Depression

It is not uncommon to go through some depression after the loss of a child, no matter how far along you were. It is also common to go through some depression after you go through a life threatening situation.

I went through both.

It comes in waves. Some days I am ok. I tear up randomly and then I am ok. I manage to maintain a relatively normal life. I go to work, I eat lunch, I clean my house. Ok, maybe I have become a bit of a crazy cleaning person. I clean obsessively at night when I am at home alone.

I look normal. I sound normal. I act normal.

And then something happens and I am in tears. Falling apart. There is no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes it is someone asking about how I am doing. Sometimes it is the sight of a new baby. Sometimes it is the shooting pain from my incisions. It just never is the same thing.

I know time will help and that things will get better. For now, I am trying to leave the fall apart at home.

Social Anxiety

I have seen people in small groups or one on one since everything happened. I have not be in any kind of large social setting. Today as I plan to go to only a portion of church, sacrament meeting, I am having great amounts of anxiety.

Everyone knows what happened. It isn't a secret or something that I have obviously not talked about. But now, as I make a public appearance for the first time I am terrified that I won't be able to handle it. At home and one on one I can control my environment, I can change the subject.

I know I will get hugs and looks of pity and support. All good things that just remind me of what I don't have anymore. Why is today any different than yesterday or last week? Maybe the mass groups of people have me on edge or how close my emotions are to the surface today. I have kind of kept them at bay, taking deep breaths and kind of just moving on. Trying not to dwell or think about it. I won't have that option today.

I don't know how to do this. How do I stay strong when I want to fall apart? How do I find the strength that everyone thinks I have?

How do you deal with such heartbreak?

I know the answer, you just do. You wake up everyday and try your best. You smile when you can and cry when you have to. You be as grateful as you can be and you beg for peace in your prayers. You just keep moving.

I haven't forgotten and I still feel it deeply but if you see me and ask how I am doing and I smile and say "I'm OK" or "I'm Fine", know that I am trying not to fall apart and that it doesn't mean that I don't still hurt.

Complications

Today I am nauseated. The pregnancy hormones are dropping and that is good...but a reminder.

I also spent last night in the ER. It was so not a fun night. I have had so many narcotics in the last week that I was so beyond constipated. So...that made for a fun evening. Lots of morphine and that helped.

I am depressed. There is no way around it. I am just so overwhelmed with emotion that I don't know where to start. Some days I am very clinical of the situation and talk about it almost like it was a shopping trip. Other times, I cry. I cry a lot.

I don't sleep much.

I don't have an appetite.

I am sad that I lost my baby.

Part of me is dying to try again. I want to be pregnant again and I want to be able to experience that. I am scared in the same breath. I don't want the same thing to happen again. Could I really lose another child?

I keep praying for peace. I will never understand why and won't ever forget but I need peace.

One Week

Today it has been a week. I week since I was with my child.

I have cried an prayed and pondered so much in the last week. I have asked why, I have asked to help me have more faith in the plan and I have prayed to have my heart softened.

I have prayed to have patience with Jared, who is only trying to help me. I am irritable and in pain which often means I am snappy with my sweet husband. I know he is hurting to and I try to be mindful of that.

I try to sleep. I have a hard time going to sleep. I know that being awake is hard but if I go to sleep I am one day further away from that baby. I am one day further from feeling like I was going to be a mother.

It has been a longer recovery than we anticipated. I am bruised from my belly button down and it hurts to move. The stitches burn and my insides ache. It is a constant reminder of what happened.

I cry. I cry a lot.

I feel like I took the opportunity to be a Father from Jared. I know in my head that there was nothing I could do, nothing I did...but it doesn't change how my heart feels sometimes.

I am focusing on being grateful. Grateful I am alive. Grateful for such a sweet husband who has been amazing. Grateful for friends and family and their prayers. I am grateful that one day, when I have healed, we may have the chance to be parents.

Our Exciting News...That Isn't Anymore

On January 9th, a Friday, I finally got a positive pregnancy test. I was in shock. I scared the hubs by shaking him awake, showing him and running out the door to work. I was in shock for the first few days. Then the idea became real to me. To us. We were finally going to be adding the precious child we had prayed for. We smiled from ear to ear and talked about all the things we wanted for our sweet baby. We calculated when we would hear a heart beat, when I would feel them kick, when  we would shout our great news from the roof tops.

I told a few people, I couldn't help but share my exciting news. I started looking for car seats, strollers...everything. In my excitement I wanted to do everything right. I switched to prenatal yoga, made appointments with my OB and watched my blood sugars like a hawk.

I went to my first appointments at 5.5 weeks pregnant. We did basic blood work and basic tests. We adjusted my blood sugar meds to get me to a better place with those. It was exciting and in the quiet moments we shared looks of excitement and joy at the idea we had created a life.

I told my parents. We were so excited. We asked them to come to Thanksgiving at our place this year, so you know, they could meet their newest grandchild. It was fun and easy and I felt complete.

On Saturday the 17th I agreed to cover a shift at work in the morning. I started having pain on my way to work. By the time I got there I barely made it into the building. I tearfully sat in the bathroom and called a replacement. I called my on call doctor and he told me to take a Lortab and if the pain went away to see my doctor on Monday. If not to head to the ER. The pain went away and I laid low for the weekend.

Sunday night I started having what I thought was UTI pain. It wasn't too bad and I started drinking lots of water and planned to head right to the doctor Monday morning. I went to sleep about 1am. I woke up at 3am feeling like I had a gigantically full bladder. I headed to the bathroom. The pain was there so I took tylenol and turned on my heating pad. I worked hard to divert myself from feeling the pain. It was just a UTI and I just had to make it a few hours until I could have relief.

By 4:30am I had gotten into a hot shower to help with the pain. By 4:35am I was screaming for the hubs in so much pain I thought I was going to die. After a few minutes he woke up and came to find me shaking, crying and in pain in the shower. He got clothes on me and managed to get me out the door to the ER.

I cried in the car begging lights to change to green. I felt every single bump in the road. I felt every single moment that it took to get there and I worried about my baby. I practically crawled into the ER. I was in so much pain that I didn't care what they did to fix it.

They asked questions and I vaguely remember what they were. All I knew was that I was pregnant and I was in pain. A lot of pain. They got me into a room on a wheel chair but I couldn't even make it onto the bed I was in so much pain. I just curled up on the floor and cried and rocked. They kept trying to coax me onto the bed but I couldn't stand up enough to get onto the bed.

Eventually I made it onto the bed, still on my hands and knees rocking and crying. They kept trying to get an IV started but my inability to stay still was a problem. They held me down to get the IV in. More questions that Jared had to answer. After they got the medicine in and I started to calm down enough to sit and eventually lay on the bed the wheeled me right into the ultrasound room. They did all kinds of ultrasounds. It was painful and awkward to try to figure out what the tech was seeing, she offered no expression, no information. Eventaully
 I saw the babies heart beat. After all, I was 6 weeks at this point and it was exciting. 

I went back to the ER and I talked with Jared. We waited. Then the doctor came in and without any prep or without warning he said, "It is an Ectopic. We called your doctor and he is on his way to do the surgery."

I stared at him. I just watched him walk out the door and I began to sob. Every part of me broke. The anguish I felt was like nothing I felt before.

Tears streamed down my face and my heart was broken into a thousand pieces.

Jared sat in the chair beside the bed, shedding tears of his own. After a minute he grabbed my hand and we shared the agony of our loss.

I can tell you exactly the color blue of the curtain in that ER room. I can tell you that the white blanket that covered me was actually not covering my left foot and it was cold. I won't forget those moments. They lasted forever.

Eventually my Doctor came in. He came in and took my hand and apologized. He said, "When they said your name on the phone my heart dropped. I am so sorry.”

I could only cry.

He explained what was going to happen. The ideal situation was that he would go in, do one small incision, remove the baby and close me up. That was the ideal. He also explained that if the ectopic had ruptured that he would have take the fallopian tube. That was a last resort and he would do what he could to avoid that.

He left to prep and I got more meds. The hubs and his dad gave me a blessing and then his dad took him to get something to eat. I had begged my father in law to not leave my husband alone while I was in surgery. For some reason, I felt very strongly that I didn’t want him to be alone. I didn’t want him dwelling on what was happening without him there.  I wouldn’t be awake to know but he would wait in that waiting room with all those thoughts and fears in his head

I fell asleep. I woke up to nurses coming in and checking me, my blood pressure had dropped, I was sweating and felt totally in a fog. I was quickly rushed to Pre-Op, new IV's being placed as we rushed down the hall and all kind of things I didn't understand being said. When we got there they asked more questions and Jared showed up. I kept asking them to check my blood sugar, something wasn't right. Nobody mentioned my blood pressure had dropped to dangerous levels. Pre-Op took 15-20 minutes max before they rolled me into the Operating Room. Then I was put to sleep.

I woke up in Post-OP slowly and forgetting why I was there. Then I was being told I needed a shot because my babies blood was different than mine...I was in such a confused half asleep state. I just remember it hitting me as they were saying that what just happened. I was so angry that they were talking about my baby. They didn't know me or my now gone baby, I didn't want them to talk about it.

I made it into Recovery and they brought Jared in. He gave me a hug and told me that my tube had ruptured and that they had to remove the right fallopian tube. I was divested all over again. I had lost my baby and a part of my reproductive organs...how was I supposed to have children now? (At the time I was still seriously drugged, in physical and emotional agony and the world was a hard, miserable place. I have since read about and educated myself on this matter.) He told me when they went in I had about a bags worth of blood in my gut, from where I had been bleeding all weekend, which is why I was in so much pain.

The first night I was pretty drugged. Being so drugged I just wanted to be home. I just begged the hubs to just take me home. He got me settled on the couch and he watched me. He set his alarm to go off every two hours for my medicine. He helped me up to go to the bathroom, he checked my stitches, he made sure I ate and made sure I drank. He took amazing care of me as I let the drugs numb the physical pain and my heart ache. 

We choose to be very open with our situation as we had previously decided to open about the infertility. We shared on facebook and instagram. We were immediately inundated with phone calls, texts, messages and comments. We were surprised to have people offer to bring dinner every day this week. Visitors came in regular intervals to check on us, to bring flowers, cards and to offer love and support. 

Jared took two days off work to be with me. To comfort me, to watch me, to mourn with me. We watched mindless tv. We ate ice cream. We cried. And we cried some more. 

He went back to work and a friend came and sat with me that first night he was at work. We cried and I poured out my anger at being given such a gift of a child then having it torn away in the worst possible way. I cried about feeling like I killed this living child that I created…even though there was no chance of survival and every chance of it causing me death. There really was no choice, but it didn’t make me feel any less like that child was alive and then it wasn’t. It was my fault. 

I cried because I tried for 3 years to get pregnant. I cried because I felt broken that whole time because my body couldn’t get pregnant. Then I did and my body didn’t like it. I felt a new kind of broken. I feel betrayed by my body. I feel scared of getting pregnant again…which is what I have wanted for so long! I feel angry that I am scared. I am twisted inside with emotions that I couldn’t have imagined.

Most of all I feel the loss of our child. While we didn't have a lot of time together, I loved who that child would have been, I loved that that child made me the mother I always dreamed of being. I will always wonder about what could have been with that baby. 

We have been so blessed through these few days. We have felt the prayers and thoughts sent our way. We have grown in our relationship. I love Jared more today than I did on Sunday. I cherish him in a way I couldn’t have before. 

Most of all, we have had our faith tested. We don’t understand our path or why we have had to go through the infertility and this ectopic pregnancy. What we do know is that our Heavenly Father lives and loves us. We know he has a plan for us. We know that while we have suffered heartache and pain that we have been held in his arms and he has felt our pain and anguish with us. We know that the time will come when we will welcome precious children into our family. We will welcome them with hearts full of love and gratitude for their sweet lives. We won’t forget the first child that came into our lives but we will prepare for the time that we will be reunited with that sweet spirit who was ours for such a brief moment in time.