And now we wait...
So I've already pointed out that when it comes to making babies & growing them, Scott and I are pretty unconventional and get thrown some tough curve balls. But it's even hard for us to believe this latest hurdle, and we're experts at complicated.
On Monday, I woke at midnight to go to the toilet and noticed my underwear was wet. I just thought I was sweating (eww, I know) or had a little light bladder leakage (yes, it's real) but when I peed, the toilet bowl filled with bright blood. At that moment, everything just stopped. I've felt this feeling too many times but I still can't describe it - everything literally comes crashing down & there's nothing left but numbness.
The bleeding was as heavy as a period - I was convinced I was miscarrying. By this time Scott had woken up and we just sat silently trying to comprehend what was happening. This is when my mind went into overdrive - I hadn't felt nauseous that day, I had some stomach cramps the night before, I'd had diarrhoea for the past 24 hrs. I questioned everything but mostly I questioned myself. But at the end of the day, none of this shit that eats away at you even matters and it certainly doesn't give you any answers. So we tried to find the positives (we're actually getting pretty good at this), but we could only come up with one: we had a similar episode when I was pregnant with James (and he was fast asleep in the next room).
Rather than rushing to hospital, we decided to just wait for my appt with Dr S later that day (and killed the time with a trip to Kindergym with James!) We were taken straight through for an internal scan, which showed a gestational sac measuring 5w 5d, but there was no heartbeat. Dr S explained this could mean one of two things - it's too early to see a heartbeat (these usually only develop around 6 weeks) or bubs has stopped growing and we are miscarrying. Because we have no idea when I ovulated, we can't even be sure that the sac is measuring correctly & hold onto that hope. I initially wanted to wait longer to do our first scan for this exact reason - so we could avoid the 'not knowing' and just see the heartbeat straight away. So when I started bleeding, I had a strong feeling that this would happen and we'd be stuck in this limbo land. Because it couldn't be straight forward, right? Then I'd have nothing to write about!
So we walked out with the plan to repeat bloods urgently and do a formal ultrasound in a week. Yep a week. The first thing Scott said 'I can feel the grey hairs sprouting already'. You all know how much we love waiting. Ha! By this time my bleeding had settled. This was a good sign. I went home, and of course I googled and forum stalked once again. This is going off on a tangent, but seriously, has anyone ever posted in a forum, or are we all just stalking for answers we'll never get? I swear they're just made up stories to make us feel even more confused about everything. And then when you finally find someone who has been through the same as you (and it wasn't 15 yrs ago), you scroll down only interested in the outcome and of course there bloody isn't one. Does anyone EVER give an update on those things for the next person?!
Anywho, by the end of the day I was feeling much more confident for the following reasons:
1. It's rare to see a heartbeat before 6 weeks. Yes, google told me this, but I'm also a nurse and even I tell my patients this. THIS is why we don't scan early!
2. If we assume that I was about 3 weeks pregnant when I got that ridiculous HCG level of 7 and work forward from there, I should be around 5-6 weeks. Which means bubs is measuring close to my dates.
3. I hadn't been cramping and the bleeding had stopped.
I went to bed feeling all sorts of positive that everything was going to be ok, and I would just have to keep busy to pass the time. And then this morning I woke up, went to the toilet, and was bleeding again. Yep, a large amount of bright blood. Once I finally got over that morning slap in the face and I had taken my anger out on poor Scott, I rang Dr S's office to get my blood results. This would at least either give me some more hope or allow me to prepare for the worst. My HCG level was 12,783 and progesterone 33.5. This was good. It was still high, and definitely had well and truly risen since the last test. But we don't have a reference other than my level of 1800 a week ago, so again, this doesn't give us anything concrete. There's still a possibility that it was higher a couple of days ago and has only just started dropping. But you know what? WE WILL NEVER KNOW. Like everything with this shitty unknown stage of pregnancy, we just never get answers. It's actually torture.
This next week is going to be tough. In just the last 48 hours my emotions have been up and down more times than my undies. My nails are really not going to enjoy this time. But now we wait. We are literally going through the motions - we've been here so many times before that we are becoming accustomed to it. This hits home pretty hard. It's pretty damn upsetting that the 'abnormal' has become our normal and is so familiar to us. Scott and I are walking around silently stewing and feeling constantly lost, with the 'what if's' hanging over our head. We can barely make each other laugh, and when we do, it's a cheeky grin because we're not sure that we should be laughing. We knew this pregnancy was going to be hard, and we prepared ourselves for that. And trust me, we know more than anyone that we are so blessed to have this opportunity again. But we didn't think it would be this hard this early. We thought the first trimester was going to be the easy part (before the multiple scans, infusions & appts truly began).
But here we are, stronger than ever with each setback, still giving each other encouraging words and loving hugs (in between my meltdowns when I don't want to be loved!) We look at James and then look at each other, both thinking the same thing - man we are so lucky to have him. And you know what? If I'm going to trust anything right now, it's my gut. And my gut is pretty damn confident that I'm growing a baby that will make James the best big brother in the world. And it's craving hot chips. Nuff said, right?! We've got this.
