Miscarriage...

A few people that I am very close with have miscarried in the last month. It's such a hard thing that I think is very hard to understand unless you have been though it yourself. So I just wanted to write down a few thoughts that I have about this subject.

Another reason why I've been thinking about miscarriage a lot lately is because today marks the due date of my first pregnancy. Had I not miscarried I would be celebrating the second birthday of him/her sometime this week. Instead, I'm thinking about how tomorrow I will have a sweet little boy who is going to be 11 months old.

When Trent and I first started trying to have a baby we got pregnant right away. We decided to wait to tell people until I had hit the 12 week mark because of the whole risk of miscarriage before then. So a few days before that mark we felt pretty good about the whole thing and I didn't think that I was going to miscarry so we started telling people at a ward party we were at. And we told both of our families the good news. A few days later I went in for my 12 week appt. and the doctor could not find a heart beat. She asked me to come back a few hours later for an ultrasound to see what was going on. I knew that it wasn't good. I just knew...

Trent had to go to a lab that he couldn't miss so I drove up to the little blue trailer in Kahuku for the ultrasound by myself. I will never forget the image that I saw on the screen. There was this little tiny baby... I could see a head and arm nubs and leg nubs, and it just floated there in a little bubble. There was no heartbeat. From the size the baby measured they think that it died around 9 weeks but my body was still acting like it was pregnant and didn't abort the baby like it should have. I will also never forget that drive home... It was during the 41 days of solid rain in Hawaii and I felt like that was how I felt... I just wanted to cry and cry and cry as the rains came down around me. The doctor sent me home with a jar of formaldehyde and gave me a week to see if it would come out on it's own. It didn't...

So a week later I had a D&C to get the baby out. That was no fun. I was so sad that this baby hadn't lived. In the hospital the nurse told me that usually women who had miscarriages were very fertile afterwards and usually got pregnant very quick. So I tried to stay positive and figured we would just get pregnant in a month or so.

Months went by.... I think that was harder than the miscarriage itself. I remember when September 15th (my due date) rolled around and I was still not pregnant, I was so sad. I have always wanted to be a mom. When people would ask me what I wanted to do when I grew up I would say, "Be a mom..." That's it. So this was really hard for me. I didn't understand why I wasn't getting pregnant. I started to think that there was something wrong with me (there were reasons why I felt like there was something wrong with me, not just a gut feeling, but this post is getting long enough as it is).

So I went back to the doctor, and the second devastating ultrasound happened. They did an ultrasound to see what was going on in there and low and behold...

This is not my ovary... I found this picture on google... but this is what an ovary with PCOS looks like. All those black circles are cyst... and this is what my ultrasound looked like.

There were a lot of cysts on my ovaries and the doctor thought that I might have PCOS (I don't think that I actually had this, I think that I was misdiagnosed... FYI).

The doctor suggested that I go on the crazy pill (birth control pill) because that is how they treat PCOS. Kinda makes it hard to get pregnant though when you are taking the pill. So I went back on for two months (doc suggested 4 months but I wasn't that patient) to level out my hormones a bit. The idea is that the pill levels out your hormones so that when you get off the pill your hormones will stay level for a few months before they start to get all out of whack again. So after two months of pill popping we started trying again. Also, I was taking some herbal stuff during this time called fertility blend that is developed at Standford and has shown in studies to help women with PCOS get pregnant. After two months... I was pregnant with Tru!!! We really did wait to hear the baby's heartbeat before we told people this time and that is the best sound I have ever heard in my life.

We had a little scare when I was around 14 weeks pregnant and I started bleeding, so I had another ultrasound and got this gem...

Here is little Tru lying on his back, waving at mom...

Now that I have told this long story of my long year of getting pregnant... back to miscarriage.

There was some advice that I was given that really helped me stay somewhat sane during all this that I want to share.

#1 - I had to tell a teacher about all this because I was suppose to do a presentation the day of my D&C. When I told her she said that this had happened to her when she was having children. She said that she lost a baby and it was very hard, but that she had gotten pregnant soon after and she could not imagine living life without her son. Even though she was sad that she had lost her baby she was so grateful for the baby that she did have shortly after and she would not have had him if her first pregnancy had gone full term...

#2 - I worked for a man who was very quiet most of the time, and I didn't really know him at the time. But he came to me one day at work a few weeks later and he said that he was sorry about what had happened. I of course started bawling, and instead of just patting me on the back and going to his office he stayed and talked to me. He said that when his wife was pregnant with one of their children she was threatening miscarriage and so he gave her a blessing. In the blessing he said that he felt so much peace and that he knew that everything was going to be okay. The next day his wife lost the baby, and he didn't understand how he could feel like everything would be okay when they had lost the baby. A few months later his wife became pregnant with their youngest daughter and when she was born he was filled with that peace again and he knew that everything was okay...

3- Another boss of mine was a very sweet lady that was like my second mother out in Hawaii. She sent me flowers and a card from everyone in the office. She told me to take as much time as I needed, which I thought was a little strange. The flowers, the card, time off... I had just had a miscarriage right? It was a hard thing to understand because the baby was so small and it wasn't like I had lost a child that I could hold in my arms. But she treated me like I had lost something very dear and valuable... even when at the time I didn't understand this. Then one day she told me that it was okay to feel bad about this. It was okay to feel horrible about this... because I was mourning the loss of a child. She was a mother and she helped me recognize that I didn't need to just brush off the sadness, that I didn't need to pretend like I felt okay about this when I didn't. I had lost a baby, and I needed to mourn, and I'm so grateful that she helped me through that.

As I write this all out the feelings that I experienced that year come rushing back. It was hard to go through the heartbreak of losing a baby and then not knowing if I would ever be able to get pregnant. I cherish my little boy. I know that he is one of the greatest blessings in my life. I don't know what the future holds for my family. I was taught a big lesson that we are not the creators here, that Heavenly Father has a plan for all of us and he is the one with ultimate control.

I can say though that today I do not mourn the loss of the first baby. My little boy just woke up from his nap and I am going to go hold him and squeeze him and love him to pieces and I will feel no sadness for the baby that I lost. Had I not been able to have Tru I'm pretty sure that this would not be the case. Having Tru erased all of that sadness for me. I probably would not have had Tru when I did if I had the first baby, but it's so hard to know how you feel about the unknown right?

For my dear friends who are going though this now you are not alone. It's okay to mourn the loss of a baby... and hope for a brighter future with your family. And I hope and pray that your mourning will be erased by a new little one soon...