Today I'm at home with a stomach bug that struck at about 2am. Ew. Why does that always happen?? It's always the middle of the night/early morning when these things hit. Luckily, I'm feeling a bit better this afternoon and should be back on my way to work tomorrow morning.
Now, let me tell you a bit about my first two losses. As soon as Tom and I started trying to get pregnant, we did. We were really blessed to get pregnant on the very first try! I was excited, but wary, because I have seen my older sister go through miscarriage after miscarriage. The second I found out, I made a doctor's appointment and it was confirmed. I was pregnant and I was due in April 2007. We were both ecstatic! However, our ecstasy didn't last long. I went to my OB for a dating ultrasound (they estimated I was about 7 weeks) and all that they saw was an empty sac. No baby had developed at all. A couple of days later I began bleeding. We lost our little bean on 8/25/06. I was devastated, as was Tom. I feel like this first pregnancy experience tainted all of my others. Instead of being a time of joy and excitement, pregnancy was now a time of anxiety.
Months later, we decided to start trying again (sometime in Jan/Feb 2007). Again, we got pregnant immediately and were cautiously optimistic. At about 6 weeks, I went in for an ultrasound and lo and behold, there was a heartbeat! It was a little slow, but the doctor said that it was ok - the heart had probably just started beating. Much to my dismay, the next morning I started bleeding. I called the OB right away and my younger sister accompanied me for an emergency ultrasound. The technician SUCKED. After she jammed the wand into me (sorry for the graphic details), she noticed there was no heartbeat. Instead of saying "hold on a second, honey" or "let me get the doctor," she leaves the stupid ultrasound wand in me and starts yelling over the intercom "DR. PARKER! DR. PARKER! I NEED YOU IN HERE!"...what the hell?!?!?! You just discovered that my baby is dead, yet you have no sympathy, and definitely NO bedside manner. That experience sticks in my mind to this very day. I can still picture her and remember the feeling...
Thus began my hate of ultrasounds.
I love your blog name. My favorite Counting Crows song! Trying to have a baby shouldn't be so hard, should it? I've had two early losses myself, just confirmed pregnancy number 3, but it has started out rough and stressful already. Thank you for deciding to share your story.
ReplyDeleteUgh...It's such a horrible experience. I can't go near one of those machines without freaking out! I wish they could just look at us and say "yup, got a sticky one" or "nope, try again". Would make life easier eh?
ReplyDeleteARRRGGHH!!! ULTRASOUNDS!!! At the doctor where I was a patient with my first pregnancy loss, there was a bold-face highlighted sign on the wall of the ultrasound room that said, "Technician will make no statements nor answer any questions. Please save all questions for your doctor." I hated that the techs weren't competent enough to be trusted to say one word (at least that's how I took it). The sucky tech you had to endure... the insensitivity of some people in the medical field! At the same practice, just after I'd learned our baby had no heart beat and I was waiting to speak with the doctor, a nurse came in and said to me, "So you're trying to get pregnant? How's that going?" That she didn't know why I was waiting in that room; that she hadn't read my chart or known what was happening-- it all pissed me off. When she realized, though, she apologized, and I think she was truly sorry. Ended up, she was the only person at that practice who treated me with true compassion till it was all over.
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