Infertility Background part 2 (less TMI)

So after my husband returned from deployment we very quickly had a surprise.  In March of 2014 I was pregnant!

The positive test

My husband was at work that night and I was so excited I couldn't wait to tell him.   So I went to a bookstore and bought him the book "How to Dad" and called him to come off the ship to my car because I had "brought him dinner".  His reaction to the news was amazing and just made me more excited.

We had a lot going on at that point in them.  We had just purchased a new house (in fact I'm fairly certain the baby was conceived the day we closed on the house) and we were working on painting walls and refinishing floors, work that I love doing, but of course with this news I had to back off a bit and take a more supervisory role.

Because we live about 12 hours away from our family I wanted to tell my mom and my husbands dad and sisters about the pregnancy in a cute, unique way.  (My dad passed away in 2009, His mom passed away in 2012).  But I wanted my mom to know first.   So I kept putting off telling them (and therefore almost everyone else) while I tried to come up with an idea.

Near the 8th week I started having some cramping and bleeding and went to the ER.   They did an ultrasound and found a heart beat then told me to follow up with ob/gyn as soon as they could get me in.  My first prenatal appointment wasn't scheduled for another 2 weeks so I called ob/gyn when I left the ER with my beautiful printout of my little baby and they made me an appointment for a couple of days later.   At my follow up with ob/gyn they did another ultrasound and said that everything looked ok.   The bleeding had stopped so they thought I was out of the woods and should be ok.   Since I now had in my possession early ultra sound printouts I figured out the perfect way to announce my pregnancy to my mom.   I decided to make a super cute "grandma" card and put the ultrasound inside.  a week or so later with no cramping and no bleeding and I felt safe mailing it, so I dropped my mom's card in the mail and had my father and sister-in law's cards ready to go as soon as I heard from my mom (again I didn't want to risk them finding out first.)

The next night I started bleeding again.  This time it was a lot of blood, and I felt like I was going to die.   My husband took me to the ER and they confirmed that I had miscarried.   As I was laying on the bed in the ER all I could think was "my mom..." So through sobs and tears I somehow got through to my husband what I had done.   That precious man had to leave me in the ER so that he could go outside and call my mom and tell her what was happening, and she wouldn't even get the announcement that I was pregnant for two more days.  I can't imagine what that was like for him.   At the time I was so wrapped up in my emotions and so distraught I honestly have no memory of anything except the fact that it happened and this overwhelming sense of pain and hurt.   It was the worst experience of my life and something I would never wish on anyone.

My mom is an amazing woman, she knows that I don't like talking about these kinds of things outside of facts and figures, so she handled it as a fact of something that happened and we moved on.  To this day I don't know if she even ever opened the envelope I sent her and saw the ultrasound or if she simply threw the envelope in the trash.

I still have those ultrasounds tho, in the notebook I use to record all of the information from my doctors appointments related to my fibroid, pregnancy, and miscarriage and related follow ups.   They mark the page where I started researching daycares because I thought the medical side was over...Of course now there are many more pages of medical stuff after the daycares....

My original ob/gyn appointment was scheduled for two or three days after I miscarried.   So the ER told me to keep that appointment and that I wouldn't need to call and change anything, just to show up and they would do a miscarriage followup to make sure I didn't need any further follow up care.   Unfortunately for me and the nurse I was scheduled to meet the wasn't actually the case.   But I think That story will be my next post.