There was a long time where I thought I'd never be able to write this post. I wanted to lock up the entire experience and throw it to the bottom of the ocean... pretend it never happened. But now I seem to have arrived at what I think is the healing stage in my grief process, where talking about it no longer makes me cry but makes me feel good. I know that writing out my thoughts and sharing my story will only help me to move forward, as blogging has always been my own little form of therapy; and who knows maybe my sharing will even help someone else. Okay here we go...
I'll just say it fast and then go back through the details of everything. On October 12th Jake and I found out we were going to have a baby! It was not planned or expected but, wow, we were excited! And then our world flipped upside down on November 17th when we lost the baby. I had a missed miscarriage at 10 weeks and I had to have a D&C procedure the following week.
A big reason that I wanted to write this post, in addition to further processing my own thoughts on the situation, is because now that I have healed from this I really DO want to remember it. It was a very special couple of months for Jake and I and our families and I want to remember all of the good that happened before the bad.
On the day we found out I was pregnant, I took some time to write a quick blog about it, trying to capture the crazy emotions of that day. I wanted to remember every detail of that pivotal moment in our lives. Of course, I never published that blog but I did save it and have gone back to read it a few times. Here's what I wrote...
"This morning I had a doctor’s appointment for my stomach pain, just a follow-up to see how my new medicine has been working and talk about what we might do next. It came up in my record that I was due for a tetanus shot (yuck!) but before giving it to me the doctor asked those typical words “Is there any chance you could be pregnant?” I gave her a definite no but she insisted I take a urine test, just to be sure. She came back into the room shortly after and said “Congratulations, looks like you’re going to have a baby!” Actually, to be honest, I’m not exactly sure what she said because at that point everything went blurry. It was the last thing I ever expected to hear! She then sent me down to have my blood tested to double check the results and told me to come back in an hour.
"After leaving, I called Jake as fast as my hands could dial and said (sobbing of course from being overwhelmed with emotion) “Get over to the hospital! I’m freaking out!” I probably should’ve chosen different words because he thought I was going to tell him something horrible like I had cancer or something. When I told him about the baby, he was totally opposite of me – he was calm, collected, giddy even. After seeing his reaction, I began to calm down and even started to get excited about the idea too. Because we had an hour to kill I decided that I needed to see the positive results for myself so I went to the store and bought a home pregnancy test, and the positive result came through clear as could be!
"When we went back to the doctor’s office the nurse took us back to a room where we sat and waited for the doctor for what seemed like FOREVER! In reality it was probably only 5 minutes but really, it seemed like forever. I remember telling Jake “I just can’t be pregnant because I don’t feel like I’m pregnant!” When the doctor finally came in she looked at Jake and said “Have you heard the good news? It’s official now… yep, you’re going to have a baby!”. When she walked out of the room Jake and I just stared at eachother for a minute in disbelief and then he wrapped me in the biggest hug ever and we just stood there like that for awhile, soaking it all in."
I definitely didn't
feel like I was pregnant, although being only 6 weeks I guess that is pretty normal. Jake and I didn't tell anyone for a few days and took some time to ourselves to process the big news. We talked about turning his office into the nursery, and how he wanted a boy and I wanted a girl, and I instantly started imagining who this little person was going to be and who it would look like. We couldn't hold in the excitement long and within 2 weeks had burst the exciting secret to our parents, close friends, and family. We figured we would tell the rest of the world at Thanksgiving which would be right about the 12 week mark.That is why I stopped blogging so suddenly in October, because I couldn't write about my day without wanting to scream the good news!
On October 27th, at about 8 weeks along, we had our first "official" prenatal visit. The doctor did an internal ultrasound to date the age of the baby and make sure all was going well. That was an amazing moment I will never forget! This little tiny peanut was in there bouncing around and wiggling. I was amazed that at only 8 weeks I could see distinct fingers! The baby dated to the exact day we had thought and the heartbeat was very strong. The doctor told us that the chances of miscarriage after seeing all this were very slim.
Over the next 2 weeks I got hit HARD with morning sickness, which I took to be a good sign that the baby was growing. It was miserable though! I had felt queasy in the weeks prior and wondered if that was morning sickness but I quickly learned that when you do have it, there is nothing to wonder about. I had it especially at night which was hard because I wasn't getting much sleep, and was still getting up to go to work everyday.
We started telling a few more people about the baby as it would come up, mostly because people were wondering why I was being so antisocial. I told the girls in my bible study group and the news also started to spread through Jake's squadron (mostly because Jake was so excited and couldn't keep quiet!). Jake deployed on October 31st for a short 2 month deployment and I kept busy trying to manage work and being sick all the time. As the days went by, I became more and more attached to this little bean growing inside of me. It's amazing how much you can love someone you've never met! I was very anxious for Thanksgiving to arrive so I could spill the news to everyone and anyone that we were going to be adding a new Pruitt to the family somewhere around June 15th.
On November 17th, I had my 10 week OB appointment and I was so excited! I met with a midwife and talked about the baby for over an hour while we got to know eachother. I also brought in my list of questions to ask her and took lots of notes. At the end of the appointment she did a quick physical and asked if I wanted to try and hear the heartbeat. Of course I said YES! She was unable to locate any heartbeart but said not to worry, that it may just be too early still.
And honestly, I wasn't worried at all. I never thought in a million, billion years that I would be the one to have a miscarriage because no one had ever voiced to me how common they are.
She took me over to an ultrasound room and went to get the doctor for a quick look just to make sure all was well.
Again, I was not at all worried or upset by this. Quite the opposite. I was thrilled to get to see the baby again! I felt lucky... I got out the camera on my phone and told the dr that I was going to take a video of the sonogram to send to Jake because I knew he would hate to miss this. When she started the ultrasound I was looking through my camera for a minute so I didn't notice anything right away; what I did notice was the doctor and midwife sitting in silence. When I put the camera down and focused on the screen I knew instantly that the baby had died - The little jumping bean I had seen a few weeks earlier was completely still, like a picture of a printed sonogram. The baby had grown SO much since the last appointment. I could see a nose, a defined head and body, fingers, toes, everything, but there was no movement. No heartbeat. Nothing. I can't actually remember if I screamed this out loud or in my head but I remember yelling "DO SOMETHING!!" Somebody had to do something,
anything to save my little baby. I'm pretty sure this was all in my head though. According to the sonogram, the baby had died just a few days earlier.
They asked if I wanted to talk.
No, what was there to say? They told me that miscarriage is common and was nothing I did wrong. I didn't say anything, I didn't cry, I just got dressed and walked out of the building while everything around me was a complete blur.
Was this really happening? Please let this be a bad dream! I collapsed into my car and finally broke down, crying so hard that I'm not sure how I was still breathing. I started frantically trying to get a hold of Jake, who was across the world getting ready for a flight. Thanks to a friend Jake was able to be tracked down and called me back within 15 minutes. I don't even remember what we talked about. I'm pretty sure it was just a lot of screaming on my part. Jake was told by his commander that they were sending him home immediately to be with me. I told them it wasn't necessary, that I'd be fine, but inside I was so thankful.
How could I possibly handle this without him?
Somehow I made it back home from the doctors office, although looking back I definitely should've called someone to drive me. I just didn't want to talk to anyone... I didn't want it to be real. The part that really started to get to me was the fact that I was carrying a dead baby around inside of me. I just wanted it all to be over. Once I finally calmed down a bit, I called the doctor back to talk about the next steps. Because my miscarriage was not progressing naturally, it seemed best for me to have a D&C procedure. They weren't able to schedule it until Monday (it was Thursday at that time) so I had a full 4 days to sit around and wait.
Horrible. Knowing that Jake would not be home until Saturday night, my parents and best friends came to stay with me. I told them not to come and I honestly meant it. I didn't want to be around anyone. Period. But they came regardless, loaded with good food and movies, and caffeine (Oh how I had missed caffeine!) and though I couldn't see it at the time, that was exactly what I needed. They didn't push me to talk about anything but let me bring it up on my own time, and when I finally did they let me cry and be sad and they cried with me. So thankful for them.
Jake got home that weekend and went with me to my surgery on Monday morning. It was fast and not painful but very emotional. I am thankful that I don't remember the procedure and that I was pretty drugged up for the few days following it. That next week was Thanksgiving, which was especially hard because that was when we were going to make our "official" announcement about the baby. I was a numb, sad shell of a person that week, but Jake was there for me and held me every time I needed to break down and cry. It was an awkward time for me because the majority of people in our lives never knew about the baby and therefore probably had no idea why I was acting so differently.
As the days and weeks passed, I began to come back to life a little bit and by Christmas I was finally healing... although at that time I could've never written this post. I had confided in the ladies of my bible study group (there's about 20 of
us) about all that had happened in November and was shocked to find out that several of the ladies had also
experienced a miscarriage, with some having more than one, and with ALL of them going on to have successful pregnancies since. Hearing their stories made me
realize that miscarriage is so much more common than I ever knew. I started researching more and learned that the odds of having one in the first trimester are 1 in 4! That's so high! I also learned that 93% of women in my age group go on to have a successful pregnancy following a miscarriage, and that was a very comforting statistic for me.
I still don't know God's reasoning for why I had to go through all this, but I do believe that He has a good reason... and I will definitely ask Him one day :) For now, I am looking toward the future. Anyways, thanks for letting me share this with you and process it through my writing. I really needed to document this "something that has changed everything" in my life and I have to say I am proud of myself for finally getting to the point where I was able to do it.
