Funny how you're always so sure of things.

Wow, did I speak too soon. This has been quite a month, especially emotionally.

My last post was the night of August 24th. I went over how we had techincally tried to get pregnant and that I believed I was but that I got my period on the 11th of August. That I thought I had experienced a chemical pregnancy. That I got a +OPK on the 24th and was ovulating. My, how wrong I was.

It was not a chemical pregnancy. It was a very real pregnancy. That day--the 24th--I got a couple +OPKs, and then the same thing happened the day, the 25th. I know my body and, despite having gotten my "period" on the 11th, I still didn't feel right. My head told me I obviously wasn't pregnant, but everything else screamed something was going on. So after getting so many +OPKs and feeling strange, I remembered reading that ovulation tests can come up positive if you're pregnant. So, I took a pregnancy test. It was just like Gemma... That positive line came up instantly and was much, much darker than the test line. I, understandably, freaked out and immediately called my OB's office.

Dr. Rafi was on vacation until late into the next week, so her partner, Dr. Bonsue, squeezed me in the next morning. A physical exam revealed that my cervix was closed, which she said could be a good sign (that the pregnancy was still intact and that the bleeding was unrelated) or a bad one (that I'd passed everything already, even though that didn't make chronological sense). She sent me for blood work. I went for HCG levels three times. The first was 4000, the second was 4200, the third was 4069. Not good. The number should have doubled each time. Dr. Rafi was the one to call me with the results and she said that she assumed that I'd miscarried back on the 11th and that there must've just been some remnants from the pregnancy that I hadn't passed, which were keeping my hormone levels up. She scheduled me for an ultrasound the next morning to see what was left and then wanted to schedule me for a D&C.

We're now at August 31st. I had to go for my ultrasound alone because John couldn't take off from work. I had been a mental wreck (I had yet to be truly emotional about the situation--sometimes I have trouble with that, it was the same when my mom died) for a couple of days but had finally processed the fact that I had been pregnant but that it hadn't worked out for some reason and that our baby was gone. I was prepared to go into the appointment and have them say, "I'm very sorry, but you lost your baby." That was the thing I feared hearing the most, but I came to wish that's what I'd heard. Instead, boom. Right on the screen was an obvious baby. Well, obvious if you know what to look for at 6 weeks and 6 days. There was gestational sac, a yolk sac, and a fetal pole, measuring right on time. That was not what I had mentally prepared myself for. I had let go of any hope. This blew me out of the water. The tech called the doctor in and they both looked from different angles for a while, making all sorts of confusing faces. Then they checked for a heartbeat. Now I'm slightly obsessed with matters of fertility and pregnancy and babies and I know what we should've seen. There was the obvious flickering of a heart, a live, beating heart, but it was slow. Too slow. Painfully slow. 30bpm. Thirty. It should've been flittering away, at a good 90-120bpm. No, it was 30. One beat every two seconds. Seeing that, I think, was the most devastating part of all. To know that our little baby--a little person we already loved even though we thought we'd lost them, a little person who we imagined being another little Gem--was there and was hanging on with all it had in its little 7 week old self.

Of course, the doctor didn't have to tell me for me to know that there was no hope at that point. Things were not going to take a dramatic turn for the better. We were not going to get a take home baby out of this. No, we had to wait. We had to know that there was a little person that we had created living and growing inside of me and we had to wait for them to let go. Dr. Rafi scheduled me for another ultrasound about a week later (September 8th) before we would go ahead with any course of action. When I went in that day, I knew what I would see and hear. Our little fighter had finally had enough and had gone to be with God. There was no more heartbeat at that next appointment. The baby had not grown much. It was over.

The problem then became the fact that, other than the bleeding I'd had a month prior, my body did not seem to want to let this pregnancy go. My hormone levels continued to rise and fall and rise and fall. I had no bleeding, no pain, my uterus didn't get any smaller, and my pregnancy symptoms actually continued. Dr. Rafi scheduled a D&C for the 15th. That day was something I'd foolishly assumed I'd never have to experience. I don't know. I don't mean it in a cocky way, but I never imagined myself ever miscarrying. It's so common these days, and yet I thought it was something that wouldn't touch my life. Especially after having such an amazing pregnancy with Gemma.

Thankfully John managed to take off and was with me the whole time, as much as he was allowed to be, at least. It was my first experience with any sort of real medical procedure, my first experience with anesthesia. On top of everything going on in my head related to the baby, I was incredibly nervous about doing it in general. I remember being wheeled into the operating room and the next thing I knew I was waking up in the recovery room. The terrible part, though, was that I woke myself up by crying. I didn't even realize it was happening, I just woke up in the middle of a sob. Everything that had been held back (voluntarily or not, mostly not) up until that point just let loose. John hadn't been brought back yet, so I was lying alone in a dark, curtained off section of the recovery center, crying. It was the saddest I think I've been in a very long time, if I've ever even been that sad.

Fortunately, all the nurses I had that day were angels from God. I could not have asked for better, more comforting women to have with me. One of them came in to check on me and wiped my tears away with my blanket and told me she'd been there and that I'd be okay. Within the half hour, they got me up and in a chair and wheeled me over to another part of the recovery center, where John was waiting for me. He got to sit with me until I was cleared to be released.

I know it sounds stupid to even say, but I never want to go through that again. Of course not. Who does? I'm now (probably typically) terrified that Gemma was the fluke and this will be the norm. What if Gemma was a one-in-a-billion miracle and we're destined to relive this over and over? It's definitely a possibility with John's history. Before we're cleared to try again, Dr. Rafi wants to send him for a sperm analysis to see if the chemo, indeed, had any sort of effect on the quality of his sperm. She said she wants to do it so we can avoid having to go through this again if there is something wrong. I know her heart's in the right place, but what does that mean, exactly? That if there is something wrong, we just won't try anymore? We're not done having children, not even close. I don't even know what hearing that would do to me. That's what really keeps me going in life--the idea of having more babies. It's all I've ever wanted to do.

Thankfully, she also sent tissue samples from the D&C for chromosomal testing, so if it was just a genetic abnormality (all on its own) we'll know that too. Amazingly, she said that she'll be able to tell us if the baby was a boy or a girl. Most people who lose a pregnancy at 9 weeks don't get the chance to find that out. Small blessings, huh?

So that's our story. It has now been one week and two days since it "ended." It hasn't really, though. I'm still bleeding (despite Dr. Rafi saying I'd bleed for a day and spot for one or two more), pregnancy tests are still positive, we're still waiting to hear about the test results. They won't come back for a month, though. I have my follow up Tuesday afternoon, though I'm hoping to reschedule since it's our anniversary and that would throw the whole night off. Providing the tests come back okay, she tentatively said we could start trying after two normal cycles. That'd put us in the November-January range, if we were to get pregnant right away. That's a... August-October baby. Not what we were hoping for, but we're starting to throw the planning out the window and just live. Whenever we should be blessed with another child would be the right time. God knows better than we do.

There are other things to update on, I suppose. Gem's 15 months now and is growing and developing like crazy. I'll come back soon and fill you in on all that. I think I need to leave this separate, though. I don't want it coloring any other part of my life, especially my happiness in Gemma.