Preface
Every year about this time for many years, there are some things from my past that I have to deal with. Things that aren’t fun, and things that no one like to talk about. I don’t often get personal on the blog, but sometimes I really feel like I need to. If I don’t share the hard, messy things, all I am is some ideal unicorn behind a computer screen. If you know me, you know that being personal is important to me. I want to make connections, and feel real things with others around me, whether they are family, friends, clients, or just someone on the internet coming across my work. Life is all about connections; being able to share in the struggles and joys of others, being able to understand and connect on another level with those around you. Let me preface this by saying I am not posting personal things because I want sympathy. I am at a point in my life where I have accepted all of the terrible things that have happened to me. All I wish to gain from these posts is a personal connection; even if just one person that reads this can say”I can relate”, or “Now I don’t feel so alone”.
The Secret
So, what is this difficult thing that I carry around? Well, it’s more than one difficult thing, but this one particular thing is really important to me, because it is so shrouded in secrecy. It’s hidden, deep down inside so many people, because we as a society feel that we can’t talk about it. That thing is infertility and miscarriage. Whoa, didn’t see it going that direction did you? For me, in the beginning, my infertility and miscarriage struggles were hard to talk about. Intimacy and reproduction are somehow taboo subjects, even though we are overwhelmed with sex in the media on a daily basis. But, it’s time to talk about it. This post is going to be long; really, really long. But it needs to be out there. It needs to be talked about because you need to know that I am human. I hurt, I cry, I have experienced some awful things. But you also need to know so that whether you have experienced this and are struggling, or if someone you know goes through it, you will know that you are not alone.
I met my husband in 2010, and within the first six months I knew he was the one. He was the man that I was going to marry, build a home with, have children with, and grow old with. I had never been interested in the idea of having children before I met him. I never really understood the drawn, probably because I had never been in a relationship where I could see myself raising a tiny human with someone else. But with him, I did. Six years ago, we unexpectedly discovered we were pregnant. It was scary and exciting at the same time. We weren’t trying, but we weren’t not trying. I remember feeling really off at work one day; just a feeling I had never had before in my life. I pondered it for a few hours, then started to wonder if it were possible that I was pregnant. A little backstory; when I was younger, I had emergency surgery to remove a tumor from one of my ovaries, so at that point I wasn’t really certain if my ovaries had been damaged at all. So being pregnant wasn’t the first thing that came to mind. On my break at work, I bought a pregnancy test. And it came out positive. I called my husband, and we decided to head to the doctor to either confirm or deny the test results. The doctor called me while I was at the grocery store, and indeed confirmed that I was pregnant; around seven weeks due to their calculations. All kinds of excitement followed. We told all of our family and friends, and everyone was just thrilled for us. We started making plans for the baby’s room, we started picking baby names, and started planning this amazing future where we raised our little son or daughter together. It was surreal. I never imagined myself being a mother, but now I couldn’t image it any other way. Our first ultrasound was at 12 weeks. They wanted to confirm that the pregnancy was viable and that everything looked right, because I had not prepared to get pregnant or had any prenatal care. Walking in to the doctors office that day, we were just so elated. We talked about hearing and seeing the heartbeat for the first time if the baby was far along enough, wanting to remember that moment forever. We talked about what we’d see, and how far along I actually was. The tech brought us back into the ultrasound room, and proceeded with the ultrasound. At that time in my life, I had never seen an ultrasound before, so I had no idea what I should be seeing or looking for on the screen. It felt like the ultrasound took a long time, but the tech talked to us through it and made it seem routine. She went out of the room and came back in a few minutes later to say that the doctor just wanted to review things with us. None the wiser, we happily headed into the doctor’s room. We waited a few minutes and then a nurse came in. I’ll never forget the words she said to us. She said “Based on your last period, the baby should be about 12 weeks, but is measuring at 7. We couldn’t find a heartbeat. I’m sorry.” The room immediately started spinning and I instantly felt sick as the reality of what she said hit. The room felt like it was a furnace and my face felt like it was on fire as I tried to hold back tears. Everything kind of stopped; I couldn’t breathe. I felt like the walls of the room were closing in around me. Through my cries, I could make out that my husband was talking to the nurse, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. And I didn’t care. All I kept hearing in my head was “your baby is dead inside of you”. We got up to leave, and I literally ran to the front doors of the building, trying to hold back tears as I ran past all the pregnant women in the waiting room. I threw open the outside doors, and as soon as the warm outside air hit my face, I broke down. I fell to my knees and sobbed. Uncontrollably. I have never cried so many tears as I did that day. That tiny, precious life growing inside me was gone. All of our plans, all the things we wanted, gone. Just like that. Darkness; nothing.
The Aftermath
The next few days were a blur. I walked around like a zombie. My eyes burned from all the crying. My face was swollen. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. Guilt was starting to set in. What did I do wrong? How could I have prevented this? Why me? Why me. I’ve never asked that question so many times before. What did I do to deserve this? Was I being punished? Why would God do this to me? I went over and over the last few weeks in my head more times that I can even remember. I sat in the dark, thinking, crying, alone. I felt so alone. I was angry at my husband for not understanding the way I felt, because he dealt with the pain different than I did. I was angry at all the women I saw scream at their kids at Target. I was angry at the happy pregnant women on Facebook. I tried not to resent them, but I did. And I started questioning my faith. My whole life fell into a black hole. I couldn’t understand why this had happened. I felt like no one understood my pain. People tried to be there, and they tried to console me, but sometimes the things they said made it worse. “At least you know you can get pregnant”, “There was probably something wrong with the baby”, “You’re young, you can try again”, “You can always adopt”‘, “At least you weren’t further along”, “Everything happens for a reason”. None of these things made it any better. In fact, it solidified the feeling of being alone. I was lost. There was never a time in my life that was so dark. And it completely enveloped me. To add insult to injury, I ended up needing a D&C, because my body refused to let go of the baby, even after weeks of my precious little one being gone. The thought that I couldn’t get out of my head after the D&C was that they had taken out my dead baby, and now he/she was just in a medical waste garbage somewhere. Medical waste. That’s what my baby was to everyone else.
As the weeks went by, the day time crying mostly stopped, but the crippling pain remained. Every time I looked at a calendar, I though about how far along I would be. Every time I saw baby clothes at the store, I thought about the things my baby would never do and never experience. Every time I saw a pregnant woman or small children, I couldn’t help but ask why they deserved children but I didn’t.
I woke up every night crying for a long time. And my body fought getting back to normal. Months went by without a period. We wanted to try again as soon as possible, but my body just wasn’t having it. So back to the OBGYN we went. We discussed possible reasons for why my body wasn’t equalizing, a main one being possible Asherman’s syndrome, which occurs when the cervix and uterus is scarred during a D&C procedure, making it incredibly difficult if not impossible to become pregnant. The OB wanted me to wait a while longer before doing anything drastic to see if my body would get back on track on its own. But it didn’t. So they suggested a round of Clomid, which is a fertility drug to see if I would ovulate. And I didn’t. My body did nothing. After a few more failed rounds of Clomid, my OB referred me to a reproductive endocrinologist (RE) in Green Bay. We got an appointment set up fairly soon. On the way to that first appointment it finally hit me; we are having fertility problems. This isn’t just something that’s going to go away. Something is wrong.
The Struggles
The RE was really great. We discussed the possibility of Asherman’s, and he thought that was a very probable cause to our sudden issues. He scheduled an ultrasound to see if my body was still producing eggs. It was, which was a huge relief. So that possible issue was eliminated. But that left worse issues as possibilities. We again tried Clomid to no avail. The RE ordered a hysterosalpingogram, or HSG. During this procedure, dye is injected into the uterus and fallopian tubes to check that everything is functioning. This is a standard procedure to diagnose Asherman’s. At the very beginning of the procedure, they had to push through scar tissue to inject the dye, confirming that I had scarring from the D&C. The good news was that only the cervix was affected. He recommended that I go on birth control to attempt regulate my cycle. That was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. Why would I want to go on birth control when I was trying to desperately to get pregnant? It made no sense, but I trusted him. And it worked. I finally, after almost a year had a period! After my cycle regulated, they decided to try one last fertility drug before we proceeded to more extreme measures. They gave me Femara to take right after my cycle started. Within a week of taking it, I got a positive ovulation test; the first one ever. After that test, we had to wait a week for blood work to confirm that I had actually ovulated. And I did! That was such amazing news to hear. After so long, I finally knew that it was possible to get pregnant again. Although we weren’t really expecting much from this. We had been through so much with the miscarriage, the Asherman’s, and fertility issues that it just didn’t seem like having a baby was in the cards for us at that time. Nine days after that positive ovulation test, I decided to take a pregnancy test. Not because I thought I could actually be pregnant, but because I wanted to get the disappointment over with. I took the test, then went about getting ready for work. I went and got dressed, then went back into the bathroom. I picked up the test, and saw two lines. I had to look at that test about ten times to actually realize what I was seeing. I ran upstairs as fast as I could, and barged in the room where my husband was still asleep. I turned on the light, and shaking, handed him the test. He was half awake, so had no idea what was going on. After about thirty seconds of looking at the test, he finally realized what we was looking at. We just couldn’t believe it. We were finally pregnant. I had thought before that if I got pregnant again, all of that darkness and fear would instantly be lifted. Some of it was, but my pregnancy brought a whole new round of fear with it.
Better Days
The nine months that I was pregnant with our daughter were some of the hardest and most trying of my life, but that’s for part two of this post. Today, we have a beautiful three year old little lady that I love more than anything in this world. She is the light of my life, the sunshine in my days, and my heart. She is more than worth the pain and the heartbreak, and every day I thank God for sending me the most beautiful, precious gift in the world.
I know this story is a lot, but it’s part of my journey. It’s part of who I am, and how I’ve lived. It wasn’t easy to write this, and it brought back a lot of painful memories. But it needs to be said, because you need to know that I struggle too. You need to be able to relate to me in order for me to be real. And you need to know that you’re not alone. I pray that knowing my story will give you comfort, or solace, or hope. I pray that if you are struggling with these things, that you can find comfort and peace. I pray that you can come out of this darkness on the other side and be stronger, thankful, and happy.
