What a roller coaster this week has been!! We took the pregnancy test Friday night and called our families while shaking and crying. Saturday we went to the doctor for bloodwork so they could make it official, and on our way back, we stopped by the temple to catch our rabbi before Torah study so we could shriek with her excitedly and hug her. We knew her time was short so we kept it brief, and then I followed up with an email giving her a lot more details and saying this is what we wanted to gush about with her if we'd had thirty minutes or so instead of two. Then we told select friends who have been super supportive and deserve not to have to wait three months to share in our joy when we've been dragging them into our frustrations and anxieties for the last six.
We had a few days of bliss like this. Six days, to be exact. Then last night, I went to the bathroom and a dark red blob just fell out of me and into the toilet. I felt it go and my heart sank when I looked down because there wasn't blood anywhere else (as I assume there would be for typical spotting), just this blob that just had to be the gestational sac because what else could it be?? Nicole and I ran a gamut of emotions together. We saw the disappointment of all the things we had dreamed of - the clothes my mother had already purchased excitedly for her future grandchild, how perfect the birth date/month was for my maternity leave, how pregnant I would be for certain events and holidays. Then we felt the weight of the $3000 we still owe for the $4000 procedure and how we would pay that off AND save up again in a reasonable amount of time. And then we felt the emotional loss of losing this potential, this budding life that we were trying so hard to nurture into someone who would join our family.
I tried to accept it at first, saying, "There's nothing we can do about it, it is what it is," and "At least I know I'm capable of getting pregnant now." Within twenty minutes, the shock had subsided and I just felt so devastated. I began shaking and crying, for the exact opposite reasons that I had been just six days earlier.
I called the on-call service and a nurse immediately answered. She was one from my office so she knew me right away and was so sweet and reassuring. She told me there are a million things it could be and I shouldn't panic yet. She told me to come in at 7:30 for a sonogram and bloodwork but that I should relax and not worry all night. You can guess how well I was able to follow that advice. I spent at least an hour Googling "four-week miscarriages" to try to find descriptions from people of what it looks and feels like. Most described it as a white sac with blood vessels running through it, and lots of blood overall. Not what I witnessed, but it didn't comfort me.
At the sonogram, my doctor said she couldn't see the gestational sac because it's too soon. (I'm scheduled for my 5-week sonogram next week.) She saw one tiny dot that COULD be that, because it stayed still while the rest of the tiny dots moved as the wand moved, but she couldn't at all be sure. She did say that everything else looked good - lining still thick, no bleeding in the lining, no fluid on the uterus, nothing to make her think that something had gone wrong.
I waited anxiously at work all day before getting the call after 1:00 that my hcg levels were normal. In the meantime, I had poured my heart out to a couple of my friends at work, and one of them, a mother of two, shared that she had had four miscarriages. She said even very early miscarriages are like the worst period of your life, and that there's no way I had miscarried if I didn't feel severe cramping and have lots of bleeding. She said, "It doesn't just 'ploop' out of you that smoothly. You wouldn't be at work today if you had miscarried, believe me." This was very reassuring.
So I'm 90% reassured. I read a lot into every back cramp, thinking it feels worse and this must be it, here it comes, I'm about to miscarry. But I do believe it's in there right now. I think. I hope. I won't feel fully okay until I see it on sonogram next Wednesday. But I think I'll be okay til then.
We have gone from the heights of ecstasy to the depths of despair to cautious optimism in less than a week's time. This little bug is giving us a run for our money!
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