I've been kind of absent from the internet the past few months. I mean, not really absent because we know how much I love to read my blogs, and Facebook stalk, but I've been more of the silent observer type, liking a status here, posting a pro-vaccine article there, sort of participator. And I haven't even blogged about Christmas, which was INCREDIBLE in case you're wondering, and I have about a billion pictures to post and stories to write, but I just haven't yet. Partly because I'm in my last semester of nursing school and working two to three 12-hour shifts a week, and partly because I've been avoiding this blog. This blog is where I keep track of eventful things in our lives, and frankly I haven't wanted to document those eventful things so publicly. But I need to have this stuff written down somewhere, and I am reeeeeaaaaaal bad at journals so here it is.
Christmas Eve we were in Colorado with my whole entire family. It was amazing, and full of Christmas happiness, and I was supposed to start my period the next day. We'd been trying for two months, and made sure to pack a pregnancy test or two because I was definitely NOT waiting until we got home a week later to find out. And even though I wasn't supposed to start until tomorrow, Dallas just couldn't wait any longer, and convinced me to take it. It was positive. I jumped up and down and squealed quietly so no one would hear and kept saying, this isn't happening, this isn't real, OH MY GOODNESS I'M PREGNANT. Like a million times. So everything's all hunky-dory, and I tell my mom and she gets all teary eyed, and I do too, and it's the best Christmas ever. The year before on Christmas I remember crying to Dallas because I wanted to start our family but knew we couldn't yet, and he promised me that by next Christmas I would pregnant, and I was. Apparently he's really good at keeping promises.
The next couple weeks went by, I was bursting at the seams with news, but had decided not to tell anyone, which kind of turned into neglecting the blog as a whole, because who wants to hear about Christmas when I had a pregnancy to announce. But, I had surgery on my uterus last summer(I have a post to publish on that somewhere but...you know) so I wasn't sure if this pregnancy would stick, and didn't want to deal with that mess if we lost the baby. I can't explain to you how excited I was. I was picking out cribs, finding patterns to make a diaper bag, all that good stuff. I started to feel nauseous at about 6 weeks, and had to eat every two hours or I was a wreck, and I took that as a good sign. My hormone levels were high enough to make me sick, so that's a good sign right? I never threw up or anything, and it was never enough to make my mornings miserable, but it was there, so I was still pregnant.
I called the doctor I wanted to see (she'd done her residency at the hospital where I had my surgery, so she probably knew my surgeon), and her office said they didn't want to see me until 10-12 weeks. That surprised me, because most people I know went in at 8 weeks. The more I thought about it the more nervous it made me. I told them I had this weird uterus thing going on, but they didn't change the appointment. Which, after a few days, was fine with me. I'd taken a maternity class, I knew there was nothing they could do if I started to miscarry before 12 weeks, so I took a deep breath, and just prayed for the best.
I was 8 weeks along when I started bleeding. My appointment was 3 weeks away. At first I didn't worry that much, because some spotting in pregnancy was normal. I called the on-call doctor (it was a weekend of course), and she said to take it easy, and come in on Monday. I spotted for two days, and it then started to go away. By then I was feeling a little cooped up so Dallas and I went on a walk. And that's when the cramping started. And when I got back, the bleeding hadn't stopped, it had gotten worse. By that time it was Sunday, and I knew there was no one I could see except in the Emergency room, and this wasn't an emergency yet. I kept trying to have faith and kept saying "I'm sure there are women that have bled much more than this and kept their baby" over and over in my head. We went to church and pulled my bishop aside to tell him what was going on, and asked if we could get a blessing. We stepped into his office and he gave me a wonderful blessing, but it was so incredibly vague and I just wanted him to tell me the baby was alright, but he didn't. I left pretty much certain that I had miscarried.
The next day we tried to get an appointment with the doctor, but she was really busy. This whole time my cramps were getting worse and my hope that everything was okay was quickly waning. Oh, and Dallas was supposed to leave to go to Virginia for a week that night, so there was that too. The nurse I talked to, who was amazing by the way, ordered some labs for me, and told me to go to the Provo hospital to get them done. By the time we got to the hospital, I could hardly walk, and couldn't answer the questions the registrar was asking me. At that point, I couldn't take it anymore, and instead of doing those labs, I just went over to the Emergency room. They did an ultrasound, and there was no heartbeat. I can't say that I was surprised. The baby only measured at about 6 weeks, and I was sure I was 8 weeks pregnant. Luckily they had given me lots of pain meds, so the news just kind of washed over me. I didn't cry, and I truly felt ok with it (that was the morphine speaking). I passed pretty much everything at the hospital, and I felt like my pain was under control, so when they discharged me I was happy to go. Dallas had to catch a flight at midnight, so we drove over to my cousin's house, where I was going to stay for the week. Before he left he told me that if I wanted him to, he would cancel his business trip and stay with me. But I told him I was fine, and that this trip was important, so he could go. He left reluctantly, but promised he would be back as soon as he could. Of course, that was the week they had that huge storm on the East Coast and he was stuck there until Friday.
So there I was. Not pregnant anymore and husband-less. It was not pretty. I only really broke down once or twice that week, both over FaceTime with Dallas. Luckily I have an amazing cousin who just let me lounge around, and who has three adorable children to distract me. Dallas came back at the end of the week, and we tried to get back into our routine. Which mostly worked.
There it is. The reason I've been absent. The hardest thing that's ever happened to me. The most pain I've ever been in, emotionally and physically. I've told a lot of people about what happened, and I'm grateful to all of them for listening to my story. It helps me to talk about it. I'm not worried about never getting pregnant again, or losing another baby. I've had some pretty incredible priesthood blessings that promise me I will bear children, and I'm looking forward to that. But I'm still sad. Sometimes at night I'll just cry, or a certain song will come on the radio and hit just the right spot and it's waterworks all over the car. Or sometimes it's a lesson in Relief Society, the week after everything happened, about trials, and you end up sobbing in the middle of the lesson when the Relief Society president stands up and shares that sometimes you just need more weight, more hardships, for things to go the way they need to. Around our house these days our motto is, it's ok to be sad, but everything is going to work out. And it is going to. I have no doubt about that.
