so, but to make an appointment the next morning with my Doctor. At 1:40am I woke to the same thing again, this time I made it to the bathroom before I was in too much danger, but lost a lot of blood. The next time was at 2:50am. Why didn't I just go to the doctor then? Because I didn't want to wake the kids, didn't know anyone who could take care of them at that time of night and didn't want to wake P, and because I was in denial.
at 7:30am I called and scheduled an appointment, their earliest wasn't until 11am. I got a babysitter, and tried to eat breakfast, it went down, that is all I'm saying. I was so weak from all the bleeding that I could hardly walk to the car. When we arrived at the parking garage I began to bleed again and had to send Patrick to get me a wheelchair because I knew I'd never make it to the office without making a HUGE mess. I was so weak I couldn't feel stupid in that chair... We got to the dr and I went straight to the bathroom. We were checked in a while before our appointment even. I sat shivering on the bed wrapped in my sweater looking very pale.
The nurse practitioner had my blood pressure taken while sitting, then laying, then sitting then standing, my pulse was taken at all these times too. And then she send me (with a nurse wheeling me over, either so that they could have their wheelchair back, or so that she knew I got in over there) to the ER across the road.
At the ER they did the blood pressure again, then they drew some blood, and I fainted and apparently convulsed, nurses came from everywhere... I warned them I already felt like fainting and regularly do when having my blood drawn. They gave me oxygen and checked all my stats again. Then left us for a long time.
The nurse returned to look at my test results, all my levels were normal, but the pregnancy test had not returned yet so she couldn't tell me if I was miscarrying. Denial runs strong in the little blood I still carried in my body... I just knew I wasn't pregnant.. I mean look at the signs... my last period started on Dec 21st, I have a normal 29 day cycle, the earliest I've ever ovulated is day 13 and that was last month, normally I ovulate on day 20 (I know all this because I had been charting until this last month when I decided that I couldn't handle the stress and gave my birth control up to P and God.). I was only on day 14 now... so even if I ovulated on day 13 it would be too early to find out anything on a blood test as the baby wouldn't have implanted yet.
The Doctor came in and said "you know you're pregnant right, I mean you had to have known." No, NO I didn't know... how could I have known, my last cycle was Dec 21st! I'm pregnant?!? That means I'm probably miscarrying... and he says it like he means congratulations, how is this congratulatory? You tell me in one sentence congrats you are pregnant, oh by the way, you are not going to be for long... you might have already passed the baby... These are not the doctors words but rather my thoughts. The doctor was actually very nice. He ordered an ultrasound abdominal and vaginal, I told him that I needed a woman for that, he said it depended on who was on staff, I told him he could find a woman and he smiled and said he'd see what he could do. A woman came in, did the ultrasound but like all techs do told me absolutely nothing, and left a lot of my questions to be answered by my imagination. Which didn't help anything really.
The doctor came back... grim prognosis. He informed me that based on the level of HcG in my blood at this point there should be some sort of sac, or even a baby on the ultrasound, but there wasn't, anything, anywhere... even the tech has said she didn't see anything because I told her if she did I wanted to see it. He also said that my lining looked ok, but a little thin for the level of HcG I had. He asked if I had seen any type of tissue in the toilet or on my pads, I had not, but I had felt clots or something similar passing and had tried to look, but couldn't see and wasn't about to dig around in my toilet. He then preformed a full scale investigation of my pelvis.... I cried before he even started... there have now been 3 men to see that area of my body, and I only ever wanted one to... I mean this as an adult, not as a baby have diaper changes. My husband I feel should be the only one, but I had an ultrasound tech when I was pregnant with F that was male, and now this doctor. He didn't ask me why I was crying, he probably assumed that it was because I was probably loosing my baby. Really the whole time I wanted to tell him that I wasn't a car, I was a person, and that I wanted a woman! He said that he needed to remove some clots that were actually holding my cervix open. I think that may have been the turn around point. Since that time the bleeding has really tapered off
They sent me home, and asked that I have a follow up with blood work today with my own doctor. I have scheduled the appointment for 2:45pm. P has gotten permission to get out of work early for the appointment, and a friend of ours has agreed to take the kids for us.
In the mean time, I'm praying that God has taken control of my heart, this baby, and our situation. Yesterday after grieving a little I got on Facebook and saw that Jessica Joy Rees passed away (she is a sweet little girl who was fighting two brain tumors and helping spread the joy to other kids with cancer through a program called joy jars, and through NEGU, which is Never Ever Give Up.... she had such an amazing mission, and is now in heaven, if you feel like checking out her mission please look her up on Facebook), that a friend whose husband had been praying for work finally got an answer to those prayers, and several other things that at the moment I can't remember, but all sad, happy, and mysterious. The fact is, no mater what happens in MY life, the loss of my perfect birth, the loss of my dog, the possible loss of this baby, God is working his will all over the place... so many people following God's will, so many experiencing loss and gain... I'm not the center of it all, and I don't want to be. I'm not sure how, but that comforts me, that God is still working all over.
No matter how comforted that makes me feel, I still feel that if I really lost this baby I want to make sure that even if I'm the only one who thinks of it, it will be remembered. I'm trying to think of something to call it, probably not a real name since I don't know what gender it would have been, but something cute, like bean, or sweetpea.... I have not decided yet, and probably wont until after I get the results back from my blood work later today. Feel free to make suggestions if you have a good one... and please if you are reading this, keep me in your prayers.
by the way, I never intended this blog to be a list of my woes, it was meant to be a life time journey of the battles that I have won... and I guess you have to go through the battle in order to win it, so for now you are seeing the battles.... I'll get to the victory part eventually I promise!
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