In it for the Long Haul

My husband and I dated for three-and-a-half years before getting married. He is the love of my life and my rock. We knew right from the start that we wanted children. Parenthood has always been an important goal for both of us. We’ve had a long road to get to there. We’ve had 14 known pregnancies, 2 births, and are currently expecting our 3rd child. This is our story. I was not feeling well one night about 10 months after our wedding. I was really nauseous. The next morning and throughout the day I felt sick to my stomach, which was unusual for me. I wasn’t late for my period (it was about three days before my cycle was due), but I felt so poorly I wondered if I could be pregnant. I bought a pregnancy test and the next morning I took it. Positive! We were ecstatic!! I continued to feel sick throughout the day, but usually the nausea could be quelled by frequent snacking and keeping hydrated. I have always been a planner. We were less than four weeks pregnant and I had already figured out how to rearrange our little two-bedroom apartment to make room for our baby. We even started discussing names. This pregnancy was real to us. Five days later, at about 11am, I started to cramp and bleed so I called the doctor. The nurse told me that either I had an ectopic pregnancy (pain and spotting) or I was miscarrying (period type bleeding) and I should call if I had any further questions. The conversation with the nurse was for only a fleeting moment before we hung up and I was left alone in my anguish. I felt like my soul was being ripped in half. My husband came home for his lunch break (he had no time to take off) and held me while I cried. He returned to work and I was again left alone in my small apartment to deal with the emotions and pain. I’m not sure there is a right thing to say to someone who has lost a child, a dream, or a pregnancy, but after that miscarriage, I heard a lot of the wrong things. That same evening, we had a group of friends over. We had already had a game night planned, and I didn’t want to explain why I was cancelling it last minute. One of the ladies who came over worked for a health plan. She explained how she would regularly get calls from ladies who were crying because they were miscarrying. “They were only six weeks along,” she complained, “she had had shoes longer than that!” She didn’t know what I was going through in that moment, but it pierced me to the heart. Babies are not comparable to shoes. Looking back, the interaction I had with this woman was one of the hardest things I dealt with that day. December that same year, just a few days before Christmas, I again felt very nauseous. It was a few days before my period was due. Again, I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. Just like before, merely days after my cycle was due, I lost miscarried again. This time I didn’t bother calling the Doctor. I had been pregnant just over Christmas, but being pragmatic, I didn’t get very excited. I didn’t dream. I just mourned another lost chance. I’m a problem solver. I was told doctors would not see you until you had three miscarriages. While I waited for a third miscarriage, I researched what could be wrong. I tracked my ovulation and it was normal. My progesterone levels could be off, but I had no way to test them. The next May those familiar symptoms came. I took another pregnancy test and immediately called the doctor. I made an appointment to have a pregnancy test a progesterone levels test. I lost my third baby, five days after I got a positive test result. It was four days before Mother’s Day. Two days after I miscarried, I received a letter in the mail with a nice note from the doctor and the test results. My Hcg was very low and my progesterone was even lower. Finally, we knew the cause of the miscarriages. I finally told my family what was going on. My pregnancies were so short, my husband and I would be the only one who knew about it before we lost it. I was so tired of feeling alone in the pain that I needed a bigger support network. I wish I had told them earlier, even if the news is hard to share. I started to see a doctor to try and treat the problem. The doctor put me on Clomid to see if it would increase my progesterone by creating a better cycle. For me, it actually made me relatively infertile. I then began the disheartening cycle of infertility. I would take Clomid, try to get pregnant, and take the negative pregnancy tests. I started taking them on day 25 to try and get an early result so I could start taking progesterone early and continued to take them until I started to bleed. I was taking multiple tests a month for a year. After a year, I got pregnant once, but didn’t get a positive pregnancy test until they day I started to bleed. My doctor decided to try a different approach the next month. We doubled the Clomid, but did artificial insemination on my day of ovulations. I was pregnant. On day 25 I had a positive pregnancy test. I got blood tests done and a prescription for progesterone. My miracle was finally here. Once I made it past that 4 ½ week mark I had a simple uncomplicated pregnancy. Eight months later I gave birth to a healthy baby girl. We had lost four pregnancies, but hopefully our problems were solved. When our daughter was just over a year, we got pregnant again. I took early pregnancy tests each month we tried, which was two months, and immediately got on progesterone. I later gave birth to a healthy baby boy. We were cured! At least that is how I felt. All the pain and heartache was past. When my son was a few months over a year, we decided we were ready to try again. He had been a hard baby, but we knew our family was not complete. It took a couple months this time, but we were soon pregnant. I took early tests each month and went on progesterone immediately. I was so excited. I told my family and a few friends the news after a week or two. The baby would be born in later spring, which was a dream after having a winter baby. I was six weeks along when I started to bleed. I had a blood test that day and it was negative. My doctor then told me I had never been pregnant. That was disheartening. I knew she was wrong, for lots of reasons, but to have my pregnancy completely dismissed because it didn’t meet her expectations was hard. I went back to the doctor and we decided to try a different prescription of progesterone. I again lost the baby early, at 5 ½ weeks (This time I had to the blood test done at 4 weeks so the doctor would know that I was in fact pregnant). We next tried taking the progesterone earlier in my cycle. This made me moody and extended out my cycle. But I still lost the next pregnancy at 5 ½ weeks. The Doctor then decided to try putting me on Letrozole, a fertility drug. I got pregnant and things were looking up. I made it past 7 weeks, which was past when I had ever had any problems. I felt like I was home free. Once again free to dream! Thanksgiving weekend came and something changed. I can’t even tell you what it was, maybe mother’s intuition. I knew something was wrong. I spent three days the next week calling the doctor’s office to get them to schedule a first trimester ultrasound. I was nine weeks along, and a doctor would not see me until I was past 13 weeks because of the doctor’s busy schedule. They were not planning on doing an ultrasound since would just assign the due date from the start of my last period. After a couple hours talking to different medical professionals I finally had an ultrasound scheduled for 10 weeks. I was sure that I was paranoid after seven miscarriages. I was 10 weeks along, nothing should be wrong. I had not bled or anything to indicate any problems. I was so sure that I was wrong that I had my husband bring my two children with him to see their baby sibling. My four-year-old had already been asking for another sibling. The ultrasound began. It wasn’t hard to find the baby but there was no heartbeat. I cried as I watched my husband hold my confused children. I didn’t need to be told what was wrong. I had seen healthy ultrasounds, this was not one. It is not a good sign when the ultrasound tech is quiet throughout the entire exam. I was then quietly ushered out to see an ob-gyn I had never met before. He informed me that my baby had passed away. About eight-and-a-half weeks, on or about Thanksgiving, my baby had stopped developing. I was sent home to discontinue the progesterone and wait for a miscarriage. A week later, my husband and I made the choice to use medication to terminate the pregnancy as spontaneous miscarriage wasn’t happening. I could no longer take carrying around a baby I would never be able to hold. We sent our two young children to spend the day with grandparents. It was surreal. We went Christmas shopping and wrapped presents while we waited for the medicine to kick in. Anything to keep my mind off of what was going on. Christmas time was hard. I cried through any song that mentioned a baby in it. I have faith that God’s plan for my life is perfect, but nothing says it is always easy. It rarely is. Hard times like these have helped to make me a more compassionate person. You never know what another person is going through. I was instructed to give my body time to heal, but my heart needed time to heal as well. About six months later we were ready to try again. I came home from a vacation and realized that I was a day late for my period. I took a pregnancy test—it was positive. I went in for blood tests and started progesterone. The blood test numbers weren’t good, but they started to rise. I had a scheduled seven-week ultrasound to track development after my last pregnancy. The pregnancy measured about four-and-a-half weeks. We scheduled another ultrasound in two weeks. The pregnancy now measured five weeks but there was no sign of a heartbeat. That would be normal at five weeks, but at nine weeks we knew this pregnancy wasn’t going to make it. I started to bleed two days later. The bleeding wasn’t heavy, but it continued day after day. On ninth day the bleeding intensified. Luckily my husband got home soon, before it got crazy, so he could take care of our two children. It got to the point where getting off the toilet would fill a pad before I left the bathroom. I was instructed to wait to see if I continued to bleed for more than four hours, or three hours if it continued to be so heavy or have other problems. We got a hold of my parents to arrange childcare. My husband put our children to bed and I stayed in the bathroom. My parents were set to head up at the beginning of the third hour as I wasn’t having any extreme problems to warrant going in early. Just after three hours the bleeding slowed down and we called off my parents. These are probably three of the scariest hours of my life. Even after eight previous miscarriages and two childbirths, I had never dealt with anything like that before. It is interesting. Somewhere between my first and my ninth miscarriage, I changed. I no longer was silent about what was going on in my life. I wouldn’t tell strangers unless they asked, but if you were my friend, you knew what was going on. Most people only knew I had miscarriages, not all the details. It was about this time that I started to get told that maybe I should be content with the two children I had. I was told to give up, it wasn’t worth the heartache. I was even told it was not fair to my two children to continue to try. Luckily for each of these voices, there were many more comforting me and giving me the choice to decide when it was too much for me. I would not blame a soul for being done at this point. It takes a toll on your body and your soul. We still felt that our family was not complete. We weren’t ready to give up. We looked into foster care, but it didn’t feel right. We looked into adoption, but again it just didn’t feel right for our family. We still had a baby that needed to come to our family through birth. We waited a few months for my body to heal. In October I lost another one at five weeks, December I lost another pregnancy at four-and-a-half weeks on Christmas day. Not surprising since I had just recovered from the flu and had lost track of timing. We now were at 11 miscarriages. Pregnancy had lost it’s wonder, it’s excitement. And yet each loss hit me. Some deeper than others, but each was a loss. I have contemplated my 11 miscarriages. I have had many responses between crying for days, to feeling nothing at the time (For me it always hits me, but not always hard. I got used to expecting disappointment). I have had pregnancies I have tried not to invest emotions in, I have been fully invested at four weeks. I think there is a big range of normal. It’s okay to be different than another person you know. It’s okay to be different that the last time you were dealing with something. Throughout this whole experience we had dealt with three different local doctors, all ob-gyns, trying to treat me. I seemed like I should be an easy case, but it was proving otherwise. There are no infertility specialists near where I lived. My husband and I decided I would drive over an hour away to the nearest big city and start to see a fertility specialist. An expensive decision, but it felt right, and we had enough for our needs to try this route. I got a recommendation from a friend of a friend for a doctor to see. Amazing enough I didn’t know anyone personally that had seen an infertility specialist in my state. I do know friends in other states that have. I sometimes wonder if this is true or if I just don’t know. We are not always open about discussing reproductive problems. February 2018, I went in for an intake appointment. On the morning of the appointment I had a positive pregnancy test. We did a blood test and it was negative. Two days later I had another home test that was positive. What was really going on I didn’t know, but it didn’t amount to anything. Just another emotional rollercoaster. I went in a week later for further testing. The doctor suggested a course of treatment that started with an extreme diet and new meds. I started the diet and new meds. I was so sick! Sicker than I’ve been with any pregnancy. This lasted for weeks. I then continued onto the next step. About six weeks later we were ready to try to get pregnant. I expected it to take a while, but we got pregnant the first month. I wasn’t sure what to expect since we had just started this course of treatment and the doctor warned that sometimes it takes months to make a difference. I tried to be hopeful, but didn’t have a lot of expectations. We scheduled a seven-week ultrasound. At seven weeks, everything looked good, but I still felt reserved. I scheduled a 10-week ultrasound with my normal ob-gyn. Maybe after this I would feel comforted. Nothing. I had an appointment to see my ob-gyn at 13 weeks, maybe after that I would feel engaged. I knew I should hear a heartbeat and I would be out of the danger zone. I ended up having an ultrasound because the ob-gyn couldn’t find the heartbeat (Worst 5 minutes of this year!). It was wonderful to see my baby growing and moving, but I still felt like anytime something could go wrong. Everything continued normally until my 20-week ultrasound. We brought our two older children and enjoyed seeing our baby boy moving around on the screen. It was then that I finally emotionally accepted that we were actually going to have another baby. After seven miscarriages since our son, and 11 total, it is emotional to realize it’s finally our time. At 28 weeks I got to go in again to see how my baby boy was progressing. He was doing fine. He is due in December. After three miscarriages in December, it will be nice to have a Christmas baby.