The Second Time

The Second Time Around...

If you read The First One, then you know that I got pregnant for a third time shortly after the due date of the first baby I lost. Needless to say, we were ecstatic. This was the first pregnancy that we actually were trying to conceive, which is probably why it took the longest to happen. 

Unlike the last pregnancy, I had all the major symptoms, which I took as a good sign. It never occurred to me that we would lose another baby, so we told family and a few very close friends that we were expecting again. I definitely didn’t shout it from the rooftops like I did with the first two, but I wasn’t very timid about it either. I felt very confident that this pregnancy was a healthy one and would end with a beautiful baby at the end of October. After all, God owed me a baby, right? He took one away, and He was going to give me another one. Not to replace the one I lost, but as a reward for going through the heartache, surely I deserved another child. Atleast that was my mindset. Wrong, I know.

Everything was going smoothly, I even told Lucy she was going to be a big sister. (Not that she understood...but still...)At exactly 6 1/2 weeks, I began spotting bright red blood. Mark was at work, and of course I started panicking and called him immediately. He rushed home to find me feeding Lucy lunch, a little shaken, but again, I was so confident this pregnancy was going to last. It HAD to be from the Lord, so why would it get taken away? I called my doctor, who calmed me down and said some spotting was not abnormal, especially since I had no cramping. She told me to lay down and take it easy, and they would get me into ultrasound in a few days just to make sure everything was fine. I obeyed, and by that evening the spotting had almost stopped. My confidence was back. I took it easy for the rest of the night. 

The next morning I woke up and there was a lot of blood. By mid morning I was cramping and passing clots. I called my doctor and they fit me into ultrasound that afternoon. Waiting on that ultrasound was so painful...knowing that my baby was gone, but not having complete confirmation, so still clinging to what little hope was left that maybe everything was fine. I even convinced myself that maybe it was twins and I had only lost one of them. 

But soon my hope was crushed, as the ultrasound tech confirmed that we had lost the baby. I cried through the whole ultrasound. The doctor saw us afterwards and I cried the whole time I was talking to her. She probably didn’t hear a word I said. She told us that since I had miscarried twice in a row they wanted to do some testing to try and find a cause. But before we tested, I had to get my hCG back to a non-pregnant level, so they would monitor my levels once a week until they got back down to zero. We left the office completely stunned and devastated.

This time the grief came like sweet relief. My tears flowed freely and my heart ached. I’m not sure why this loss seemed so final, or why I accepted it quickly. Maybe because I began bleeding on my own, it seemed more real. Whatever the reason, I grieved fast and hard. I didn’t want to leave the house, didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning, and barely had enough energy to shower.

 But spiritually is where I was injured the deepest. I felt disappointed with God. I didn’t pray for a few weeks. I grieved, and accepted, but I didn’t pray. More on my spiritual journey in another post. Looking back now, I was depressed.

 It didn’t last long though. Finding a cause for my miscarriages gave me something to look forward to, a way of possibly fixing what went wrong. I thought we would be testing in about 2 weeks. Well, 6 weeks later I was still bleeding and my levels were falling, but weren’t at zero yet. It was agonizingly long and drawn out. My mind and heart wanted to move on but my body wasn’t ready. As those 6 weeks passed, I had time to think and began to doubt doing some or all of the testing. Mark didn’t have a job at the time, so we didn’t have health insurance, and were planning on paying for all the testing out of pocket. It was not cheap. We battled the pros and cons and finally decided to just do some basic bloodwork for now.

 The day came for me to have my bloodwork done, and the Lord miraculously provided the money to pay for it. We were so relieved that the Lord confirmed in our hearts what we thought we should do to move forward. Everything came back normal, so we still don’t have an explanation for the miscarriages. My doctor put me on baby aspirin and gave me a prescription for progesterone for when I get pregnant again. She said we could do more invasive testing, but we just didn’t feel comfortable with that yet. 

For some reason the Lord wanted us to get the basics done, and then trust Him for the rest. So that’s what we’re doing, and that’s where we are right now. 

Trusting, Praying, Hoping.