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.

Noah's 16th Illness

This is not earth shattering, nor is it all that interesting, but I need to mention that Noah got sick again last week.  For the 16th time.  Third time in less than 2 months.  Another cold.  Kind of ridiculous, if you ask me.  But luckily he was in good spirits and didn't needed any pain medication to stop him from being a terror.

This post was sitting in drafts for a few days, and I was going to say that the last two times Noah has been sick, I didn't get it, which is amazing because the previous 14 times he was sick, I was down and out with him every single time! But I did end up getting this cold.  Boo.  It's very mild, though, so I'm not really complaining.

To make a long story short, the fact that I didn't get his 15th illness is pretty amazing.  I have an autoimmune disease (ulcerative colitis) that has made me catch everything Noah has had.  I mentioned back in September how I had a really horrible flare up, during which I ended up in the ER and had to see a new specialist.  I had a follow up with her last week and things are awesome!  She did really thorough blood work to compare to the blood work I had done at the end of September, and the results were perfect.  Better than perfect!  She was amazed at how well my body has responded to all the health supplements I've been taking (not prescription, unfortunately, so it's cost us almost $4000 out of pocket).  I already knew that my colitis was a lot better, and that my immune function must be improving, since I avoided Noah's 15th illness, but it was nice to have it confirmed in my blood levels.

As happy as I am about my own health improving, I really do wish that Noah could be healthy for more than a week or two at a time.  It's so lame.

Still Suffering

The Bad News:

I am still pretty sick with my colitis flare up.  I have been strictly in bed for 5 days now.  Saturday and Sunday Noah and I were taken care of by Justin.  Monday to Wednesday my Mom has been here taking care of Noah and me and the house.  Tomorrow she has to go to work, so my Dad is coming out.  That means I will have to do a little more than I've had to for the past 5 days.  My Dad will play with Noah - that's about it.

I have gotten quite a bit better, though.  Ibuprofen is helping with the swelling, which is making it easier to pee.  Saturday to Monday were torture.  I had one or two "good" moments during the day where I didn't feel like someone had sewed my waste-excreting orifices shut.  These moments lasted maybe half an hour.  On Tuesday I felt like that from about 9am to 2pm, and then got some relief.  Before and after that period of time I was like a geyser.  Today I've felt like that maybe only half the day.  But it wasn't as severe as it has been, so that's good.

I am doing ozone therapy everyday and taking as many helpful supplements as I can.  I need to get more.  I am waiting to get my appointment with the surgeon.  I'll need another colonoscopy very soon, I'm sure.


The Good/Neutral News:

Justin and my parents have really stepped up to the plate, and I am so thankful for all of them.  Justin voluntarily stepped back from training and coaching this week, even though it was a bad week for that to happen.  One or both of my parents have been here everyday, and my Mom has fed or made us dinner for the past 4 days.  I don't know what I'd have done without them.

Also, the pool is almost done!  It feels like it's been a long road, and there have been some annoyances on our end, like the fact that it is being finished almost a week behind schedule.  This is partly because of crappy weather forecasts that were never actually fulfilled (it's very stupid to pour concrete if there's a chance of rain), and partly because they just didn't do some things they could have been doing while they weren't pouring the concrete because of the chance of rain.  Therefore they had to spend all day today doing those things, when the pool could have actually been completely filled and ready today.

I had a huuuge freak out last night when we got home from my parents' house (where I do the ozone therapy) and discovered that the new five foot "railing" on our already 6 foot tall deck was literally a fence.  You could not see the pool at all from the deck or the kitchen, which houses the sliding door leading onto the deck.  Not could you see onto the stairs or deck from the pool area. It was such an unsafe situation, not to mention aesthetically disappointing.  It's not that the railing looked bad.  But it would be nice to be able to actually SEE the pool we sunk all this money into.  And if my kid(s) somehow managed to get into the pool area unsupervised, I would like to be able to SEE HIM before he drowns.  And when you have toddlers playing in the other part of the yard where the playground is, it'd be nice to be able to SEE them if they decide to climb up the long flight of stairs to go up onto the deck.  And when I have older kids who are allowed to be in the pool as long as I'm nearby in the house (doing dishes or whatever), it'd be nice to be able to supervise them from that distance and easily look out the door and windows for that exact purpose.

I seriously flipped.  Adrenaline was pumping through my veins.  I wrote a nice but very firm email to the contractor and told him I don't want to cause problems, but that is completely unacceptable.  He was very accommodating, and said we would discuss it first thing in the morning to find a solution.  His response made it so I was able to sleep.  We discussed it as soon as he got here today and they fixed it.

Anyway, everything looks good, they did everything they promised (and more, frankly), everything is ready for the inspector, and the pool should be filled up by the end of tomorrow.  It's supposed to be a sunny weekend, so hopefully Justin and Noah will be able to enjoy some time in the pool.  And maybe I'll be well enough to go down onto the patio with them.

I'll post some pictures sometime soon.  I'm so glad we made the decision to do this!  Even if we'll only get a few good pool days between now and when we close it for the winter.

ER Visit

Tonight I ended up going to the ER. Anyone who knows me knows it's pretty bad if I leave Noah and risk not being home for bedtime. I was crying about it.

I was feeling soooo terrible. I had a fever of 99.6, which for me is really high because my normal temp is about 97 degrees, not 98.6. I was feeling so queasy and light headed and dizzy, I could barely walk. Justin had to drive me, because I certainly couldn't drive. He had to just drop me off because he had Noah. By the time I got to the ER I was so out of it, and my temp was up to 101.1. When they brought me back to my room I just laid there with my eyes closed, feeling like I was drugged.

My mom drove out and met me there and stayed the whole time. Thank goodness for her.

I haven't given any details of my most recent physical issues, which started on Monday, because it's kind of TMI. But I have been tortured for 5 days now, and was starting to think I had a partial bowel obstruction.

They did a urine sample and took blood and did physical exams (OMG, a rectal is, like, worse than giving birth without drugs). (Okay, maybe not quite that bad, but still extremely uncomfortable). I don't have an obstruction, thank goodness. They have no idea what my problem is. The doctor put me on antibiotics because of my lingering constant headaches and being sick with other stuff for so long - it's been 18 days now. She doesn't think the fever and dizziness is related to the bowel and bladder stuff (I'm having a hard time peeing, too, even when my bladder is full). She thinks that other stuff is related to my colitis, so I have to go see a surgeon again.

Besides the antibiotics, she gave me the laxatives I took before my colonoscopy to maybe be able to clear out whatever feels like its stuck up there. I'll take them tomorrow. Hopefully they help with the constant feeling of having to go, and nothing coming out.

I am not feeling as bad as I was before I went. I laid down the whole time I was there, and that helped. My fever is back down. I have a headache, and I feel weak, but I also have had hardly anything to eat today. Two apples, half a banana, and a piece of pizza.

I am going to have to just lie down all weekend. I have been mostly lying down and not doing anything, but when you're the sole caretaker for a toddler, you DO have to get up. Changing diapers, feeding him, etc. Justin will have to do all that while he's off this weekend. And if I still feel bad on Monday I will see if my mom will come out here and take care of him. Or maybe my Dad. I'll just be around to nurse.

I got home just in time for bedtime, thank goodness.  I am sooo glad to be home. I was so afraid that I was getting toxic or something and was going to be admitted and maybe end up with surgery or something. I was so afraid of what Justin and Noah would do without me (if Noah wakes up in the middle of the night and wants Mommy, which is everytime, seeing Daddy makes him lose his mind), about how it would affect nursing, etc. My boobs don't respond to a pump, so it could have been the end of things. Although I would have worked my ass off to not let it be.