"I'm ready to see what my story is."
This is what I told people when Bret and I made the decision to try and start expanding our family (with humans, not more animals). The decision to become a mother is not one that came easily to me. I'm not someone who just "knew I always wanted to be a Mom." All of it scares the hell out of me, to be honest. Ultimately, I had to stop thinking about the sleepless nights, the pain, the worry, and the money, and imagine the big picture. Bret and I both come from big, close families who are everything to us. The thought of adding on to those families while also creating a little family of our own just out of our love for each other - THAT was what I wanted. I started to have friends and family go through their own journeys of parenthood and I loved hearing their stories - how did they decide to start trying, what was their pregnancy like, how did their labor and delivery go, etc. I was ready to see what my story was going to be.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't have lots of thoughts about my story starting with a miscarriage. As we went through a few months of not getting pregnant and feeling frustrated, I said multiple times to Bret "we could get pregnant and get all excited and then I could just miscarry." I've heard a lot of statistics, but my doctor (whom I love love love) says that 1 in 3 women miscarry. Because of this, I just couldn't get TOO excited when I finally had a confirmed pregnancy. I was a little excited though, and I began to tell many people, because I knew that if I did miscarry, I would be telling everyone. The excitement from others made me a little more excited, but also really nervous, because I didn't have A LOT of symptoms so it was just hard to feel pregnant until I could see it on ultrasound. Plus, another statistic I saw said that the risk of miscarriage goes down to 5% once you heard a heartbeat on ultrasound, which would probably happen at my 7 week appointment. So I found myself saying "I just need to see it on ultrasound to believe it."
Well, of course, that day never came. My ultrasound at 7 weeks showed a gestational sac and a yolk sac (the thing that nourishes the embryo/fetus until the placenta is formed) and I was measuring around 5 weeks. They told me I was either 2 weeks off in my calculation of my cycle, or I miscarried. My doctor was realistic, saying that the likelihood of being off 2 whole weeks was pretty low, though there was still a chance. I had a little grain of hope, but I knew deep down that day that I miscarried. That day was the first day I realized there was stuff I didn't know about miscarriage because no one talks about it. I didn't know there was this gray area where you MIGHT have miscarried, but you might have to wait weeks to find out for sure. And your body MIGHT bleed on its own, but you might have to have medical intervention to help it along.
This whole thing was complicated by the fact that my birthday was at the end of the week and then we were going on vacation. My doctor was amazing and we came up with a good game plan in the event that I did start bleeding on vacation. We needed a good game plan because, if I started bleeding, I was going to need the Rhogam shot because of my rh- blood type. I pushed this out of my mind as much as possible to enjoy my birthday and vacation and, thanks to my amazing support network of friends and family, my birthday was as great as it always is. I was enjoying vacation with Bret very much until one day, nothing was going as planned. Our drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway got rained out, Bret got a large speeding ticket, we hit a huge rain storm and traffic getting into Atlanta, and then I started bleeding. I could only laugh at that point. Luckily, we were in Atlanta to visit my cousin and his amazing fiance who just happens to be a nurse. Plus, we were in a major city with lots of good hospitals. It couldn't have happened at a better point in our vacation. Unfortunately we spent basically the one evening we had in Atlanta at the Piedmont ER, but they were all really nice and did everything as quickly as they could to get me out of there. We left with them telling me they couldn't conclusively say it's a miscarriage and me rolling my eyes, but I got the shot which was all I needed. I talked to my doctor the next day and she explained again why there seems to be this gray area - basically the numbers and tests don't really show you've miscarried until after you've finished bleeding. Crazy, I know. I'm only sharing all of this because WHO EVEN KNEW THERE WAS SO MUCH GRAY AREA. Again though, my doctor is awesome, so she was able to tell me with more certainty that it was a miscarriage, which meant I could start drinking!
I know what you're thinking. How can I be excited about drinking when I just miscarried? Here's the thing. My miscarriage happened very early - so early that the embryo didn't form past being a teeny tiny blob with no human characteristics and we never saw it on ultrasound or heard it's heart beating (because it probably never started beating). To us, that made it not feel so much like a loss of human life. I am thankful for my body because it did what it was supposed to do - it prevented us from the inevitable suffering of carrying a child that would not be able to live. This is science and it's amazing and wonderful. Not only that, but my body was able to let go on its own, with no medical intervention. I have never been so in awe of what my body was able to do for me. I am humbled, grateful, emotional, and hopeful. Bret and I have never been closer and we had an amazing vacation.
It hasn't all been perfect and it definitely wasn't the easiest past couple of months, but it's part of my story. Luckily, it's just the beginning.
