A few years ago when we were trying to conceive, there was a commercial that came on television for a home pregnancy test that said something along the lines of …”it is possible to be a little pregnant…”. I hated that commercial. I hated it for my online friends who had suffered early losses and I hated it for myself because I didn’t want to be a little pregnant, I wanted to be a LOT pregnant.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had my own experience of being “a little pregnant”. It started the Sunday before last when my husband and I found out that 6 years after having our son and a very positive home pregnancy test, “Surprise! You’re pregnant!”. A test at our doctor’s office confirmed it and my diabetes medication was immediately changed and the prenatal vitamins were immediately popped. For two days I’m quite sure I walked around in sort of a stupor. Having been through 4 years of fertility treatments and the sheer torture of waiting to have our son, the fact that we had conceived again was stunning. Then reality set in. I would be 37 when this baby would be born….our son would be almost 7. That’s a pretty big gap between them. Aside from medical issues (diabetes, a positive lupus antibody test, etc.) there was also the fact that, “OMG….do I even remember how to do this “baby thing” after all these years??!! After the initial shock wore off, I started to get a little excited. E.B. would be a big brother and a new baby to love would be the icing on the cake for our family.
We only told a few people, mainly my parents and the people I work with. Because we had a very early loss before conceiving our son, I knew I had to be realistic about the chances of sustaining this pregnancy. And I hate that about being pregnant. It should be a happy time and ideally, you should be able to share your good news with the world.
On Monday I promptly showed up at my 6 week ultrasound appointment very anxious to see our baby. Unfortunately, we saw absolutely nothing in my womb. No gestational sac, no fetal pole, no baby at all. We assumed it might be too early and my doctor gave me the choice of taking a blood test to measure the HCG hormone to see if the numbers were consistent with me being this far along, or to wait 2 more weeks for another ultrasound. Being the very impatient person I am, I chose the blood test. 2 days of testing and another ultrasound confirmed by Wednesday that most likely I had suffered a missed miscarriage and this was not going to have a happy ending. Simply put, a missed miscarriage is when a fetus stops growing but the body doesn’t recognize this and still produces the hormones necessary to sustain a pregnancy. My only options were a D&C or to wait this out (which could take days, weeks, or months and still result in no baby). I chose to have the D&C.
The procedure itself was painless and quick. Emotionally, I was a wreck going in, but the Lord really placed some good people in my path that day, everyone from the caring nursing staff (including 2 people from my own church who worked there) right down to the woman who wheeled me out to the car after I was discharged. My parents were also there (my husband was out of town) to make sure I had their support and help. Given the circumstances, I couldn’t have had better care. The only complaint I had through the whole experience was that the day before when I did my pre-op processing, I was taken to a labor and delivery room to have this done, surrounded by the sounds of beeping fetal monitors, proud fathers exiting rooms holding newborns, and everything that screamed “BABIES!! PREGNANCY!! BABIES!!! It honestly didn’t bother me too much because I had accepted what had happened, but can you imagine how difficult that could be for someone experiencing a loss for the first time or a loss possibly later in their pregnancy? Or any loss, for that matter. To be honest, I was a little floored about the lack of sensitivity. Also, every time my case was discussed between nurses/lab workers, I was labeled a “threat abortion”, which is the medical/technical term for someone who is losing a baby. However, those words just made me cringe inside because we did want this baby.
So today we are no longer having a baby. I’m not sure if we will pursue trying to have another one ever again, but I know that now is probably not the time for me to be making those types of decisions at all. As of now, I’m simply feeling very blessed to have our son and if that’s the only child we have, then that’s enough.
