The Fast Poster

Okay, so I'm going to go all "Facebook" on you now.  Obviously this post is regarding a Facebook post.

You know that friend you have on Facebook that you side eye every time they post?  What about the ones that blindside you with their post?  Or the one who is constantly posting about the same thing.

This has to do with the middle one.  The Blindsided post.

Yesterday I logged onto Facebook.  For the average 25 year old, this is a daily task.  To find that my friend commented on something someone had posted on her wall.  The post said "Congratulations, do you know your due date?"  She responded with a Thank You and her due date.  The due date of 9 months from yesterday.  The due date that shows she's exactly 4 weeks along.  And her pregnancy has been posted in public.  4 weeks!

I text this girl today and asked her if what I saw on Facebook was true.  She said yes and she was so sorry I found out that way.  Mind  you, she doesn't know what we've been through.  Honestly, this is the girl whose wedding we went to the day we found out we were pregnant.  Then 2 days after I took the suppository to help pass the miscarriage, I met up with her for lunch.  She's a wonderful friend, and I love seeing her and her husband and I knew that they were likely going to start trying soon after the wedding.  So this didn't come as a surprise.  

But I can't help but be fearful for her.  For what she could possibly go through.  Yes, there are what ifs.  There are what ifs with everything in life.  But it's already been posted to her 500 Facebook friends that she's expecting, and her husbands' 300 friends.  If something happens, that's 800 people to ask if you're okay.  Or the chance of not all of them seeing your post that you lost the baby, and they ask you later how you're feeling or when you're due.  

I've prayed for her multiple times since this afternoon.  Prayed that her appointment on January 30th goes great, and that there's a loud thriving heartbeat.  And that she has a very uneventful 9 months.  That her and her husband don't go into their appointment 3 weeks from now and have to go through anything we did.  That she never has to "untell" people.  That don't have to make a follow up Facebook post that their baby isn't growing.  

It's great to be excited.  Wonderful to be excited.  The creation of another human being is a wonderful thing.  But let the pee dry on the test before you tell 800 people you're 4 weeks along.   For your own mental state, and their mental state too. 

Amazing people

The day that Someday and I had the appointment scheduled to officially find out whether baby M had grown or not, we decided to both take the day off of work.  If the appointment went great, then we would go to Babies R Us (1.5 hours away from our appointment) and test out jogging strollers.  Being an avid runner and half marathoner, I was already researching the best one and didn't want to skimp on quality.  If the appointment went bad, then we would still head that direction but we would go shopping at the mall and just take a day to be together.

As I've already posted, we found out that we lost the baby.  After the appointment we got back into the car and just started sobbing.  There was no stopping it.  We couldn't drive anywhere yet, because we couldn't see to drive.  I didn't want to go shopping over 2 hours from home and it just be the 2 of us...... sad together.

So once we were finally able to see to drive, I told Someday that I wanted to go get my wedding ring cleaned.  For some reason I felt that even though we just found out the thing we had created together was being taken away from us, we still had each other and our marriage to fall back on.  So I wanted to have my ring sparkly and new.  While we were there, Someday called one of our friends to see if they had the day off of work.  It was Columbus day, and she works at a bank.  It was also her birthday.  They both had the day off and were planning to head out of town for a leisure day of lunch and shopping, and they asked if we wanted to join them.

For some people they would think that the last thing they wanted was to go somewhere with people after something like this.  But this couple knew everything we've been through.  They knew about my PCOS, when we started trying, when we found out we were pregnant, and that things weren't going right.  They also knew that we had the appointment that day.

For some reason spending the day with them made everything all better.  They didn't ask about the appointment, but Someday and I brought it up soon after we got in their car to leave.  It helped to have these friends to discuss this with.  I firmly believe that what has made it so much easier is that they have very similar religious views as us.  They got our mind off of things, talked with us about life, and helped us to comprehend what we were going through.  Even though they haven't been through it themselves.

What next?

This is a question we both have been asking ourselves over and over again.  What next?  Do we try again? Do we go through treatment again? Do we see if my body does its thing on its own?

These are all questions we asked at our last appointment.  What next?  What does the Dr recommend?  Through all of this, I had been moved from midwife to midwife, and hadn't seen the same one twice.  So at this appointment we met with Jennifer.  Jennifer had gone through IF treatment herself to have each of her 3 children, and I instantly put all of my trust in her hands.  For some reason I didn't care what was medically correct in what to do next.  She was someone who would know and understand what we had just gone through, and we both felt that she would give us her thoughts on what to do next.  Even if it wasn't what she needed to tell us as a medical perspective.  She told us that medically they say to have at least 1 cycle before trying again.  But with my history, I do not have any sort of cycle.  So this was a mute point for me.  I told her that I was willing to try again.  Wanted to put this loss past us, and move forward.  Turn the page and wake up tomorrow feeling renewed and ready to move on.

Then she asked us the question I never would've thought of myself.  "If you were to get pregnant again right away, could you mentally handle it?"  My response, "yes."  "Now, if you were to get pregnant immediately and then lose the child again, could you mentally handle it?"  Someday and I: "Not a chance."

There it was. Decision made.  No proceeding with treatment. No jumping right back in.  Another loss just wouldn't be good.  We just can't handle it.

Sometimes Dr's can give more than just giving medicinal advice.  They can also meet the mental needs too.

Dr's visit after Dr's visit

So it's taken me a while to get up enough courage to post a follow up to the prior post, but I'm going to be straight forward with it and just come out and say it.  We lost baby M.  No heartbeat. No growth.  Nothing.

I went through an appointment per week for 4 weeks straight to see if the fetus had passed on its own.    At week 3, it had not.  So the midwife I was meeting with recommended taking a suppository to make me go into labor and pass it without surgery.  It consisted of taking a day off work and going into full blow labor, contractions, and dilation.  This was definitely quite the experience, and has made me officially consider a natural birth.  Well, maybe someday, a natural birth. If I ever get to that point.  Thankfully the suppository worked, and I was able to avoid surgery.  But there's still so many unanswered questions.  Why did this happen?  Will it happen again?  Did I do something wrong?