Monday, May 13, 2013

Mother's day and all that it means to me.

I hope all you mothers out there had a FABULOUS day. And I hope that all of you took a moment to tell your mothers happy Mother's Day.

The best part of my weekend was playing with R at the Park on Saturday.  It was an unexpected trip to the park, but we had fun. He is at the age where he really wants mommy or daddy to play with him and do the things he is doing.  So I got to go down the slide with him and really just play with him.  There were A LOT of smiles and laughter. It was nice to slow down and just enjoy my child!

Mother's day in the past has been a hard day for me. The last couple of years not so much, but I am reminded that I am missing 2 children. I mentioned that I had 2 miscarriages before in a post but I haven't gone into depth about it. Well I will do that today because I want them to know that even though I am incredibly blessed to have R in my life I still miss my other 2 babies.

My first miscarriage was a year and half after we got married. When we found out we were pregnant it took us by surprise.  We weren't really trying, but we were preventing either.  We knew it could happen, but I was starting to think we would have issues having a baby because we hadn't gotten pregnant yet. So when it happened I was really excited and Jed was just surprised.  It took him a little to absorb the information, but he was happy by that afternoon, in fact we had a wedding to go to and he kept telling me he wanted to shout out loud that I was pregnant, but I wouldn't let me him.  I remember thinking back at that moment and where we were at in our lives and our relationship  it makes think about how young we were.  None the less, we loved this baby. I knew from what I had read that at 12 weeks the chances of the baby going to full term was higher than from weeks 4-11. Well week 11 had just begun and I remember thinking, we are so CLOSE to week 12. That afternoon I went to the bathroom and things were NOT right. I freaked out and called the doctor's office. The doctor's office tried to tell me that what I was experiencing was normal, but I knew something was wrong so I told them I would feel better if we did an ultrasound.  So they sent me to the ultrasound tech.  Jed met me there and I remember thinking that I am going to look like an idiot if everything was fine, I had dragged Jed out of work to go to an ultrasound that wasn't necessary. But as the Tech was looking at everything she said that things didn't look right. She asked how far a long we should be and I told her 11 weeks and she said that things were not progressing like they should be. She then sent us to the doctor's office for the final word. I was 11 weeks pregnant, but the baby had stop progressing at 5 weeks and there was NO heart beat. My heart sank. He told me that 1 in 3 pregnancies end in miscarriage. ONE IN THREE, ARE YOU KIDDING ME, why is this the first time I had heard this statistic? I was mad and sad all at the same time. I mostly wanted to know Why had this happened to me? As we were walking out of the office we saw a very young girl with a big ole pregnant belly and her boyfriend sitting beside her and all I could think was, why couldn't that be me.  I wanted my baby and you could tell they did not! So why me.

I struggled after the miscarriage.  I had A LOT of anger towards God and I couldn't figure out why he didn't let me keep the baby. As far as I know I was the first of my friends to have a miscarriage and it was hard to talk about it.  I mean I talked about it, but it felt like people didn't understand where I was coming from. And they didn't, but I kept talking about it because it was the only way that I felt a little better. I think I talked about this miscarriage until people didn't want to be around me any more.  Jed got mad at me one day and asked me "when are you going to get over this?" And I remember being mad at him because I felt like he was the one person who should understand how I felt.  But to be honest, he didn't. Most men don't. It took me a while to understand this. So after that I stopped talking about it as much and I tried not to show my true feelings.  I would be lying if I said that things got worse after bottling it all up, but to be honest things got a little easier with each day.  I never forgot it, but I knew that I needed to move forward. Also let me add, that I can understand why Jed said what he said.  I was basically just letting myself dwell in this depression and I wouldn't want to be  married to someone like that either. He didn't know how to handle this situation any better than I did.

So with each month things seemed to get a little better. We talked about getting pregnant again, but Jed wanted me to finish college (I had gone back to school after we got married) and logically that made sense, but in my crazy mind I thought I could do both.  So I would get upset when he mentioned this, but he was right!Then about a year and half after the first miscarriage I took another pregnancy test and it was positive. Although Jed wanted me to be done with school when we had a baby, he was pretty darn excited about it this time, especially from the moment he found out.  At the same time we were both really reserved about it. But at the same time I kept thinking "this can't happen twice, right??" The doctor was great with us and knew that I would be a mess with this pregnancy and I was a little bit. But like I said before, I really didn't think it could happen again. We made it past our 11 weeks and I could breathe a little better.  Then we made it past 12 weeks and this is when we really started to tell people. I felt like everything was going to be perfect this time and come December we would have a baby!! I remember thinking about my finals that semester and that it might work out pretty good to finish my finals and then have a baby shortly afterwards, I mean this is going to be perfect. Well come week 14 I started to feel some back pain, but I didn't think much of it. I left work and went home, but as I got closer to home the worse it felt. So as soon as I got home I laid down and took some Tylenol. Jed came home and rubbed my back and it was starting to feel better.  The next day my parents were coming to Salina and we were all going to the River Festival. We went to the festival and I had to take several breaks because my back was bugging me. I also started to spot that day, but I was in such denial that I just chopped up to what they tell all pregnant women that it was normal to have a little spotting during pregnancy.  That night I took it really easy and went to bed early.  The next morning I woke up and I was still spotting. So I finally called the doctor and they told me to go to the ER and have them do an ultrasound. So Jed and I went and had an ultrasound. At this point I thought history was repeating itself. But to our surprise the doctor announced, "There is the heart beat!" OMG that is the heart beat!! It was beautiful. If I wasn't in love with this baby before I am now!! We could see the profile and he looked like he was praying. He was beautiful, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen before. It was simply amazing!! She printed off a picture and sent us on our way with A LOT of hope.

Once we got home I started to get REALLY cold and tired. So I stayed inside cuddled up in a blanket and napped off and on during the day. That night I went to bed early so I wouldn't be tired for come Monday morning. I woke up around 10:00 p.m. and my pants were all wet. WTH?? I know I didn't just pee the bed. UGGG!! So I go to the bathroom and get all cleaned up and things just didn't seem right. So I called the doctor again and she said to keep an eye on it and if I did it again or things got worse to go to the ER again. I go to bed and Jed woke me up at 11:00 to see how I was doing, he had just finished working on some project out in the garage. Once I woke up I realized my clean pair of pajama pants were wet AGAIN!! I told Jed to get changed because we were going to the ER again. That was one of the worst nights of my life. When I was checked in my temperature was 98ish degrees and I told the lady that was high for me, that I am normally at 96ish. She didn't listen to me. I get put into a room and told that a doctor would come look at me soon. Well between then and an hour my fever really started to spike and I started to hallucinate. I ended up getting really mad and using the phone on my bed to call the nurses station and yell at them because I had been there for 4 hours without any one looking at me. Jed told me shortly after I hung up that we had only be there an hour. He thought this was funny because I tried to convince him that I had been watching the clock on the weather channel on TV, he told me that we hadn't been watching the weather channel for that long. He didn't realize that my fever had gotten so high either, but once the doctor came in they said it was pretty high and that they needed to get it down. All it took was some Tylenol and some water to get that baby down, but then they put me through the ringer to figure out what was wrong with me. They kept trying to tell me that I had peed the bed and that is where the water/pee came from. I knew that wasn't the case because as I was laying in the ER bed the moisture was building up and I was NOT peeing at that moment. But you know how pregnant woman are is what they kept telling me. I promised them I was not peeing the bed. I asked them if they could do another ultrasound and they said no because I had one earlier in the day. So at 5:00 in the morning they sent us home with no answers. They told us to wait until 8:00 and call my ob/gyn. I did that and she saw us immediately and sent us to get another Ultrasound.  This time things weren't so good. We saw the heart beat (yes!!!), but then sac around the baby was not what it should be. My water had broke the night before. So what does that mean?? Well the doctor called me immediately after our ultrasound and said that I could terminate the pregnancy or wait it out, sometimes the sac would seal back up and the fluid will refill. Well I just saw the heart beat so termination isn't going to happen. The doctor agreed and said that I would need to be on bed rest until things got better.  So I went home and stayed in bed and Jed went to work. That day wasn't bad, but the next morning I woke up and things seemed worse. so I called the doctor yet AGAIN and went in to see her.  The doctor examined me and said that things actually looked better and that I seemed to have stopped leaking fluid which I thought was a good thing. So we did another Ultrasound and this time there was no heart beat. My heart sunk again. How could this happen again? I just saw him the day before and he had a heart beat and 2 days ago he was moving around. How did I fail again?  I know that isn't logical to think like that, but I couldn't help it.Once again I asked the Doctor what had happened and all they could say was that I had an infection and that caused my water to break. I felt so guilty afterwards, I kept thinking I should have been more careful.  Looking back there was NO WAY to know where I got that infection and no way of preventing it. It was what it was.

I can't write much more than this right now. On Wednesday I write what happened next and how I moved forward after the loss of baby #2.

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