Heartbreak

Since I didn't have an outlet to write about this at the time, I'll do it now.  Along with my crazy irregular cycles, this past fall I experienced an 80 some odd day cycle and it was really getting me down.  I basically stopped even trying for a few months because what was the point?  With no period/ovulation I wasn't getting pregnant anytime soon.  Sometime in late October/early November someone posted on TB about Maca root and how it had been reccommended to them by their RE.  I did some googling and saw that many people had good luck with it to help their cycles and such, I figured what the hell.

I started taking it early November and within a few days I started feeling kind of crampy, so I thought oh good, maybe stuff is starting to work, maybe I'll get my period soon and I can end this God awful cycle.  I still have no idea why, but one night a few weeks later I decided to use an OPK, I hadn't used them in forever, I really can't think of what spurred me on to use one.  To my shock, it was positive.  I had never seen a positive before so I must have stared at it for forever, showed it to my husband to make sure I wasn't crazy and he agreed it was positive. 

I had no idea when I actually ovulated or if I did, but I decided I could just count 14 days from when we had sex and take a test.  Since learning of what a chemical pregnancy was, I was terrified of testing too early and going through that pain.  I always figured if I had one, I would rather just not know about it.

So the two weeks went by relatively fast, I was cramping quite a bit toward the end of that last week, but I still had hope since I know many women have reported period-like cramping and still getting their positive.  I can't describe the feeling, but I just felt very strongly that I was pregnant.  I had no other symptoms really, but somehow I just knew.  I had planned to test that Saturday morning.... I needed to get up early anyway around 8, but I woke up at about 6:45 and just could not get back to sleep.  I had had a dream that I had already tested and it was positive, so I was very antsy and couldn't get back to sleep, so I got up to test.

As the test was working I was staring at it, and within 10 seconds I was devestated that I hadn't seen a line yet, really certain that I was pregnant and bummed that my feeling was wrong.  A few minutes later I went to wash my hands when I looked again and holy crap....there was a faint line, but definitely visible.  It was absolutely one of the most amazing moments in my life.  Before I could even think, with shaking hands I dipped another test to make sure I wasn't crazy, but before that one could even begin to start working I pulled out the big guns, the digital.  My hands shook even more and my heart was beating through my chest as I stood there, staring at that little blinking test symbol, waiting for the response. 

I am not much of a "burst into tears" kinda girl.  Yeah I get teary at sappy songs and commercials, but when I should cry I don't.  I didn't cry when my husband proposed to me, not even close.  But yet when that single word "pregnant" popped up, tears were not far away.  Though I think I was just too emotional to cry, if that makes sense.....I was feeling so much joy, shock, fear, disbelief all at once that I almost threw up.  It was still early, a little after 7.  Ryan was still sleeping so I didn't want to wake him, but I didn't know what to do.  I had all this nervous energy, I kept looking at the test.  For a while I just sat on the couch and absorbed the information.  Looking back it was kind of nice to be up that early, with this little secret that nobody else in the world knew, even for a little while.

Finally when it was going on 8 I decided to wake Ryan up.  I was trying to think of something cute to do.....text him with the picture of the test and see how long it took for him to notice, write "I'm pregnant" on the dry erase board on the fridge.  Finally I just settled on waking him up, telling him I had something for him and shoving the pee stick in his face (capped of course).  It was dark in the room and he was half asleep so he was like what is it?  I said through a smile, I'm pregnant!  He was like you are?  His reaction was a little less than what I had dreamed of, but hey he was half asleep, in shock......I was even still in shock and I had a pretty decent feeling all week that I was pregnant, so I gave him some slack seeing as how life altering this news was at 8am when you're half asleep.

I probably wouldn't have told quite so soon, but I just happaned to be going shopping with my best friend that day, and I honestly don't think wild horses could have kept my mouth shut.  I could barely stand the 20 minute drive to her house.  When I got there she was still getting ready so I played with her son, not wanting to just shout out the words the second I walked in the door.  So she got ready and once we got in her car and she got her son all bucked in, I took a deep breathe and said well.....I'm pregnant!

I can't even describe the words/sounds that came out of her mouth.  It was kind of an oh.....oh...ohhhhhhh.....excited oh's of course.  She was like oh my God and was just laughing.  It's funny, we had been trying for 7 months at that point, and she knew this of course but for whatever reason it's still so shocking.  Her son was just sitting in the back sit with the big smile on his face, colored with confusion.  He knew his mommy was really happy about something, so he was really happy but you could tell he just had no idea why he was happy, lol.

The next few days were pretty crazy but also scary.  I was really tired, whether this was a phantom symptom or not I don't know, but I sure did have a few good naps.  I didn't work out at all even though I knew I should, but I suddenly felt as if I was so breakable, like even walking could damage me.  I was very happy and it was killing me not to tell more people, but we were just three weeks away from Christmas...I couldn't believe my luck of getting pregnant just in time to announce on Christmas morning.  My brother would be home for Christmas so I had planned on telling him the week before as I think each person should kind of get their own moment to bask in the news that they're going to be an uncle or a grandpa, etc.

I was soooooo excited to be able to tell my dad.  It would have been his first grandchild, and when I say this man is starved for a grandkid that is a huge understatement.  I know he seriously didn't really want me to have kids until I was married and financially stable, but he has seriously been bugging me to have kids since I was like 20.  Or rather, to hurry up and settle down so I could have kids.  When we announced that we were engaged, I don't think he was all that excited about the idea of me getting married, but it meant that I could have kids soon, so yay!  I've always wanted to be a mother and I can't wait to have kids, but one of the biggest things about having a kid that I have always looked forward to was to tell my dad he was going to be a grandpa and to see the look on his face.  Especially since he doesn't know we're trying and I always avoid the "when are you going to have kids" comments.

I had already bought my dad's christmas present, so the plan was to give that to him and then when all the hoopla of present opening was finished I was going to be like oh wait you have one more.  We were going to find some incognito way of videotaping it....his second "present" was a picture frame that said #1 Grandpa on it and inside I put a piece of paper that said Picturing Coming Soon, August 2012.  We had the same for my inlaws, a Nana and Papa frame for each of them.

In fact I still have that in the frames.....I can't even bear to look at it or take it out and I'm not going to until I have a new "picturing coming soon" sign to put in it.  I ended up telling my friend at work, I wasn't going to but I needed someone to talk to.  I also told another friend, though by the time I told her my fears I was already having were turning into legitimate concerns.

I don't know where the fear came from initially.....I mean yeah I've always known pregnancy is never a sure thing and that is why people don't tell a lot of people right away due to the risks in the first trimester.  But until I started posting on TB, I had never really known anyone personally that had had a miscarriage.  But on TB it's a weekly, sometimes daily occurence.  They happily announce their BFP, but then come back a few days or weeks later, heartbroken.

I am not sure if that is where my fear came from, by just seeing how common early losses were....or if like my "intuition" that told me I was pregnant, I was also experiencing an intutiion that all was not well.  It certainly didn't help that I was still cramping.  I tried to tell myself that my body was making changes, making room for the little peanut, so of course cramps made sense.  But each day they seemed to get more intense and more frequent.  By Monday the cramps were so intense I literally feared going to the bathroom each time, scared to death of seeing blood.

My fear was realized Tuesday night....I was in bed reading and was just about to go to sleep when I decided to use the bathroom first....the cramps still there.  I gave a sigh of relief when I saw no blood, but then my heart stopped when there was light pink on the toilet paper.  I tried to tell myself that spotting can be very normal, some women spot their entire pregnancy and give birth to a perfectly healthy baby, but that didn't stop my fears and I went to bed with a very heavy heart.  The next morning Ryan was already in the shower when I got up, and when I used the bathroom the same pink was on the toilet paper but this time the water in the toilet was bright red.  Ryan had been talking to me and stuck his head out the curtain when I stopped answering him.....with a shaky voice and tears in my eyes I told him there was blood.

He was amazing, very calmly he told me not to worry, everything could still be fine.  I knew he was right, but again inside, I just knew it wasn't fine.  I decided then and there to call off work, knowing I couldn't handle being there with all this worry, especially if the bleeding got worse.  Within a few hours the bleeding was like the start of a normal period....I already had my first doctor's appointment scheduled for the following week, so I called the office, told them what was happening.  The nurse advised me to go to the ER and they could do an ultrasound to see what was going on.  The second I hung up the phone I burst into tears and cried like a baby for what seemed like forever. 

I spent the rest of the day crying on and off and sleeping.  I decided against the ER...I didn't want to go by myself and Ryan was a few hours away on a job site.  Going to the ER wouldn't make me feel emotionally any better, and physically there was really nothing they could do for me either so it didn't make sense to make him come home early to take me.  By the time he got home I decided against it for all the same reasons I listed above.  I was worried about Ryan though, he seemed oddly unfazed by the whole thing, almost as if he still had hope.  I tried to tell him I was bleeding a lot and the cramps were still there, I just had no hope left that this coule be normal at all.  And despite the fact that he was going to keep quiet at work, he chose that day to tell his boss.  It broke my heart when he said he told his boss "I'm going to be a daddy".

He continued to worry me a few days later when he voluntarily cleaned the litterbox, since upon finding out I was pregnant it was now his job.  When I asked him though, he did say he knew it was over but he remained very upbeat and optimistic about it.  In some ways this hurt a lot.....aside from the first and second day I did pretty well...but I still had moments of sadness.  One day about a week later I bawled almost the entire way home from work and then was just blah all night.  Ryan didn't understand why....his attitude was just well, we'll try again.  That kind of hurt because he wasn't understanding, and therefore wasn't empathetic to my pain.  I know we both lost it, but I think it can definitely be harder for the woman.  I don't care what anyone says, the moment you see those two pink lines, you fall in love.  Even though you cannot see, hear or really feel anything yet, you know it's there. 

There is also the worry that maybe I did something wrong.  That Maca I had been taking which I believed helped get me pregnant....the nurse told me over the phone when  I found out to stop taking that and another OTC vitamin I had been taking.  What if whatever in it helped me get pregnant, also caused me to miscarriage when that vital ingrediant was no longer there.  That's probably pretty irrational...many women take fertility drugs to help get pregnant and I am certain they don't keep taking them once pregnant....and early miscarriage is sadly very common.  But I can't help thinking that way.  And finally my most irrational thought  was did I will this to happen?  Unlike jinxing, I worried that I thought so negatively for the full 4 days I was pregnant, that maybe I caused it to happen.  Ridiculous I know.

And finally, regardless of any bond I may or may not have felt, even if I did nothing at all to cause it, I was devestated over the simple fact that I had the one thing I really wanted and it was taken away from me.  In 9 months I wouldn't have a baby, in three weeks I wouldn't get to make my dad the happiest guy on earth, and I couldn't spend the next greater part of the year preparing for a little baby.  I felt pretty alone...I mean yeah Ryan tried, but he really couldn't support me the way I needed him to at the moment.  I think if, God forbid, I would have been further along and was showing or we had seen the heartbeat he would have felt more of a connection and therefore a loss, but he just wasn't feeling what I was feeling.  He was sad and dissapointed, but he didn't understand my tears and sad nights.

However Ryan's upbeat attitude also helped me "get over" quicker, for lack of a better term.  I don't want to in any way deny that what I went through was heartbreaking, especially if anyone else that experienced it were to ever read this.  I do believe a loss is a loss and should therefore be mourned as such.  However, I don't believe all losses are comparable to one another.  Yes I was devestated, but I won't for one second believe that what I went through was the same as someone who experiences a loss at 8 weeks or 16 weeks or what have you.  So I was glad that Ryan's optimism kept me from being really sad about it for an extended period of time.  I accept that I experienced a loss and that I should be sad....even now I get sad sometimes when I think about the fact that I would have been about 14 weeks along by now and would have likely announced it to everyone.  I get sad thinking about the crappy Christmas I had, rather than the wonderful one I should have had by getting to celebrate with our families over the new addition that would have been joining us.  However, I don't think it's necessarily healthy to be seriously depressed for weeks on end over a very early loss and if Ryan had been very sad, or even worse somehow blamed me for it, I could see myself being more serverely depressed for a lot longer than I was.

I never did tell my family....I wanted to on several occasions.  My grandma called the day it happaned, but I just let it go to voicemail.  I knew if I heard her loving familiar voice I would burst into tears and then I would have to tell her so she wouldn't go crazy wondering what was wrong.  I also talked to my brother on facebook that day....again dying to tell him just to get some support.  I knew he wouldn't tell anyone if I asked him not to, but then I realized that wasn't really the issue.  Why break anyone else's heart when they didn't know in the first place?  One day when we get our positive again I might tell....just because A. they are my family and love me and will support me, but also because I know I will be scared shitless the second time around.  If I thought I felt fragile then I am sure I will feel even worse.. 

I really hope I can be excited when it happens for us again.  I don't want this experience to take away the joy of being pregnant.  Pregnancy should be an amazing time in my life and I want to be able to enjoy it, not dread every second of it, waiting for the worst to happen.  The rational side of me knows that worrying does no good, and in fact can cause undue stress.  I worried for the entire four days I was pregnant and I lost it anyway, and it wasn't any easier to accept, I was still crushed.  I hope I can manage a fine balance between cautious (ie not screaming from the rooftops to everyone the moment we find out) but not worrying to the point where I am in constant fear.

We are now on the second cycle since the loss, and my periods are apparently still very messed up.  My first period after the loss was nothing more than brown spotting, but it lasted the usual 4-5 days and was when I thought I should be due, so I counted it.  I am now on CD46 I believe, with no end in sight.  I'm hoping for another miracle, in which I just sporadically discover I am about to ovulate, the stars align just right and we get preganant, though with our sticky baby this time.  I know he or she is out there and I am trying to be patient.  I know that when it does happen and I look into their eyes for the first time, suddenly nothing will matter.  I won't care how long it took because only the right timing could give us OUR baby....but I'm still hoping it doesn't take too much longer.