Number three

I should be doing my hours and hours of homework now, but I'm hooked on blogging and couldn't wait to get home to write my next entry.  Who knew it would be so addictive?

So, we left off with my hate of ultrasounds.

What I didn't mention about my second miscarriage was that I had to "collect" the "fetal matter" as I was bleeding and carry it to the hospital emergency room, where I was turned away and told I had to bring it to my doctor's office.  Yet another insensitive bitch (pardon my French) giving me the runaround and being totally unsympathetic about my loss. Ugh!

Well, after my second pregnancy loss, the doctor decided it was time to do some testing.  I had tons of vials of blood drawn hoping to find an answer.  Unfortunately, no answer was found.  My ANA was "weakly positive" which my doctor (now former doctor) thought was worthy of being swept under the rug at the time.  Interesting, since one of my sisters has lupus and a positive ANA is a good indicator of that.  So after lots and lots of tests, I basically learned nothing.  I know that many who have suffered the same way I have had similar experiences.

Months later, I think some time around July, maybe, we got pregnant unexpectedly.  Of course we were thrilled, but cautious once again.  With this pregnancy, my doctor put  me on prometrium suppositories to keep my progesterone up.  I was also going in several times a week for HCG draws, which were doubling nicely.  Imagine my excitement when I saw a heartbeat at 6 1/2 weeks, and even more excitement when I made it to 12 weeks!  I had passed the "danger point" (or so I thought).

Since I was anxious due to my previous experiences, my doctor agreed to do my anatomy ultrasound at 17 weeks.  I was super anxious and looking back, had a gut feeling that something was wrong, but just passed it off as being paranoid.  I rented an at-home doppler so that I could hear my baby's heart beat every night.  One weekend, when I was 16 weeks, I couldn't find the baby's heartbeat.  I had gotten pretty skilled at it since I had been listening since about 10 weeks, and I FLIPPED OUT.  Completely.  I spent hours over the weekend looking for the heartbeat.  On Monday of that week, I called the doctor and told them how anxious I was feeling and they let me come in to get checked out.  The doctor kind of blew me off saying that I was an amateur (not in those words) at using a doppler and the baby was probably just behind the placenta or something.  He broke out his doppler and heard (what he thought) was the baby's heart beat.  In reality, this was just my heart beating SO FAST because of my anxiety.  However, he insisted he was right and sent me on my way.

Two days later, I had my ultrasound.  Guess what?  No heartbeat.  The baby had stopped growing at 16 weeks.  Right when I stopped hearing the heartbeat.  I guess I'm not such an amateur.

My doctor was off that day, so another doctor came in to the dreaded ultrasound room to give me the news that I already knew.  He told me I would have to deliver.  My answer was basically, HELL NO!  I refuse!  He was nice enough to call around and find a doctor who would do a D&E at 16 weeks.  Dr. T, who did my D&E was so sweet and empathetic...just what I needed.  I had to wait a few days to have the procedure, and I was so nervous.  I had never been under any kind of anesthesia before, and was convinced I wasn't going to make it out of it.

My hubby and sister accompanied me to my surgery, and they were great.  Little did I know that the anesthesia would be the BEST PART of the procedure.  It was over before I knew it, and I was comforted to wake up to a sweet nurse who turned out to be the mother of a friend of mine from high school.  Then they gave me my pain meds and sent me on my way.  The fetus was sent off for testing, but of course, there were no issues found.  BLAH.

After all of the issues I had with Dr. Parker's office, I decided to make a switch, which turned out to be the best thing I could've done.

That's all for tonight!  I'll write about Joshua tomorrow.

Thanks to my THREE followers and those who commented on my previous posts!!! :)