Happy Valentine's Day!

Hello my patient readers. It’s almost Valentine’s Day and love is in the air. This year, the hubs and I will be taking his mom to dinner and to see our friend in a production of Spam-A-Lot. Yes, we are spending the evening with my MIL, but I love her, so it’s OK. I figure, so long as she’s not sleeping at our house, which she won’t be, we can still have a romantic Valentine’s evening after the show. It should be fun all around, and I’m pretty sure we’re going to take her to Ghyslain (Pronounced G-sleigh), where I can get an amazing dessert that’s both gorgeous and heavenly tasting. These are the things that matter people.

Update from the festivities of the holidays: Wicked was AMAZING! Duh! (Why hello 8^th grade Natalie, nice of you to pop in.) Thanksgiving went off without a hitch. Yeah, for finally getting to use my great-great-grandmother’s china! And Christmas was so lovely. I highly recommend seeing Disney at the holidays, however, I don’t recommend going during the actual holiday. While the crowds at the rest of the parks were manageable, the crowd at the Magic Kingdom itself was a nightmare!!! If you don’t have kids, I’d suggest only doing the Magic Kingdom from the fireworks on, not during the day. That’s how the hubs and I got to ride most of the rides. We had a “magical” date night on Christmas Eve (see what I did there). We spent the day with the family, but when dinner time came we parted ways and went to Epcot. There we had dinner in Japan, drinks in England, dessert in Italy, and watch the fireworks in America. We then took the monorail to the Magic Kingdom, and while everyone else was on a mass exodus to get leave we got in quickly and were able to ride 6 or more rides, some multiple times, in the final hours the park was open, and never had to wait more than 20-30 mins. It was so much fun!!

Since my last post there have been some changes in our life. No, not that… If only. However, for Christmas we did receive a kit and membership to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. First, let me say, if you’re going to give this as a gift, do it privately and with a sweet note explaining how the program changed your life and now you’re hoping it can change the recipient’s life too. Instead, we received it from my mother and her partner, who weren't even in FL for Christmas with us, and not know what it was we opened it in front of everyone, only to find out from my sister that they had given the same thing to everyone after going to some seminar about it. Needless to say, it’s pretty embarrassing to open a present like that in front of everyone, especially knowing that the giver wasn't even practicing the teachings yet. That being said, after some discussion back at home we decided to give it a try, and we’re in love! We have one more lesson to do and then I’ll be doing a post about our experience and how FPU has changed our plans and our relationship. It’s truly something special, and I highly recommend it!

Has anyone else actually done FPU? I’d love to know if you’re still sticking with it and how it helped or even didn't help you. 

Happy Valentine's Day to you all! I hope your hearts are filled with love and joy this weekend as you celebrate.

Lost

Sorry it's been so long. I certainly didn't plan on writing such a dense post and then just leaving you all behind, but I was trying to focus and me and the hubs. Of course I completely missed my own 1 yr blogiversary, oops. Right now I'm looking forward to seeing Wicked, MY FAVORITE, for the 4th or 5th time (I've kind of lost track), hosting Thanksgiving at our house this year, and going to Disney World for Christmas! OK, so that is pretty exciting, but that's all future stuff.

When I look at what's happened since my last post there's nothing really to report that's positive or interesting. What has happened since the last post is why I'm writing today. I'm feeling very lost. I've been doing reasonably good with staying positive, but so many of my friends and acquaintances are announcing their pregnancies or getting ready to have their babies and I find my self becoming angry and sad, which is not the reaction I should be having for these people whom I genuinely care about and should be excited for. I know it's not their fault that this morning I had yet another negative test. And the conflict that's going in in my heart ultimately ends with me just feeling guilty. I feel guilty that I can even have a fleeting moment of resentment towards even my dearest friends. I feel guilty that I may be putting too much pressure on my husband. I feel guilty that I'm struggling to love myself and my body even though it's not cooperating with what I want it to do. And I feel guilty for questioning God and what he has planned for me. I have 2 more cycles before my next annual exam, which is when we'll be referred to a specialist, if we're still not pregnant by then. At that time it will have been 2 yrs and 1 mo since we first found out we were pregnant and miscarried. It will have been 1 yr and 4 mos of trying with no results since our last miscarriage. And it will be 1 wk until my 29th birthday.

I've been trying to push all this out of my mind and be more positive. This morning, for the first time since July, I allowed myself to be hopeful when I peed on that stick. Not guarded, not pessimistic, truly excited and hopeful. I just knew this time it was going to be positive. That we would be calling the doctor to schedule our early ultrasound and get me started on progesterone sometime next week, ideally Thursday or Friday, after the hubs completed the oral portion of his final Master's exam. We would have so much to celebrate this holiday season.

I was wrong. Open. Pee. Wait. "Not Pregnant". (I usually use the digital readouts because I have a tendency to see phantom pink lines.) My heart sank as I thought to myself "I knew it". As if telling myself "I told you so". This isn't fun anymore. It hasn't been for a while but I've been able to trick myself for so long into thinking it still was.

For those who know me in real life, I'm generally a very positive and optimistic person. I find joy in other people's joy and achievements. These feelings of anger and guilt and general negativity are not me. I feel very lost within myself. Today's a particularly bad day of feeling like this, so I apologize for using this space to vent that. Here's hoping the good, exciting things that are coming down the road will help me find my joy again.

Part of My Story

I’ve thought and hesitated about writing this post for a while. This is one of those posts that is not all sunshiny. It’s also long. You’ve officially been warned. I mostly decided I wanted to share this story because the more and more I read from bloggers with a similar experience, the more and more I realized how isolated you can feel when dealing with loss. Finding others with a similar tale has helped me, so I’m writing today in hopes that maybe I can help someone too.

One Year. Today. It’s officially been a whole year since my D&C. July 12, 2012. It was awful. I had just lost my father-in-law exactly two weeks, to the day, before, now I was losing my baby. I don’t remember much from that day. Everything was just black.

Me and the hubs with his mom and dad.

We had told my father-in-law we were pregnant on Father’s Day. We gave him a picture of him and my hubby, when he was a little boy. They were wearing their matching Batman t-shirts. With the picture we also gave him a Batman onesie. He didn’t get it at first. I think he was trying not to be too presumptuous. After all, it was only six months since we had had our first miscarriage. He didn’t handle that loss well, at all. We were so excited to give him his gift and when we told him, he cried. It was an amazing joy for all of us. We all needed that happy moment. He had been battling cancer, and losing. When he died on 6/28/12, eleven days after we had told him, we felt so blessed that he at least knew about the baby. When we went in for our first ultra sound and found out the baby had stopped developing my first semi-rational thought was how glad I was that I didn’t have to break the news to Marty.

 

I have written before about how 2012 was the worst year of my life so far. Technically it started December 14, 2011. We hadn’t been trying to get pregnant, the first time. A girlfriend of mine had recently been married, I was a bridesmaid, and the day after her wedding she told me about a dream she had had where I had a little girl. I tried to laugh it off, but it seemed to linger with me. I had never paid much attention to my cycle, so I didn’t know what a “normal cycle length” for me was, but on 12/9 I couldn’t stop thinking about babies, for some reason. When I looked at the calendar I realized I was at least past the 28-day average, so I took a test. PREGNANT. Hubs and I went through about every emotion possible in about 24 hours. By the next day, as we were walking the Reindeer Romp, instead of running it as originally planned, we were ecstatic about becoming parents. 12/14, less than a week after we had found out we were pregnant, I started bleeding, heavy, at work.  I had gone to the doc for a blood test the day before, so I called them as I tried to make my way home without going into a fit stage. I had had a chemical pregnancy. Many women don’t ever know they have this kind of a miscarriage. Some doctors don’t even classify it as a miscarriage, since the egg never properly attached to the wall. Just enough to trigger the start of the hormones. Honestly, if I hadn’t of had baby on the brain I would’ve never tested. But I had tested and it was a devastating loss for us and for our parents, who hadn’t even known we were pregnant yet, we were going to tell them at Christmas. I went in for my annual early Jan and was given some suggestions for when we wanted to start trying. We thought maybe we’d wait, since we hadn’t been trying, but after having gotten to a state of excitement to be parents, there was no turning back for us. We were definitely ready to start trying, after the recommended waiting time, of course.

We found out the second time on our anniversary weekend. It couldn’t have been better timing. We went to our first meeting with the doc’s office to discuss the process. Our first ultrasound was scheduled and we signed up for classes. We told his parents and my dad on father’s day. My mom was going to be coming in to town soon, so we decided to wait to tell her in person. Our hearts broke when we lost Marty, but we had hope for the future still. Mom bought us a crib to celebrate. I started having very minor spotting so my ultrasound was moved up by a week. We weren’t worried. We had made it to week 11! Then the tech quietly tells us that the baby’s measuring at only 6-7 weeks and there’s no heartbeat. If she said anything else after that I didn’t hear it. My world went deaf. A “missed miscarriage” they called it. Simply put, even though the baby had stopped developing my body still though it was pregnant, so it didn’t trigger the opening of my cervix to remove everything. The doc came in and we discussed the next step. Since I was spotting my body would probably naturally start the process in a few days to a couple weeks. I could be given a medication to trigger it all to start right away. Or I could have a D&C. I didn’t want to see that kind of blood again and I wanted to just get it over with, so I opted to do the D&C. It was more immediate and had more control as well, which appealed, since I felt like I had no control over anything at that moment. It was scheduled for the next morning, 7/12/12.

It doesn’t seem like it’s been a year already. What makes today harder is the fact that we haven’t been pregnant in that year either. In that year, however, we have found our optimism again. We’ve ran tests. Lots of tests. Results led to me being put on a daily baby aspirin, to try and help prevent future miscarriages from clotting; probably what caused mine, and the knowledge that I’ll be put on progesterone once we conceive again. Other than those, considered fairly minor issues, both the hubs and I are perfectly healthy and capable of conceiving, according to the doctors. We’ve started trying to take a more relaxed approach to our situation, to avoid putting too much stress on us, although, if we can conceive while we’re dealing with a parent who is battling cancer, I don’t see how stress is our issue. Of course, it has been nice not waking up and reaching for a thermometer every morning. Earlier this week, we thought maybe, since I was 8 days late, but after 3 negative tests I finally started. I think the HSG (a test to check that your cervix & tubes are open) that I had on day 7 of my cycle, which caused some minor bleeding, screwed with my body enough to cause the delay. We’ve decided to give it through the rest of the year before we start to discuss other steps and options. For now we are thinking happy thoughts, enjoying “us time”, and trusting in God’s plan for us. After we met with the doc last month both the hubs and I walked away agreeing we had a good feeling about everything, and that is the best feeling you could have when dealing with any matter. It’s one we haven’t had since December 2011.

For those who are new to this kind of loss. I’m sorry. Keeping your faith is the best piece of advice I can give you. Also, talk. As an expert rug-pusher, I know it’s not easy to bring up a subject like this with anyone, especially if they have no experience with it, but no good will ever come from keeping it bottled up. If you don’t have someone to talk to, talk to me. I’m happy to talk to anyone about anything, even if it’s not related to this topic.