I had my first ultrasound yesterday at 7 weeks 1 day. I was really nervous before hand, especially considering the fact that the last time I went for an ultrasound, my baby was dead. It went well, though. I saw the heartbeat right away, and it clocked in at 146bpm. The baby also measured exactly to the day s/he was supposed to, according to when I ovulated. That was a relief, since in my last pregnancy when I went for an ultrasound at 8 weeks 3 days the baby only measured 7 weeks 4 days, and then died within a week afterward.
The baby looked weird to me. Not that kind of peanut/kidney bean shape, but just a strange triangle shape the whole time. It was weird. But of course I'll be concerned about anything.
I still don't feel confident, so the doctor booked me in for another ultrasound next week. She said I might as well come in every week if that is what's going to help me manage my anxiety about this. I was hemming and hawing because I didn't want to seem crazy, I wanted to be a reasonable person who can go weeks between ultrasounds. But she clearly saw that probably wouldn't be a great decision for me, so she booked me in and told me I could always cancel it if I want to.
As for symptoms... my breasts are bigger, and they hurt more now than they did a week and a half ago. I can't feel my uterus much these days because it's not contracting a lot like it did at the beginning (the same thing happened in my other pregnancies at this point), but my belly is stupidly huge for 7 weeks (as usual). I am so tired. And I'm not as sick as a dog like I was in my first two pregnancies, but I have definite food aversions (to things I usually love) and gross icky feelings, and sometimes have full on nausea. It's completely tolerable at this point, though.
My resting heart rate has gone all the way down to 64, from when it was 74 shortly after I got pregnant. That is so weird to me because it is the opposite of what is supposed to happen - your heartrate is supposed to go up at this point in pregnancy and stay up. And last time it was a bad sign. But last time my heartrate went down once the baby died, and this time it's been going down for the past 3 weeks and everything is fine so far, so I guess it's just a weird fluke.
Showing posts with label Baby #4. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baby #4. Show all posts
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Betas
Here are the betas from my 4th pregnancy:
168 - 14 DPO (October 18)
226 - 15 DPO (October 19)
362 - 16 DPO (October 20)
932 - 18 DPO (October 22)
2008 - 20 DPO (October 24)
6441 - 23 DPO (October 27)
I've had so many done because I'm super nervous. My heart rate originally went up to 74 when I got pregnant, but has decreased over the past 2 weeks to 65 today. This worries me because it was one of the signs of my missed miscarriage last time - my heart rate started decreasing at exactly the time my baby died. My betas were going up properly during the first week that y heart rate was decreasing, so I stopped doing them. But it's gone down by 3bpm since then and is now way lower than it was before I got pregnant (normal for me is 60-65, but when I was so ill this summer my resting heart rate went up to somewhere in the 80's and never recovered back to normal. Before pregnancy it was 69-71 normally).
I'm 6 weeks 2 days today and don't really have any nausea. I feel like I'm getting carsick easier, and I have periods where I feel icky, and I'm having some mild food aversions sometimes, but nothing that really screams "pregnancy symptoms!!" at me.
My breasts have grown and are somewhat sore, but it's also not unbearable.
I'm super hungry all the time and I'm watching what and how much I eat (I have to eat Paleo because it helps control my autoimmune disease, and grains cause it to flare, so it's not like I can pig out on refined carbohydrates all day like I kind of did in my first two pregnancies to help control hunger and nausea). But I have a weakness for chocolate and I'm put on a few pounds recently, possibly as a result of too many chocolate covered almonds. My weight was still low after my flare up, so I can afford a few extra pounds, and I don't mind gaining weight for a good cause. But I would really rather not gain a bunch of weight and end up with no baby like I did last time. Carrying extra weight after dealing with a miscarriage is just a pickle on top of a huge crap sandwich.
They say every pregnancy is different but I just can't buy into that for my personal situation. My two successful pregnancies were very similar, and it was my unsuccessful pregnancy that was different and easier. I guess I'm just so nervous something is going to go wrong, I just want to be miserably pregnant. I want all the signs and symptoms to be torturing me so that I feel like everything is okay. Because my last pregnancy was the time that symptoms weren't torturing me. The symptoms were mild, and it turned out to be a very bad sign for me.
I know there's still time for the nausea to come. I was super sick at this point in my pregnancy with Noah, but it wasn't terrible at this point in my pregnancy with Isaiah. It was pretty bad by 7 weeks, so I still have "time" to get bad.
My ultrasound is in 6 days. My main goal in life right now is to try to not think about it, to not dwell on the anxiety. There's nothing I can do to change the outcome.
168 - 14 DPO (October 18)
226 - 15 DPO (October 19)
362 - 16 DPO (October 20)
932 - 18 DPO (October 22)
2008 - 20 DPO (October 24)
6441 - 23 DPO (October 27)
I've had so many done because I'm super nervous. My heart rate originally went up to 74 when I got pregnant, but has decreased over the past 2 weeks to 65 today. This worries me because it was one of the signs of my missed miscarriage last time - my heart rate started decreasing at exactly the time my baby died. My betas were going up properly during the first week that y heart rate was decreasing, so I stopped doing them. But it's gone down by 3bpm since then and is now way lower than it was before I got pregnant (normal for me is 60-65, but when I was so ill this summer my resting heart rate went up to somewhere in the 80's and never recovered back to normal. Before pregnancy it was 69-71 normally).
I'm 6 weeks 2 days today and don't really have any nausea. I feel like I'm getting carsick easier, and I have periods where I feel icky, and I'm having some mild food aversions sometimes, but nothing that really screams "pregnancy symptoms!!" at me.
My breasts have grown and are somewhat sore, but it's also not unbearable.
I'm super hungry all the time and I'm watching what and how much I eat (I have to eat Paleo because it helps control my autoimmune disease, and grains cause it to flare, so it's not like I can pig out on refined carbohydrates all day like I kind of did in my first two pregnancies to help control hunger and nausea). But I have a weakness for chocolate and I'm put on a few pounds recently, possibly as a result of too many chocolate covered almonds. My weight was still low after my flare up, so I can afford a few extra pounds, and I don't mind gaining weight for a good cause. But I would really rather not gain a bunch of weight and end up with no baby like I did last time. Carrying extra weight after dealing with a miscarriage is just a pickle on top of a huge crap sandwich.
They say every pregnancy is different but I just can't buy into that for my personal situation. My two successful pregnancies were very similar, and it was my unsuccessful pregnancy that was different and easier. I guess I'm just so nervous something is going to go wrong, I just want to be miserably pregnant. I want all the signs and symptoms to be torturing me so that I feel like everything is okay. Because my last pregnancy was the time that symptoms weren't torturing me. The symptoms were mild, and it turned out to be a very bad sign for me.
I know there's still time for the nausea to come. I was super sick at this point in my pregnancy with Noah, but it wasn't terrible at this point in my pregnancy with Isaiah. It was pretty bad by 7 weeks, so I still have "time" to get bad.
My ultrasound is in 6 days. My main goal in life right now is to try to not think about it, to not dwell on the anxiety. There's nothing I can do to change the outcome.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Why I've Been Absent
I haven't blogged in over 6 months. There are a lot of reasons for that.
My last post was about finding my baby's heartbeat at 8 weeks 2 days. The next day I had an ultrasound. Everything was "fine", the heartbeat was great, but the baby was only measuring 7 weeks 4/5 days. I WAS 8 weeks 3 days. I knew the exact day that I ovulated (I always do). The only day we had sex that whole month was the day before. The next day my husband got sick, then I got really sick. There's no way my husband's infertile sperm lasted an entire week until I ovulated, and if I was only 7 weeks 4 days then there's no way I would have gotten a positive pregnancy test when I did. It would have meant I got a positive HPT at only 4 or 5 days after ovulation. Impossible.
I was immediately concerned. I was concerned that my baby was dying, and the growth had slowed down because of that. But I tried to convince myself that there is a margin of error depending on who is doing the measuring, and MAYBE I ovulated a day later than I thought, and MAYBE the baby grew just a wee bit slow, and if you combine those things with the ultrasound tech measuring too small, MAYBE it would add up to me measuring 5-6 days behind.
I didn't have any other choice but to try and justify this to myself. Doctors never listen to patients.
After the ultrasound I was never able to find the heartbeat with my own Doppler again. There was one day, maybe the day after, that I found what sounded like a fetal heartbeat (you know how the sound is very different and distinct compared to the other sounds you pick up with a Doppler?). But it was too slow. I remember thinking "I really hope that isn't my baby's heartbeat, because if it is, it is way too slow and my baby really is dying..."
At 9 weeks and 1 day all my symptoms basically disappeared. My constant feeling of icky mild nausea was gone. My extreme hunger was basically gone.
My Fitbit showed that my resting heart rate, which had gone up by about 10bpm starting after implantation, slowly started decreasing back to my pre-pregnancy rate.
My uterus stopped growing. I could feel it, and it never got any bigger after 8 weeks.
I had a midwife appointment at 9 weeks and 3 days. I explained all my fears to her, and told her maybe I was just crazy and overanalyzing everything, but I was pretty sure my baby was dead. My midwife didn't actually think anything was wrong with me, but she sent a requisition for me to get an ultrasound the next week.
Unfortunately the fucking ultrasound department refused to book it until I was 12 weeks.
So I walked around with extreme anxiety for 3 weeks. Extreme anxiety. Everybody kept telling me everything was fine, I was overanalyzing, every pregnancy is different, blah blah blah. Typing this out I still want to go back and punch them all in their faces. Everyone was constantly trying to shut me down as I tried to talk about my fears and anxiety.
I spent three weeks knowing my baby was dead, but trying to convince myself I was crazy. Three extra weeks loving my baby and imagining what our life would be like with him, but at the same time having intense fear that he was already taken away from us.
Friday, May 13 was the day of my 12 week ultrasound. It is also my sister's birthday, and I remember thinking when he ultrasound was booked that I should try and change it because I was forever going to associate my sister's birthday with finding out my baby was dead. For some reason, I just left it. I think I was just frozen with fear and denial.
That morning my husband was so worried. He finally was taking me seriously, which made me even more anxious. I tried to tell him I was probably crazy, and maybe everything was fine.
It was a long wait for the ultrasound. When the tech came to get me she asked how I was, and I told her how anxious I was because I was pretty sure my baby had died three weeks ago. She also thought I was wrong.
She started the ultrasound, and thankfully she had the screen in a position so I could see it (a lot of techs tilt it so much away from you that you can't see no matter how awkwardly you position yourself). When the image popped up I immediately thought "I hope that is just a picture of the top of his head." As she moved things around more, I knew for sure. There was no heartbeat. There were no arms and legs. There was no movement.
After a couple of minutes I said, "That doesn't look good." She said the baby was only measuring 7 weeks 3 days, and there was no heartbeat.
I always thought I'd be one of those people who wouldn't believe it, who would want weeks of follow up ultrasounds to make sure the baby really wasn't growing.
But I've had enough ultrasounds. I can recognize a heartbeat without it being pointed out to me. I know what a baby is supposed to look like at each stage. I could see for myself my baby was dead. My baby had died right after my last ultrasound, just like I had thought, just like I knew for the last 3 weeks.
You'd think the fact that I already knew it had happened would prepare me, but it didn't. I was absolutely shattered. And I still carry some anger toward the stupid fucking system that doesn't listen to women and doesn't believe the ones who know their bodies and made me walk around with a dead baby inside of me for 3 weeks, living in a horrible anxious terrified limbo. Where I knew but I didn't know. Those 3 weeks made the experience so much worse.
As soon as I saw for sure my baby was dead, I wanted it out of me. I loved that baby with all my heart, but I couldn't have it inside of me anymore. This was another thing that surprised me. I had always feared miscarriage in the past, so I'd thought about these scenarios. I never thought I'd be in such a hurry to not be pregnant anymore.
There were complications in that I was seeing midwives, and they don't have anything to do with a missed miscarriage. They don't medically manage any of that. So I had to be referred to the on call OB. I had the choice to meet her in the morning at the hospital in Labour and Delivery, or wait until Monday and see her in her office. I chose L&D on Saturday morning.
My meeting with her was... well, she didn't really give a shit about what I had gone through during the past month, how the system ignored me, etc etc. I was just another woman who doesn't know her own body. Anyway, I was given the choice between taking Misoprostal (an induction drug) at home, or waiting until the following Thursday or so and having a D&C.
Being that I hate doing things the medical/surgical/invasive way, I elected to take the Misoprostal.
It was fucking hell. It was the worst labour I'd ever gone through. My labour with Noah was an induction that lasted 5 hours, and it was 3 times worse than my labour with Isaiah, which lasted 52 hours. I had no drugs with either of my babies. This labour was just as painful as my induction, if not more, but it took 12 HOURS of extreme pain before I finally birthed the baby and placenta at 1am on at 15. I was in completely and utter panic. I was overdosing on every possible pain pill I had available to me, and nothing helped until my Dad brought me two leftover oxy's from a surgery he had had. They calmed things down by like 10%, just enough to make me feel less panicked.
Seriously, the pain was so bad that if I could have gotten to the hospital (which I couldn't because I was in too much pain to get in any vehicle), I would have begged for a hysterectomy to make it stop.
12 hours of complete agony, all for a dead baby.
I spent May and June in a state of intense mourning. I had retained tissue that didn't show up on ultrasound, and my miscarriage made me bleed for 26 days. It took along time for the tissue to finally make its way out of my body (it was stuck in my cervix for a long time). As soon as I stopped bleeding, I ovulated within a few days, and just 7 days after I ovulated I got the heaviest period of my life. It lasted 12 days, and was way heavier than my miscarriage.
To make matters even more wonderful, the hormones from my miscarriage, the medications taken to induce it, the medications taken to try to control the pain, and the uncontrollable grief that followed, caused the perfect storm inside my body. I ended up with a severe flare of my autoimmune disease, ulcerative colitis. It got slowly worse throughout May and June, and by July I was literally dying. I lost 35lbs altogether, 25lbs of which I lost in just 3 weeks (I am thin to begin with so I ended up underweight and sickly skinny from this). I was losing 3 cups of blood a day. Putting anything on my tongue, no matter how tiny, made me gag and throw up. I couldn't stand, I could barely get to the toilet (26 times a day, just to let out blood). I couldn't read or watch TV. I didn't have the energy to do anything except lay in bed with my eyes closed. For weeks. I couldn't even sit propped up by pillows. My heart rate was through the roof. Even rolling over in bed would shoot my heart rate up to 120 and it would take an hour for it to calm down. My heart would pound so hard it shook my whole body.
I felt SO terrible. I thought I was going to die and it was terrifying. I didn't want to leave my children motherless.
My specialist was wonderful and got me on the right medications in the middle of July (I'd been to the ER twice before then and the medications they prescribed me didn't help, I just kept getting worse). She also forced me to eat what I could, no matter how unhealthy it was, and to get out of bed as much as I could, no matter how terrible I felt. I remember thinking "You clearly have no idea how I'm feeling right now." Like, I couldn't even lean over to get a drink off my bedside table. And putting food in my mouth made me vomit. I had no appetite and didn't want to eat ANYTHING. How was I supposed to get out of bed and eat? But I tried.
It took along time, and my efforts were pitiful at first. Eating a few chunks of watermelon. Drinking an Ensure. Limping bent over to get to the couch instead of staying in bed. I started trying to spend an hour each day sitting outside under a tree instead of just being inside all the time. By the end of July I could finally sit propped up part of the time, and I started to crochet. I spent a lot of time meditating and thinking positively to try and control my anxiety, as stress has a large influence on autoimmune disease.
I slowly got better during August, and by the beginning of September I was mostly normal and in remission. I'm extremely thankful that I'm still alive and able to parent my children again. Justin was on summer vacation (he's a teacher) during the two months that I was at my worst, and I'm so grateful for how those two things coincided.
I couldn't bring myself to write about any of this before now. Since getting deathly ill I've been trying very hard to stay positive and grateful. I feel like I've rewired the way I think. I'm still very sad about losing my baby, and it still makes me cry, but the difference is that now I have the tools to acknowledge but not dwell on those feelings, and to focus on all the good things in my life (of which I have many).
This has been more challenging in the last short while. This seems like a weird way to bring this up (at the end of a post like this), but almost two weeks ago I found out that I am pregnant again. I am a little over 5 weeks. I want this baby so badly, but I have constant anxiety that something is going to go wrong again. I am due at the end of June, but I can't seem to get to the point where I think I will ACTUALLY have a baby at the end of June.
I was always very afraid of having a miscarriage, especially in my first pregnancy. I was never one of those naive, blissfully pregnant people. I always was afraid something would go wrong. But now something HAS gone wrong, and now I'm in a place where I just can't seem to feel like there's a possibility of it going right. I feel like I'm just waiting for the bad part to come, so I can try and deal with it (and hopefully not almost die from my autoimmune disease again).
After my miscarriage I made an appointment with my fertility clinic in June. I wanted to be a patient of theirs immediately, so that I would have their monitoring available to me no matter how we ended up getting pregnant (IF we got pregnant). We had a plan to do IUIs this summer (we would have been able to do three before Justin went back to school), but I got sick, so it all got put on the back burner. Then, my first normal cycle (my cycle was extremely messed up this summer from being so ill and also being on prednisone, which shuts down your adrenals), the first time we've had sex since June, we get pregnant. It's madness. How did we spend 8 years trying to get pregnant every month, having to do fertility treatments to have our two living children, and then suddenly in 2016 we get pregnant naturally twice. Twice in a ROW, really.
I got my betas done 5 times, and they've all doubled in less than 48 hours. I forced myself to not go again today, but I might go on Friday. My uterus is quite swollen and I can feel it. I'm ridiculously bloated (like I have been in all my pregnancies). I'm a little more hungry, a little more tired. Nothing major going on yet.
I have an early ultrasound booked for November 9, two weeks from now. I don't think it'll make me feel much better, though, since my last baby didn't actually die until after I had had at ultrasound at 8 weeks 3 days. I think if I made it to 9 or 10 weeks and had an ultrasound where the baby was measuring appropriately I would feel a little better. Logically that makes no sense, because things could still go wrong after that point. But I think it's normal for people to just not feel at all comfortable until after they passed the point at which their last baby died.
So really, this is why I finally wrote about my horrible experiences in the last 6 months. Because I'm pregnant again. While I'd like to ignore it and hardly think about it (because I have a tendency to obsess about the fact that I'm pregnant and it makes things go soooo slowly), if this pregnancy goes well and I actually have a child at the end of it, I'm going to wish I had recorded things like I did for my first three pregnancies.
My last post was about finding my baby's heartbeat at 8 weeks 2 days. The next day I had an ultrasound. Everything was "fine", the heartbeat was great, but the baby was only measuring 7 weeks 4/5 days. I WAS 8 weeks 3 days. I knew the exact day that I ovulated (I always do). The only day we had sex that whole month was the day before. The next day my husband got sick, then I got really sick. There's no way my husband's infertile sperm lasted an entire week until I ovulated, and if I was only 7 weeks 4 days then there's no way I would have gotten a positive pregnancy test when I did. It would have meant I got a positive HPT at only 4 or 5 days after ovulation. Impossible.
I was immediately concerned. I was concerned that my baby was dying, and the growth had slowed down because of that. But I tried to convince myself that there is a margin of error depending on who is doing the measuring, and MAYBE I ovulated a day later than I thought, and MAYBE the baby grew just a wee bit slow, and if you combine those things with the ultrasound tech measuring too small, MAYBE it would add up to me measuring 5-6 days behind.
I didn't have any other choice but to try and justify this to myself. Doctors never listen to patients.
After the ultrasound I was never able to find the heartbeat with my own Doppler again. There was one day, maybe the day after, that I found what sounded like a fetal heartbeat (you know how the sound is very different and distinct compared to the other sounds you pick up with a Doppler?). But it was too slow. I remember thinking "I really hope that isn't my baby's heartbeat, because if it is, it is way too slow and my baby really is dying..."
At 9 weeks and 1 day all my symptoms basically disappeared. My constant feeling of icky mild nausea was gone. My extreme hunger was basically gone.
My Fitbit showed that my resting heart rate, which had gone up by about 10bpm starting after implantation, slowly started decreasing back to my pre-pregnancy rate.
My uterus stopped growing. I could feel it, and it never got any bigger after 8 weeks.
I had a midwife appointment at 9 weeks and 3 days. I explained all my fears to her, and told her maybe I was just crazy and overanalyzing everything, but I was pretty sure my baby was dead. My midwife didn't actually think anything was wrong with me, but she sent a requisition for me to get an ultrasound the next week.
Unfortunately the fucking ultrasound department refused to book it until I was 12 weeks.
So I walked around with extreme anxiety for 3 weeks. Extreme anxiety. Everybody kept telling me everything was fine, I was overanalyzing, every pregnancy is different, blah blah blah. Typing this out I still want to go back and punch them all in their faces. Everyone was constantly trying to shut me down as I tried to talk about my fears and anxiety.
I spent three weeks knowing my baby was dead, but trying to convince myself I was crazy. Three extra weeks loving my baby and imagining what our life would be like with him, but at the same time having intense fear that he was already taken away from us.
Friday, May 13 was the day of my 12 week ultrasound. It is also my sister's birthday, and I remember thinking when he ultrasound was booked that I should try and change it because I was forever going to associate my sister's birthday with finding out my baby was dead. For some reason, I just left it. I think I was just frozen with fear and denial.
That morning my husband was so worried. He finally was taking me seriously, which made me even more anxious. I tried to tell him I was probably crazy, and maybe everything was fine.
It was a long wait for the ultrasound. When the tech came to get me she asked how I was, and I told her how anxious I was because I was pretty sure my baby had died three weeks ago. She also thought I was wrong.
She started the ultrasound, and thankfully she had the screen in a position so I could see it (a lot of techs tilt it so much away from you that you can't see no matter how awkwardly you position yourself). When the image popped up I immediately thought "I hope that is just a picture of the top of his head." As she moved things around more, I knew for sure. There was no heartbeat. There were no arms and legs. There was no movement.
After a couple of minutes I said, "That doesn't look good." She said the baby was only measuring 7 weeks 3 days, and there was no heartbeat.
I always thought I'd be one of those people who wouldn't believe it, who would want weeks of follow up ultrasounds to make sure the baby really wasn't growing.
But I've had enough ultrasounds. I can recognize a heartbeat without it being pointed out to me. I know what a baby is supposed to look like at each stage. I could see for myself my baby was dead. My baby had died right after my last ultrasound, just like I had thought, just like I knew for the last 3 weeks.
You'd think the fact that I already knew it had happened would prepare me, but it didn't. I was absolutely shattered. And I still carry some anger toward the stupid fucking system that doesn't listen to women and doesn't believe the ones who know their bodies and made me walk around with a dead baby inside of me for 3 weeks, living in a horrible anxious terrified limbo. Where I knew but I didn't know. Those 3 weeks made the experience so much worse.
As soon as I saw for sure my baby was dead, I wanted it out of me. I loved that baby with all my heart, but I couldn't have it inside of me anymore. This was another thing that surprised me. I had always feared miscarriage in the past, so I'd thought about these scenarios. I never thought I'd be in such a hurry to not be pregnant anymore.
There were complications in that I was seeing midwives, and they don't have anything to do with a missed miscarriage. They don't medically manage any of that. So I had to be referred to the on call OB. I had the choice to meet her in the morning at the hospital in Labour and Delivery, or wait until Monday and see her in her office. I chose L&D on Saturday morning.
My meeting with her was... well, she didn't really give a shit about what I had gone through during the past month, how the system ignored me, etc etc. I was just another woman who doesn't know her own body. Anyway, I was given the choice between taking Misoprostal (an induction drug) at home, or waiting until the following Thursday or so and having a D&C.
Being that I hate doing things the medical/surgical/invasive way, I elected to take the Misoprostal.
It was fucking hell. It was the worst labour I'd ever gone through. My labour with Noah was an induction that lasted 5 hours, and it was 3 times worse than my labour with Isaiah, which lasted 52 hours. I had no drugs with either of my babies. This labour was just as painful as my induction, if not more, but it took 12 HOURS of extreme pain before I finally birthed the baby and placenta at 1am on at 15. I was in completely and utter panic. I was overdosing on every possible pain pill I had available to me, and nothing helped until my Dad brought me two leftover oxy's from a surgery he had had. They calmed things down by like 10%, just enough to make me feel less panicked.
Seriously, the pain was so bad that if I could have gotten to the hospital (which I couldn't because I was in too much pain to get in any vehicle), I would have begged for a hysterectomy to make it stop.
12 hours of complete agony, all for a dead baby.
I spent May and June in a state of intense mourning. I had retained tissue that didn't show up on ultrasound, and my miscarriage made me bleed for 26 days. It took along time for the tissue to finally make its way out of my body (it was stuck in my cervix for a long time). As soon as I stopped bleeding, I ovulated within a few days, and just 7 days after I ovulated I got the heaviest period of my life. It lasted 12 days, and was way heavier than my miscarriage.
To make matters even more wonderful, the hormones from my miscarriage, the medications taken to induce it, the medications taken to try to control the pain, and the uncontrollable grief that followed, caused the perfect storm inside my body. I ended up with a severe flare of my autoimmune disease, ulcerative colitis. It got slowly worse throughout May and June, and by July I was literally dying. I lost 35lbs altogether, 25lbs of which I lost in just 3 weeks (I am thin to begin with so I ended up underweight and sickly skinny from this). I was losing 3 cups of blood a day. Putting anything on my tongue, no matter how tiny, made me gag and throw up. I couldn't stand, I could barely get to the toilet (26 times a day, just to let out blood). I couldn't read or watch TV. I didn't have the energy to do anything except lay in bed with my eyes closed. For weeks. I couldn't even sit propped up by pillows. My heart rate was through the roof. Even rolling over in bed would shoot my heart rate up to 120 and it would take an hour for it to calm down. My heart would pound so hard it shook my whole body.
I felt SO terrible. I thought I was going to die and it was terrifying. I didn't want to leave my children motherless.
My specialist was wonderful and got me on the right medications in the middle of July (I'd been to the ER twice before then and the medications they prescribed me didn't help, I just kept getting worse). She also forced me to eat what I could, no matter how unhealthy it was, and to get out of bed as much as I could, no matter how terrible I felt. I remember thinking "You clearly have no idea how I'm feeling right now." Like, I couldn't even lean over to get a drink off my bedside table. And putting food in my mouth made me vomit. I had no appetite and didn't want to eat ANYTHING. How was I supposed to get out of bed and eat? But I tried.
It took along time, and my efforts were pitiful at first. Eating a few chunks of watermelon. Drinking an Ensure. Limping bent over to get to the couch instead of staying in bed. I started trying to spend an hour each day sitting outside under a tree instead of just being inside all the time. By the end of July I could finally sit propped up part of the time, and I started to crochet. I spent a lot of time meditating and thinking positively to try and control my anxiety, as stress has a large influence on autoimmune disease.
I slowly got better during August, and by the beginning of September I was mostly normal and in remission. I'm extremely thankful that I'm still alive and able to parent my children again. Justin was on summer vacation (he's a teacher) during the two months that I was at my worst, and I'm so grateful for how those two things coincided.
I couldn't bring myself to write about any of this before now. Since getting deathly ill I've been trying very hard to stay positive and grateful. I feel like I've rewired the way I think. I'm still very sad about losing my baby, and it still makes me cry, but the difference is that now I have the tools to acknowledge but not dwell on those feelings, and to focus on all the good things in my life (of which I have many).
This has been more challenging in the last short while. This seems like a weird way to bring this up (at the end of a post like this), but almost two weeks ago I found out that I am pregnant again. I am a little over 5 weeks. I want this baby so badly, but I have constant anxiety that something is going to go wrong again. I am due at the end of June, but I can't seem to get to the point where I think I will ACTUALLY have a baby at the end of June.
I was always very afraid of having a miscarriage, especially in my first pregnancy. I was never one of those naive, blissfully pregnant people. I always was afraid something would go wrong. But now something HAS gone wrong, and now I'm in a place where I just can't seem to feel like there's a possibility of it going right. I feel like I'm just waiting for the bad part to come, so I can try and deal with it (and hopefully not almost die from my autoimmune disease again).
After my miscarriage I made an appointment with my fertility clinic in June. I wanted to be a patient of theirs immediately, so that I would have their monitoring available to me no matter how we ended up getting pregnant (IF we got pregnant). We had a plan to do IUIs this summer (we would have been able to do three before Justin went back to school), but I got sick, so it all got put on the back burner. Then, my first normal cycle (my cycle was extremely messed up this summer from being so ill and also being on prednisone, which shuts down your adrenals), the first time we've had sex since June, we get pregnant. It's madness. How did we spend 8 years trying to get pregnant every month, having to do fertility treatments to have our two living children, and then suddenly in 2016 we get pregnant naturally twice. Twice in a ROW, really.
I got my betas done 5 times, and they've all doubled in less than 48 hours. I forced myself to not go again today, but I might go on Friday. My uterus is quite swollen and I can feel it. I'm ridiculously bloated (like I have been in all my pregnancies). I'm a little more hungry, a little more tired. Nothing major going on yet.
I have an early ultrasound booked for November 9, two weeks from now. I don't think it'll make me feel much better, though, since my last baby didn't actually die until after I had had at ultrasound at 8 weeks 3 days. I think if I made it to 9 or 10 weeks and had an ultrasound where the baby was measuring appropriately I would feel a little better. Logically that makes no sense, because things could still go wrong after that point. But I think it's normal for people to just not feel at all comfortable until after they passed the point at which their last baby died.
So really, this is why I finally wrote about my horrible experiences in the last 6 months. Because I'm pregnant again. While I'd like to ignore it and hardly think about it (because I have a tendency to obsess about the fact that I'm pregnant and it makes things go soooo slowly), if this pregnancy goes well and I actually have a child at the end of it, I'm going to wish I had recorded things like I did for my first three pregnancies.
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