January and February were crazy months for us. Just a few days before Rachel’s birthday we found out that we were expecting our third child. This was definitely a surprise for us and filled me with mixed feelings, mostly because of the timing. We were in such a place of uncertainty with Ryan graduating in May and still looking for a job, our loans (and primary source of income) ending in April, health insurance ending in August, mostly just not knowing where we would be and what we would be doing in 8-9 months. However, I also had the joy and excitement that I experienced with both Lauren and Rachel and I tried to keep faith that everything would work out as it should. I even started going through my maternity clothes and baby stuff to see what we would need, thinking about when to tell our families, etc. We had no idea how far along I was, since I had not had a period since before I got pregnant with Rachel, so I called the doctor and they had me come in the next day for a blood test; the results were that I was about 7 weeks along. They scheduled me for the standard 8 week visit and an ultrasound just to double check the progress.
Ryan had class at the time of the appointment and I decided it would be easier not to bring the girls and I left them with a neighbor. The ultrasound technician did the typical small talk, asked how I was feeling, how many kids I had and then spent a few minutes looking and looking and the screen in silence. She then said that she couldn’t find a heartbeat and that she could even find the fetus and said that something was irregular, without really explaining what exactly “irregular” meant she left the room and said she would show the images to my doctor. The sac was there but no heartbeat and no fetus. I felt that sinking feeling, the one where your heart drops to the floor and you know something is really wrong. After several minutes the doctor came and explained that sometimes things don’t come together the way they should and that the fetus was no longer progressing (they couldn’t even find it) and that I should expect a miscarriage in the next couple weeks. He said that he wasn’t sure when the fetus stopped progressing but that I should call in two weeks and let them know if I had started bleeding. I could also choose to have an operation called dilation and curettage where they surgically remove all the contents of the uterus. They said that some choose this option so they can start the healing process sooner. However if my body did not start the process on its own in two weeks I would need to have the operation. I decided that I would rather wait and let my body run its course but then all that was left to do was wait. I left the doctor’s office in a daze. When I got to our neighbor’s house to pick up the girls they were so happy and excited to see me (more so than usual it seemed). It was such a comfort to know that the Lord has blessed me with two beautiful daughters who love me and need me. They have become so much more precious to me as I have seen how fragile and what a miracle life is. In the next couple days so many questions ran through my mind. What if my body didn’t do what it was supposed to? How long would it take? What would it be like? What if they were wrong somehow? Do most people find out this way and left waiting for it to happen? When I asked the doctor what to expect he said it would be like a heavy period. I found this to be a rather poor description. If you would like to know my description keep reading; if not, know that it is all over now and we are doing fine. (The rest may be more information than you want to know).
My Description:
I knew that a miscarriage was emotionally challenging for people but I had no idea what it would really be like physically. Within a couple days I started spotting and a few days later for an entire afternoon and the following day I felt intense bearing down pressure on my pelvis, it was like what happened late in pregnancy with Lauren and Rachel. The worst days were about 3 or 4 days after I had started spotting. I went to bed feeling like I was having contractions, waves of pain every few minutes. I couldn’t stay in bed, and spent the next hour and a half sitting on the toilet trying to focus on birth relaxation techniques, working with the contractions and letting my body clean its self out. (Side note: I found this to be really helpful, since it really is a very preterm labor) This happened again the next night, but I was smart enough to leave a book in the bathroom to help the time pass. During those two days I also experienced a huge “rush” of fluid. Luckily I was home but not quite close enough to the bathroom to keep the whole bottom half of me from getting soaked. After those two intense days the bleeding slowed to a more “typical” (but extended) period, lasting in total from start to finish about five weeks. Starting after about the second week I have gone in every two or three weeks for a blood draw so they can follow my hormone levels all the way back down to zero, hopefully the last of which occurred this morning.
So that in a nut shell was my experience. I wish I would have know a little bit better what to expect, but being as it is such a sensitive subject usually only spoken about in whispers if spoken about at all, I didn’t know how to ask someone about their experience. I did recently find this website though that was helpful in explaining what actually happens:
http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancycomplications/miscarriage.html
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