Tiff and Company: July 19th

I kinda like the weekly look of this blog. Now to the not fun part of my life....

The last week has been very stressful. I had a feeling something was not right with our baby the week before the 19th. The doctor seemed to think everything was okay. So Sunday the 18th, Clarence's Birthday, I was still having some issues and called the Doctor again. The doctor on-call told me to rest, hydrate and try to get a repeat u/s Monday. So Monday morning I call my regular doctor and she sends me to Perinatal Associates for a check-in u/s.

I remember getting ready to leave the house and thinking, "everything is going to be great, we saw the h/b, this is just a chance to see the baby again." I remember sitting in the waiting room and telling Clarence, "well at this point we will get to see the baby every two weeks, since we have our 1st trimester screening two weeks from now." I remember thinking again, everything is going to be great.

We were called back and the u/s tech told us the baby should be big enough to see on top. Our baby should be 10w0d at this point so we should be good. She turned on the machine and had a hard time finding much. She told me that she wanted to do the internal machine b/c it would help her see. That she could see something was there but wanted a better look.

I was slightly worried at this point, b/c according to her, we should have been able to see the baby. But I changed and tried to remain calm. We start the 2nd u/s and see the baby. It looked exactly the same as it did 2 weeks prior. No changes at all that I could tell. She turned on the contrast so that she was able to see blood in and out. It was lit up all around the fetus, but the baby stayed black. She turned on the cross-hairs and the h/b line and nothing. She looked for a couple of minutes, nothing. She grabbed my knee and told me "I'm not finding a h/b on this little one, but I'm going to keep looking." I lost it, I cried. She looked, for what felt like forever. It was so hard to see the flat line the whole time. She left the room to get the nurse practitioner and I cried even harder.

The nurse and the u/s tech looked again. She said the baby measured 8w2d, the exact same size as the prior u/s. The still couldn’t find a h/b. The nurse went to talk to my Dr and the Dr said I could come in at 9am. I felt like a hole had been ripped out of my heart. I just wanted to go home and climb into bed.

That first day was hard, real hard. It was so hard to believe that we saw the heartbeat 2 weeks ago. That we told everyone we were expecting. That we were convinced that the baby was okay. And nothing was okay.

The next morning we went to see the Dr. to get our options. I lost it at the counter checking in, I lost it with the nurse in the room. The doctor finally saw us and let me know that she could perform a D&C; rather than waiting to see if my body passes everything naturally. She rushed around and got us scheduled for 4pm that day.

I was starving when we got to the hospital for the procedure. They gave me an IV (bruised me really badly) and let me just relax with my family until it was time. The wheeled me into the surgery room and asked me what beach I planned on visiting. I told the anesthesiologist that I wanted to go to the Bahamas and that was the last thing I remember. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in the recovery room. I have some applesauce, b/c at this point I’m still starving, and Clarence comes in to see me and take me home.

The rest of the night was easy, I had some cramping and back pain but nothing a little Tylenol and heat didn’t fix.

The next couple of days were rough. We had amazing friends that took care of us all week. Flowers arrived at our house and food was there for us every night. It really takes a village to raise a child and grieve over one too.

I’m starting to feel a little more like myself at this point. I don’t go a minute without thinking about the little gingerbread man that we lost. I know our baby is in Heaven with family and friends and I know God has plans for us. I wish I knew what the plans were, b/c I’m a Type A kinda gal, but I know something good is in store.

Anyway, I’m getting back to my blog and wanted to write all of this before I forgot.