The Heartache Begins

Six months passed after our return from Europe before we finally received the news we had been waiting for...Our journey towards becoming a family had officially begun!!! For an entire week I had been convinced I was pregnant, never wavering until after I had taken the test...then I was terrified to see the result! I paced anxiously in the hallway until I saw Ben go into the bathroom to check the result and heard him yell "PREGNANT"! I screamed, we embraced and laughed, and tears of the greatest joy I had ever known streamed gently down my face. Then, I took a few more...just to be sure!

November 8, 2008:

We could barely sleep that night and stayed up late talking about names, discussing my due date (July 18, 2009), trying to guess whether we were having a boy or a girl and dreaming about our little family of 3!

Two weeks later I began spotting and was assured over the phone by a nurse at my doctor's office that light spotting was perfectly normal during early pregnancy and nothing to worry about. By the time I was 7 weeks along we had shared our news with immediate family and a few close friends. We saw no cause for alarm until I experienced 20 minutes of actual bleeding the evening of December 3rd. I called the doctor the folloing morning and was able to secure an ultrasound appointment for later that day. Although we were concerned, in our hearts we just knew that everything would be okay and we were anxious and excited to see our baby's heartbeat for the very first time!

Once the ultrasound began, it was only seconds before I knew something was horribly wrong. As most expectant mothers know, by 6 weeks your baby's heartbeat should be visible via ultrasound and I was already 7 weeks and 5 days along.

This is the image we should have seen that day...

And this is the heartbreaking image that appeared instead... My eyes immediately swelled with tears and I tried (unsuccessfully) to keep it together as I heard the ultrasound technician say that the gestational sac was only measuring 5 weeks and 3 days. She was sending the ultrasound to my doctor and their office would call me once they had analyzed the results. I remember desperately struggling to muffle the sobs building inside of me as my incredibly supportive and equally devastated husband led me through the waiting room and out to our car.

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The doctor's office called about an hour after we returned home and said that, though it was likely I was in the process of miscarrying, they wanted to wait 10 days and do a repeat ultrasound as a precaution. She apologized as she knew the wait would be difficult and I responded through my tears by telling her "it's okay...we've already started to grieve".

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So on Monday December 15, 2008 we re-lived the same devestating scenario a second time. The doctor confirmed with certainty that my pregnancy was ending, just 9 weeks and 2 days after it had begun. She explained that because my body had not started the miscarriage process on its own (my HCG levels were still 41,000), my options were to go to the labor and delivery ward at a local hospital for a D&C or take medication to induce "labor" and endure the process from the comfort of my own home.

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I began taking prescribed medication the morning of Thursday December 18th. Severely painful contractions started within an hour and 4-5 hours later, the actual miscarriage process had oficially begun. The pain was constant and near unbearable for approx. 8-10 hours a day for 5 days straight as the only pain reliever able to be used in conjunction with this medication is Tylenol with codeine.

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Strangely comforting though, was that my body was finally able to suffer some of the immense pain that had consumed my heart and soul for the last 15 days...