Pregnancy After Miscarriage: Prayer Answered and Hope Fulfilled

           So there I was, still trying to think like a pragmatist while simultaneously praying that maybe—just maybe—everyone was wrong and I was still pregnant. I was edgy as a surprised cat, vacillating between hope and that something-horrible-has-happened-and-there’s-not-a-darn-thing-I-can-do-about-it feeling.

           

            I had no choice but to hurry up and wait.

           

            Dr. Landry’s call came early the following morning, minutes after his office opened.

           

            “Has the pathology report comeback?” Dr. Landry’s inquiry was garnished with edginess.

           

            “No.”

           

            “Are you having any abdominal pain or bleeding?” he questioned with greater intensity.

           

            “No,” I repeated.

           

            “You were right,” he stated flatly, with an edge of apology. “Your hormone levels are increasing, not decreasing. I don’t think you have an ectopic pregnancy because you don’t have any of the symptoms.  But I want you in my office as soon as you can get in here. I need to see you right away!”

           

            “Do I need to make an appointment?”

           

            “No, just tell the girls up front that I wanted you to come in, and they should let me know when you arrive.”

           

            “Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

           

            My shaking hands cradled the receiver. My heart raced. Then I grabbed the receiver again and called Chris at home. “Dr. Landry wants me in his office right away. Could you meet me at his office, to take Parker in case I do have an ectopic pregnancy and end up in surgery?”

           

            “Yes, I’ll meet you there. I’ll leave here right away.” Chris’s voice raised a nervous octave as he responded.

           

            I clutched the phone and sucked in my breath. “If it is an ectopic pregnancy, this is it. I won’t try again.”

           

            Chris’s shaky voice vibrated through the airwaves. “I agree. I’ll see you there.”

           

            Within thirty minutes, we converged upon Dr. Landry’s waiting room, breathless and jittery.

           

            His nurse promptly ushered us into one of the examination rooms, and Dr. Landry appeared within minutes, looking serious and concerned. He wasted no time in prepping me for the ultrasound. While he prepped, he broke the nervous atmosphere by reiterating his belief that I didn’t have an ectopic pregnancy because I didn’t have the typical symptoms: bleeding, cramping, severe abdominal pain.

           

            Suddenly the ultrasound machine snapped to life as he flicked the switch and guided the ultrasound head over the area of my uterus. Chris squeezed my hand. Parker hopped on a chair in the corner of the room and made car vroom noises with a Lego.

           

            “There is only one of two things that I think it might be, since I do not have the pathology report to look at,” he began, “…and that is exactly what I thought we would find!” With an elated sigh and smile, he pointed to a tiny object projected onto the monitor. Four pairs of eyes peered at the picture.

           

            “An embryo within an intact amniotic sac!” Dr. Landry announced like a triumphant creator of something rare and priceless.

           

            And there it was: a small embryo—not quite an inch long—suspended miraculously within a tiny, balloon-shaped receptacle. Yet all eyes were drawn to a minuscule, pulsing organ, fiercely pumping out an earnest, life-affirming rhythm.

           

            My baby’s beating heart.

           

            I sucked in air. I ached to reach out and touch the form projected onto the gray and white screen. I longed to provide reassurance that everything would be okay; that both of us would navigate the next eight months without problems.

           

            That precious, beating heart mesmerized all of us, and I found it impossible to avert my tear-laced eyes. My heart feared that when Dr. Landry switched off the monitor, I would have had my last glimpse of my unborn child. I wanted that vision etched on my memory. If we could just leave the monitor on, where I could watch over my baby, it might increase our “luck” of completing the pregnancy without a mishap.

           

            With excitement, we all pointed, gazed, and exclaimed at the tiny living miracle within my body. Even Dr. Langford acted like it was the first baby he’d ever seen; even he seemed unwilling to turn off the machine.

           

            But it all had to end, and as he reluctantly removed the ultrasound head from my abdomen, the screen went blank. Lifeless, cold, gray haze inserted itself in place of the living picture.

           

            When will I be treated to that picture again? I wondered. Would I ever be treated to it again? Were we really on our way to fulfilling our hopes and dreams? Eight months seemed an eternity, and so much could happen in that time. With my history, which seemed to be repeating itself, I could almost count on experiencing the same debilitating nausea I’d endured with Victoria.

           

            Would a rapid plunge into the valley follow this mountaintop experience?

           

            Suddenly, a rush of fear, exhilaration and doubt poured into my neural pathways. I lay on the examining table—breathless, excited. Numb. My mind raced forward as I thought about that critical ultrasound that needed to be performed at sixteen weeks to determine the placenta location—to make sure I didn’t have another placenta previa—and the blood tests to identify the neural tube defect or genetic abnormality risks.

           

            Just exactly how would I bear the strain of waiting?

           

            This was going to take mental discipline. I had to stop worrying about what if’s and the future. I needed to do everything in my power to facilitate this pregnancy into going the distance, in receiving the reward of a full-term, healthy baby.

           

            We had no choice but to wait. That’s what pregnancy is, I reminded myself: one long nine-month waiting game.

           

            Chris snapped my pendulous mind-wanderings with his delighted and celebratory mood. And in typical Chris Owan style, he suggested having lunch at his favorite Italian restaurant before returning to work. Momentarily forgetting my nausea and distinct lack of appetite, I wholeheartedly agreed with his plan, as did Parker.

           

            Waving exhilarated good-byes to a grinning Dr. Landry, Chris, Parker and I left the office to bask in the joy of the present and hope of the future. Even Parker seemed giddy, although I doubt he knew why. He just fed off the adrenaline floating around his happy parents.

           

            Though the edible portion of lunch made my stomach lurch, I refused to let anything steal my joy. The thrill of verbally reliving the moment—our baby’s picture emitted onto the ultrasound screen, and the realization that I really was pregnant—kept us suspended on clouds of unbridled bliss. We prattled on excitedly, and Parker giggled his way through lunch.

           

            Oh, how I ached for that feeling to continue—unabated—forever, to follow me delightfully through an unremarkable pregnancy (the medical term for nothing-happening-significant-enough-to-write-in-the-chart-about) and on into an easy, glorious delivery where my arms would be filled with a perfect infant.

           

            Reluctantly, Chris returned to work for the remainder of the afternoon while Parker and I drove home, happily discussing babies, siblings, nurseries and due dates.

           

            Oh, yes. About that due date Dr. Landry gave us of April 13, 1995.

           

            We were expecting our new baby’s arrival on the exact anniversary of Victoria’s death.

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NEXT WEEK: Nausea, bleeding, the 16-week ultrasound…and a chilling encounter with evil…

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Until next week,

Thanks for joining me!

Blessings,

Andrea                 

Miscarriage: Fighting Fear and Harboring Hope

            “It is that turning [Jesus] wants for them, which is why he tweaks their fear. Don’t worry about…the things that can come crashing down on your heads, he tells them. Terrible things happen and you are not always to blame. But don’t let that stop you from doing what you are doing. That torn place your fear has opened up inside of you is a holy place. Look around while you are there. Pay attention to what you feel. It may hurt you to stay there and it may hurt you to see, but it is not the kind of hurt that leads to death. It is the kind that leads to life.”

                                                            ~ Barbara Brown Taylor in Home By Another Way  

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            While Victoria’s death suctioned the life out of me and left me feeling certain the acute visceral pain of grief would actually kill me, news of this baby’s death left me anchored in an atmosphere of female inadequacy. My heart felt heavy, weighted down and resigned to being eternally wrapped in a ball and chain of perpetual sadness and defeat.  

           

            The following Friday, August 12—one week after the initial miscarriage diagnosis—I returned to Dr. Gordon’s office for the mandatory re-check. Although I’d experienced no further bleeding or cramping, I did continue to feel nauseated and fatigued. He attributed the fatigue to stress and felt the queasiness was the result of still-elevated hormone levels. He assured me, again, that it would take time. All I could do was nod wearily, smile weakly, and say, “Okay.”

           

            After discussing what to expect physically post-miscarriage, and when Chris and I could realistically, and safely, try again, he instructed me to go home, relax, and take a long soak in my spa tub.

           

            That suggestion surprised me. Hot spas or baths increase the risk of miscarriage. A previous neighbor had lost her baby after soaking in her backyard spa. His prescription sounded so good, so inviting. So…unnerving.

           

            Maybe I still wanted so badly to believe that I continued to carry a baby in my womb that my overactive imagination manufactured hopeful feelings that I might still be pregnant. I knew Dr. Gordon was considering the optimal prescriptions for my recovery from another loss, but I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t give up on my pinhead-sized hope.

           

            Just maybe they’re wrong, I thought. The pathology report hadn’t returned yet, so we didn’t know what kind of tissue I’d lost; and I had experienced the same problem during Victoria’s pregnancy. All of the doctors had been convinced then that I’d miscarried when I hadn’t. 

            It’s probably just leftover tissue causing my elevated hormone levels. I’m probably living in a dream world, here. But what if they’re wrong, and I do something stupid to jeopardize my baby’s life?

           

            Yet both Dr. Gordon and Dr. Landry concurred: I could expect to be nauseated for some time until my hormones leveled off. This was nothing to get excited or concerned about.

           

            I went home and tried to get back to life. 

           

            And the following night, even though we had to recognize our new loss, Chris and I had a wonderful date. Anticipating the birth of another child would have made our eleven-year anniversary celebration sweeter and more memorable, but we had so much to celebrate and so much for which we could be thankful.

            Despite my attempts to ignore it, my queasiness had worsened—not waned—as the days elapsed. I needed the relaxation of the soothing moist heat, but I still wasn’t going to climb in that hot tub. I could do that anytime. I don’t want to look back on this with a lot of what if’s floating around like sticky cobwebs in my mind. I’ll wait. Just a little longer. I’ll wait.

           

            Even if my tingling expecations were unrealistic, and I painted a pathetic picture of desperateness, I was going to cling to those vestiges of hope and maybes until someone proved me nuts.

           

                                               

********************

           

           

            Four days later, the nausea was bad enough to prompt a call to Dr. Landry. He was out of town, but his partner patiently listened on the phone to me prattle on about my concerns. “If you are that concerned, we can arrange for a blood test to be performed which will show us your hormone levels. That should tell us if they are continuing to rise—as they do in a normal pregnancy—or are leveling off. There might also be the possibility of a remnant of embryonic tissue causing the hormones to increase, which would require a D & C to remove. Other than that...(audible sigh), I can’t honestly explain why you would still be so nauseous. You can have blood drawn, and Dr. Landry will call you with the results when he gets back on Thursday.”

           

            I needed that blood test if only for my own sanity, particularly since a second home pregnancy test lit up with those positive pink lines. Checking and re-checking; hoping and hanging on. The unknown drove me into an agitated state.

           

            The blood was drawn, and the days ticked off while I anxiously awaited Dr. Landry’s call. When I spoke with him on Thursday, before the results had returned, he sounded irritated at my insistence about the possibility that I might be pregnant.

           

            “Hormone levels can stay high for quite a long time,” he snipped. “And I refuse to believe you’ve had an immaculate conception!”       

           

            Confusion rocked my brain as I struggled with feeling as though I’d just been slapped through the phone for saying something stupid. Did I miss part of the conversation? I felt a sudden plummet of my intelligence quotient.

           

            “What are you talking about?” I muttered.

           

            “I refuse to believe that you miscarried, then immediately had intercourse and became pregnant again!” He was nearly shouting at me, and I felt my resolve and hopes slipping like sand through a sieve.

           

            That was not my definition of an immaculate conception but I assured him his version was impossible. Chris and I had declared a hiatus until everything was clearly back to normal.

           

            “Well, the blood tests are not back yet, “ he sighed in a tone mixed with fatigue and frustration. “I will call you when they come in.”

           

            I’m driving everyone nuts, I thought, including myself! Hang it up, Andrea. It’s all a pipe dream.

           

            Yet something deep within me wouldn’t allow me to hang it up.

           

            Languishing through another night of nausea, I stared all night at the ceiling fan. Just what did they find in that ominous little tube filled with my vital fluid? That precious red fluid harboring critical information about whether I still carried life within me…or not.

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NEXT WEEK: God trumps human wisdom…

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Until next week,

Thanks for joining me!

Blessings,

Andrea

Miscarriage: Fear, Sorrow and Unmet Expectations…

            In jubilant giddiness, with the vision of those pink test strip lines lingering in my mind, I practically skipped to the car with Parker that Friday morning. It was a beautiful August day, and I planned to attend my gym’s aerobic class and then take Parker to the movie theater to see the weekly children’s movie. With season tickets, our Friday movie adventure had become a fun, highly anticipated ritual.

           

            After checking him into the gym’s child-care room, I headed into the aerobics area to carefully set up my steps and select dumbbells and Thera-bands. I eased into the first several minutes of the workout, carefully avoiding any twisting and abdominal work.

           

            Now let me stop my story right here for a minute. For those of you have read through my blog from the beginning, know my story, and “suffered” through Victoria’s death and the circumstances surrounding it, you might be asking yourself at this point, “Andrea, what were you thinking!? Are you nuts!? You should have known better than to do any kind of exercising, given your pregnancy history.”

           

            Well, maybe I should have. Or maybe I was just too giddy and hormone-infused to think straight. Or maybe I just so desperately wanted to be “normal” like other women. Whatever it was, I went to the gym.

           

            Not more than ten minutes into the aerobics exercise, I felt that distinctive flow familiar to all women. I bolted from the gym and sprinted to the bathroom, where—in terror—I stared at the slowly emerging blood. “Oh, please, God! Not again; I can’t take this again!”

           

            I thought I was mumbling, but a woman quickly emerged from a stall and asked if she could help, after first locating me lying on one of the changing benches. I managed a controlled, “No, but thank you,” and briefly explained my fears. While talking to her, my mind raced to engineer an action plan. If there were any action plan available to me at that point.

           

            Dr. Gordon’s office is just across the street, I thought. If I can just make it over there in the car without bleeding anymore, I might be able to have him look at me. Like a woman on an impossible, desperate mission—which she knows only too well she is likely to lose, but remains driven to continue in spite of odds or logic—I scooped up my gym bag, snagged Parker from his play room, smirked briefly at the child-care attendant who looked me up and down and said in a mildly sarcastic tone, “But you just got here!” and left the building as quickly and gingerly as I could.

           

            Within minutes, I stood trembling at Dr. Gordon’s reception counter, babbling at his receptionist about what had happened, saying I was sorry, but I didn’t know what else to do, and was hesitant to drive forty minutes south to the other doctor’s office. Her suggestion that he might want me to go to the emergency room of his hospital for an exam terrified me even more. Not that emergency room, again! I thought. No way!

           

            I stood catatonic and wide-eyed at the counter, while she retreated down the hallway and disappeared into an examination room to locate Dr. Gordon. As she padded back up the hallway toward me, she assured me he’d see me right away, and then she escorted me to one of his comfortable, homey accommodations. Parker trailed behind me.

           

            If I can just get my feet up in the air, maybe I can stop this from happening, I thought. After carefully scaling the examination table and assuming the head-down position with which I was so familiar, I stared at the ceiling tiles, twiddled my thumbs and awaited Dr. Gordon’s arrival. Parker proceeded to investigate the room and its unusual crannies, while I fought to keep my heart from escaping the confines of my chest cavity. Finally, Dr. Gordon entered the room.

           

            I blurted out my condition and fears, and, after a soothing word and sympathetic look, Dr. Gordon conducted an examination. After several minutes, he extracted what appeared to him to be placental tissue. Within seconds, I started cramping.

           

            “If you haven’t miscarried already, you are probably in the process of doing so,” he announced. “It’s nothing you did,” he rapidly assured me. “Things like this happen all of the time, for a variety of reasons; many women miscarry who don’t even know they’re pregnant, don’t even suspect that they’ve lost an embryo. Just go home and relax. I’ll have the sample sent to the pathology lab for evaluation. I suspect it will be normal, but if it’s not, then we’ll have more tests to perform.” It all sounded so clinical, but I was used to clinical. Being used to clinical briefly made my brain switch to a mode of hearing facts I wasn’t personally related to. Textbook facts. That’s all they were: textbook facts, and I was the specimen experiencing them. My brain switching into that mode afforded me some protection against losing every last sense of sanity I possessed. 

           

            Then Dr. Gordon ran through the possibilities falling in the “abnormal” category along with the possible scenario of excess tissue remaining in the uterus. I heaved a sigh, resigned to the realization that nothing more could be done.

           

            Dr. Gordon helped me to a sitting position.

           

            I was numb.

           

            “Chris doesn’t even know I’m pregnant. I was planning to surprise him tomorrow night at dinner,” I mumbled pathetically.

           

            With a sincere, commiserating expression, he said, “Chris is a great guy. It will be hard, but you will both be fine. I want to see you next week; I should have the pathology report back by that time.”

           

            What am I going to do now? I thought. I no longer wanted to sit through a movie at the theater, but I didn’t want to be alone, or answer any of Parker’s persistent questions.

           

            What I wanted was to crawl into bed and block out the world. Is this what infertile couples go through? I wondered. Months of unsuccessful efforts, only to find out one day you’re pregnant—and then the next day you’re not? How could they continue on the roller coaster for months, or years?

           

            I had nothing to complain about. I already had a beautiful, healthy child. So why did that feeling of incompleteness and failure, of being robbed of reproductive ability and joy rage through me? Why do I have to be so abnormal?

           

            Clutching Parker’s soft little hand, I shuffled across the parking lot to the pay phones located outside the grocery store. Oh, I hope he answers the phone, my mind groaned. A relentless ache pummeled my heart as I dialed Chris’s office.

           

            “Hello,” came the familiar voice over the receiver.

           

            “Hi,” I squeaked. Not this way, I thought. I don’t want to tell him this way. He deserves better. I tried so hard to sound strong. I wanted so badly to remain cool and controlled, but that veneer sheered off in a nanosecond.

           

            “I need you to come home; I just had a miscarriage!” I blurted, dissolving into tears.

           

            The words spewed from my lips. “I just came from Dr. Gordon’s office, and I’ve had a miscarriage. I don’t want to be alone; I can’t be alone!” I screeched into the phone. “I was going to surprise you with the news tomorrow night; I’ve known since Wednesday. I gulped in air. “I wanted it to be a surprise! Oh, I’m so sorry.” I gulped in more air. “Will you come home?” I begged.

           

            “You go home,” Chris said. “I’m leaving right now.”

           

            “Thanks…I’m sorry, Chris.” I whispered. “I’ll see you in a little while…I love you.” I re-cradled the receiver onto the pay phone.

           

            What must he think of having such an inadequate wife who presents him with so many health problems? I wondered.

           

            Still clutching Parker’s hand, I struggled to tell my him why we’d have to skip the movie and go home. Then I quickly abandoned my attempts to explain anything to him. Explanations seemed useless and inadequate. He had no idea what just transpired. All he understood was that his extremely upset Mommy was bleeding again.

           

            The small parking lot appeared to stretch endlessly in front of us as we walked back toward Dr. Gordon’s office building. Hours earlier, I’d eagerly anticipated my Saturday night date with Chris, where I’d beam proudly and expose my precious secret. I had acted it out countless times.

           

            Now I had to muster all of my emotional energy reserves to drag myself and an invisible weight across the hot, radiating asphalt. At least the cramping has stopped, I noticed with gratefulness while sliding into the car.

           

            No more cramping. No more baby. That was swift and final.

           

            When will this nightmarish ride end?

           

            Maybe Chris and I would have to end it…right here.

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NEXT WEEK: God plays His hand…and we begin the ride of our lives…

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Until next week,

Thanks for joining me!

Blessings,

Andrea