Today I am remembering what happened 10 years ago, along with the rest of the world. I don't know why I picked today to blog, but it is long overdue regardless. Possibly because of he emotion today has brought, following an extremely emotional month in my life.
I realize that I should have jumped on here a month ago when I got the best news of my life. Blogging had turned in to an afterthought for me over the summer, so I guess the thought just never entered my mind. Regardless, I'm here now to record the entries in a "diary" I was keeping at the time and write about how I am feeling at the present time.
August 9th, 2011 at 7:20pm
Today I found out that I am 100% absolutely, positively pregnant. I am ecstatic. After over a year of trying, we finally have a tiny miracle on the way. I am excited to be a mother and to see Bryan become the incredible father I know he can be.
Today is a life changing day and I couldn't be happier! Mandy
August 13, 2011 at 3:28pm
It has been a rough couple of days. I went to the ER on the 10th to ask about cramping and brown discharge I had been experiencing. To make a long story short, it has a huge waste of time. The doctor spent the first 5 minutes trying to convince me that I wasn't pregnant, until I told him I had done 2 pregnancy tests that came out positive. Then he tested my urine for an infection and it came back negative. He told me there was nothing that could be done this early in the pregnancy, but I don't believe that. What if it was ectopic? There has to be some way to tell. He really didn't care about what was going on with me, and it showed.
We told Bryan's parents about the pregnancy on the 11th. They were both extremely happy to be grandparents again. We also told Bryan's brother and sister-in-law. We couldn't get ahold of my parents that night.
On the 12th, I went to the bathroom in the evening and found blood in the toilet and when I wiped.
that day had been the first day with no cramping, but now I was bleeding. I broke down and cried, assuming the worst was happening. I finally got ahold of my mom and told her the news, both good and bad. She assured me that a little blood was nothing to worry about and I should try to rest as much as possible.
Today, I am doing exactly that. We might go to Houlton tomorrow, but I am going to try to do the same.
I've decided to tell my boss about the pregnancy on Monday. Techs do a lot of things that may be harmful to an unborn baby, so I'm going to need to avoid those situations as much as possible. I just hope she doesn't regret hiring me for a permanent position. Hopefully everything will work out for the best. Mandy
August 16th, 2011 at 8:19am
The relaxing weekend didn't help my situation. Blood flow picked up on the weekend and I would say I lost about 35-40ml of blood in total, maybe more. If I didn't miscarry, I'll be very surprised. I'm going to my doctor's office this morning to get some answers and hopefully get some blood testing done to see where my levels are at. I'm hoping for the best, but part of me already aches for what I think the outcome is going to be. I feel different today, like I'm not pregnant any more. Mandy
That was when me entries stopped. My doctor was a breath of fresh air. She was openly concerned about my situation and told me that we need to figure out what's going on. I went to the lab and got my blood levels tested that morning. I didn't get my results until the day after (Tuesday the 17th). My blood HCG was a 7. I would have been almost 6 weeks, and that level should be well in to the thousands. It was official, but my doctor still wanted me to get my levels tested on Wednesday just to have a number to compare to. My level on Wednesday was 2. I had experienced a miscarriage and was devastated. I came home from work and broke down in Bryan's arms. We both cried and he told me everything was going to be ok. I just couldn't get over the fact that I had been pregnant and that I had been so easily stripped of my miracle. We had been trying for over a year to become parents and just when we thought our dream had come true, it turned into our worst nightmare.
That weekend we had a trip to the lake planned. I didn't feel up to going, but it had been planned for months and I figured being surrounded by people to love and support us was going to be a lot easier than sitting at home wondering what I had done wrong and why I didn't deserve to be a mother. We should have been celebrating and making baby plans, but instead I walked around trying not to look like I had just gone through the worst week of my life.
I spoke to my doctor on Monday the 22nd. She explained that I had experienced a complete miscarriage, meaning that my body neatly did what it was meant to do. She suspected it had been caused by a blighted ovum, where the cells meant to develop into a baby don't function correctly, and the body recognizes that and miscarries. She told me not to blame myself, there was nothing I could have done to prevent this from happening. She counseled me to the best of her ability and answered my questions, but I still ached from the news. Just talking about it made me want to break down. She told me that we should wait a couple of months before trying again in order to mentally recover from what had just happened, and I can completely understand why. The fact that everyone around us knew what was going on was just adding insult to injury, not to mention my own personal agony going on inside my head. It will take a long time to heal from this, to be able to go one day without thinking about how far along I would have been, whether or not I would be showing yet, how my first ultrasound would have gone, what the heartbeat would have sounded like, how I would have decorated the nursery, how thrilled my parents would have been at the chance to become grandparents for the first time, how badly I just want to be able to hold my baby in my arms.
