Remembrances

Well tomorrow is the one year anniversary of my one and only due date. So many times over the years we had been trying to get pregnant I had known when my due date *would* be if I finally saw two lines, but this time I actually was told when my EDD was on several occasions by my RE. This time it wasn't something I merely hoped would happen, but in fact in my electronic medical chart he entered 2/24/06 as my due date. So I have had many thoughts (and tears) this week as I have let myself think about it more than I usually do. I'll just share a few of my memories.

Happy memories would be for starters thinking I saw TWO lines and then even more than that hearing the nurse on the phone tell me yes I was pregnant (barely - an hcg of less than 12). I wanted to scream from the rooftop I was finally pregnant (after three years of trying that included seven medicated cycles). The moment I had looked forward to for about 2 decades was finally here - I was going to have a baby!!! I first posted the news to the women online who had followed my story (as long as they promised not to tell Paul that I told them first, lol). After years of posting BFN as the result at the end of every cycle, I was finally able to type BFP in reference to me! Of course big fat positive was not the best way to describe my very faint line but that's the lingo used on those discussion boards. Then I went to CVS and bought a Father's Day card (which was just around the corner) and a candybar and drove 30 minutes to where Paul worked at the time and told him our happy news. His dad figured out what it was about just because it was the first time I had come to see Paul at work in the middle of the day (with a huge smile on my face of course). Then after I told Paul I immediately started using my cellphone on the way home to start telling others. I couldn't believe I got to finally say the words at the age of 33, "I am pregnant!". I remember feeling a huge sense of relief that our days of ovulation tests and shots and trying to time everything just right were over. And I remember getting my first (and it proved to be the only) congratulations card (from an online friend), and I remember sitting in the choir loft in church on Father's Day looking out at Paul and having tears stream down my face, but for the first time they were tears of JOY not the usual tears of grief I shed on such holidays. I also remember being glad when I felt nauseated as it reassured me I was pregnant.

Of course there are more sad memories than happy ones. A few of the sad ones would include the bad news we kept getting that my HCG was not doubling as fast as it was supposed to and the ultrasounds only showing the corpus luteum (pregnancy cyst). I had so longed for the day when an ultrasound would show a sac and then later a heartbeat, etc after having dozens of ultrasounds showing the progress leading up to ovulation in all the medicated cycles we had done. And yet the doctor printed out empty ultrasounds each visit, and of course he didn't give me copies like he would have had there been something happy to see in there. The worst moments of all were first when I started having this awful brown discharge. I remember Paul racing upstairs to the bathroom after I started screaming "NO! NO! NO!" in a panicked voice when I saw the external evidence that something was very wrong, and that was confirmed a little later at the RE when I heard that my hcg has stayed the same (I kept clinging to hope as long as it was going up even though it was going up too slowly). I sobbed in the RE's office after the nurse told me the number. Then on July 5 the RE said I had to have the chemo shots because my hcg had continued to (slowly) rise. It didn't seem I was going to miscarry on my own. The physical pain was horrific the next few days, but I think that actually helped some emotionally. Then I had to endure repeated bloodwork for a few weeks to make sure my hcg kept going down. I remember every time sitting there thinking for years I have longed to have hcg in my system and now I am wishing for it to go away as soon as possible????

Technically my pregnancy was never a clinical pregnancy because not even a sac was seen in an ultrasound. It was technically a chemical pregnancy although it lasted longer than a chemical pregnancy is supposed to last; so for that reason mine was labeled ectopic although that couldn't be proven. We'll never know for sure, but it seems that no matter where the embryo was - something wasn't right with the embryo because the hcg was so very slow in going up (which is not a typical sign of an ectopic pregnancy). I feel like I have such little proof I had a baby for a few weeks. I have no ultrasound pictures; no one ever looked at me and could tell I was pregnant. All I have are a few pregnancy tests that I saved, a few sympathy cards that I received in the mail after it was over, and a card I carry in my wallet saying I've had one shot of Rhogam (due to Rh incompatibility between Paul and I).

I wonder if my baby is in heaven. David's statement in the Old Testament is used to support this idea. If it's true, how will I recognize my baby? We are not sure if we will recognize people we've known on earth once we're in our glorified bodies, but what about a baby we never laid eyes on and never held? Well I know there are no tears in heaven so either I'll get to meet my child or it won't bother me that I won't be able to do so. Does this brief pregnancy make me a mom already? I don't feel like a mother, and people don't think of me as a mother.

Well if I've learned anything through this hard journey the last five years I have at least learned all the things NOT to say. Such as not to tell a woman it's good news she got pregnant because this means "at least she can get pregnant." I was told this so soon after my loss by many people "in real life" and online who viewed it as a "step in the right direction." How is me losing a baby a step in a good direction? We did the same shots and IUI that brought about that pregnancy three times since then, and it never resulted in another pregnancy. Not that it's impossible that I might be pregnant again some day, but I haven't in the 20 months since that pregnancy so I don't see that it was a step in the right direction.

Well I've rambled on enough. This event encompasses both the happiest and saddest moments of my life; so it's hard to be concise. As the tears stream down my face as I type I am just hoping against hope that my arms will not remain empty for too many more years.