These days, however, I'm feeling pretty great! I'm getting bigger but I can't wait to have a proper pregnant belly. I'm getting tired of people not being able to tell without my official announcement. I'm certainly bigger than I was, but it's still sort of on the side of just letting myself go at this point, especially since I can't run anymore due to sciatic nerve pain when I do.
Although my husband had packed up all the baby things the moment we came back from emerg, I unpacked it all and set it back up. As necessary as it was to have had it packed away for a while, it was an important and symbolic part of the process to unpack it again. I continue to be proud of the baby room and all the work I've put in to it and know that someday there will be a baby to enjoy it. Here are some pictures of the room as of now:
As you can see by the fur, the cats quite enjoy the room right now.
I just bought this shelf yesterday from my local environmental store who was having a moving sale on all their stuff (including their display shelves). It's now going to serve as a diapering shelf since it fits perfectly next to the dresser which will soon become the changing table.
On Monday evening I noticed some brown discharge, so I contacted my doctor and was able to get an appointment on Tuesday morning at 10:00am. She checked me and assured that my cervix was still closed and she didn't really see any blood, but she ordered an ultrasound and asked me to get my blood tested that morning and again on Thursday morning to check my HCG progression.
The discharge continued without pain.
On Thursday I went to get my second blood test and decided to work from home in order to avoid the hassle of communing in late. Feeling tired, I took a nap at around noon and when I woke up at 3:00pm I was bleeding bright red blood and passing clots. It's all sort of fuzzy now, but I remember trying to understand what was happening when I saw the blood, then I remember hearing a loud moaning sound and taking several minutes to realize that it was coming from me.
Apparently I called my husband at work because the next thing I remember was him bursting into the bathroom out of breath with wide eyes and a red face. At the point, I'm told, I was sitting on the bathroom flood shaking and crying so violently that he could hear me in the hall one floor down.
We went to the emergency room where had an ultrasound and a pelvic exam done. They also collected my blood test information from the clinic earlier that day. After a few hours of being moved from room to room, I was told that my HCG levels were 691 on Tuesday morning and 630 on Thursday morning - both of which were far below where they should have been at nearly 7 weeks and should have been doubling by the day, not reducing. They also told me that there was no evidence of pregnancy in my uterus.
They sent me home with a warning that someone would be calling from the Early Pregnancy Complication Clinic for an appointment to come in and make sure that the miscarriage was complete and that the pregnancy wasn't outside my uterus. They called and my appointment is on Tuesday.
As of now I'm just bleeding and cramping like a heavy period. The emotional toll, however, has been exceptional. I'm completely devastated. When I eventually fell asleep on Thursday, I had a dream that Kris and I were in a house with a bunch of people that we didn't know and being bullied around by this group of thugs. They were going around the room making people do these humiliating things without the chance they would survive by complying, and I knew that it would eventually come down to us. Kris went into another room to deal with the thugs in the there and I managed to wrestle the gun out of my thug's hands but when I went to shoot him the gun just puffed with air. Eventually I found a knife on him and stabbed him again and again in his lower abdomen, then I cut a piece of it out and placed in on a bed next to a newspaper. I panicked as I heard police sirens in the distance because I knew this wouldn't look good. I woke up as I was trying to figure out my next move.
Usually when I wake up from a dream like this, I feel instantly relieved that I don't have to deal with it. As the dream faded away, reality set in and I remembered that I had lost the baby and that in my real life I was empty and bleeding and broken. Having all of that rush back took my breath away and I was devastated all over again.
The worst part in all of this is that life is just supposed to go on, minute by excruciating minute. I was watching this woman on her cell phone in the grocery store yesterday, talking to someone about the things she was buying and various other superficial things. I knew that she would leave the store and go home, eat those groceries over the next few days, then return to do it all over again. I knew that she would never remember May 3 to hold any meaning.
For me, May 3 will always be the day that my first baby died. There will never be a time in the future when this didn't happen. This will always have been my first pregnancy. It's difficult to understand how I'm supposed to move on knowing this.
This time was a little different then the last two. I haven't had my period yet (it's due tomorrow) but I took a test yesterday and it was an unmistakable negative.
I was devastated.
It really felt like this was the time. Last month I knew the whole time that I wasn't pregnant, but this time felt like I was. I'm not sure what was so different this time but I was so confident that I was finally pregnant and seeing that little negative
Update:
I had some spotting on April 5th, which NEVER happens to me and works out time-wise to be possibly implantation bleeding. I could set a watch to my period, so I'll know that something is up by the end of Friday. Unfortunately, I have a pregnant friend who wants me to be pregnant so badly that if my husband hasn't done the job, I'm sure that she has just through sheer will. The unfortunate part is that she's convinced that this is my month, so she's constantly telling me that I'm pregnant and I'm worrying that all of my symptoms are because of her (except the bleeding, I couldn't make that happen). Such symptoms include; sneezing all the time while it's still basically winter (there was a snowstorm just last night), pretty much constant hunger (could be written off as stress eating), sleeping often (went to bed at around 9pm over the past two nights - could be written off as the result of waking up so early), occasional brief period-type cramps (usually only happen during my period, not the week before), glowing flawless skin (my skin is usually not perfect with breakouts occurring on my chin consistently the week before my period), and consistent thirst. Weirdest of all are the dreams. Although all the dreams I have are pretty bizarre, I usually forget them or only remember little pieces when I wake up, but they've been strange a vivid lately.
For example, I woke up this morning at 5am because I had yet another ridiculous dream, followed by a sneezing fit. In this one I was living in a reality show house with like 10 other people in Italy. When I returned one night with my husband after sight seeing, I found that there were two tvs newly built into the walls and ceiling of my room. For some reason, I instantly decided that Oprah had put them there (which made sense in the dream, as ridiculous things often do), but then remembered that I had ordered them sometime previously and figured that someone must have installed them for me. The placement of them was really strange though, with one in the far, right corner of the room built into the part of the ceiling that met the wall and the other just off the center of the room built into the high part of the wall. My husband then told me that he would be moving back to Holland the next day, and that he had to leave me behind because I was (apparently) finishing school. He assured me that he would come back after a few months, but I was devastated nonetheless.
A couple of days ago I had a dream about a giant octopus who removed the intestines of a dog and chased me to a friend house where I found her in room where the walls were covered with moving animation of people engaged in various activities (such as baseball).
Seriously, how could I NOT be pregnant?
One really annoying part of all this is that my little brother's 16 year old ex-gf is pregnant with what is probably his child (he's 18). She was expelled from school a couple of year back, has multiple mental health problems, and was actually trying (unbeknownst to my somewhat bewildered brother) to conceive in order to keep said brother from joining the Reserves and leaving her. Cut to a few months ago when a local man was sentenced to 2 years in prison and 20 years on the Sex Offender Registry for poking holes in condoms that he and his wife used. Such a ludicrous double standard.
But I digress.
The crazy ex is now around 6 months in and I can't help but hate her every day for being so useless and yet being able to stumble ass-backward into something I've been actively trying to get for months now. She will be an awful mother who is too narcissistic and damaged to understand that. She's currently living on welfare and has no intentions to do better for herself, which suggests that she'll probably have other babies with different males so she gets a larger cheque.
I keep thinking back to all the pregnancy scares of my past and the feeling of relief that washes over you when you see that the stick only has one line. Now I find myself staring at the space where the second line should be and trying to use the Force to make it appear. I'm pretty sure that if it was possible to will yourself pregnant, I would have done so already. Instead, I take each appearance of my ever passive-aggressive period as an invitation to drink my troubles away, leading to a messy week of blood, sadness, and mild alcoholism.
I find solace in doing baby-related things, though some people may argue that it's just furthering my frustration. I made a nursing pillow for the first time and without a pattern, which was interesting and turned out like such:
The pattern you see is actually a cover I made for it:
I've also been raking in the free stuff. It seems that any company who has anything to do with formula wants to give it anyone, ever. I'm going to be breastfeeding (in a perfect world), but it's good to have these kicking around just in case something goes wrong. Otherwise I'll be donating them.
We've also picking up a couple of irresistibly adorable things here and there, such as Mr. Frog (named by my dear and creative husband)
I've also been making a serious stash of baby wipes, since I was horrified with the ingredients lists on even the "natural" disposable wipes. I also bought some Dr. Bronner's stuff for the solution.
I also finally got around to talking to the program manager about my intentions, which I had been stressing about because she really doesn't like children and I'm sort of her stand-in for everything. She told me that she had been expecting it for some time and was actually more surprised that we had waited so long. She also let me know that I could work casually for a couple hours each week without cutting into my maternity leave pay, which is fantastic since we were stressing about how to make ends meet with only 55% of my income. Now we probably won't have to move.
On a brighter note, I've been slowly purchasing some baby things. I'm not pregnant yet because we aren't trying, but it doesn't make any financial sense to me not to buy things when they are on ridiculous sale. Currently, we have four Calvin Klein onesies and one adorable onsie that's a play on ACDC, which are awesome and all bought for 99 cents each at a thrift store. I also bought some newborn diapers which were 50% off and I've been working through creating some cloth diapers. Currently I have 4 completely done and two that just need some Velcro sewn on. I also have three bottles of prenatal vitamins, three bottles of Palmers cocoa butter, and a giant bottle of baby oil (which is for me as much as for baby). Lastly, I bought two little blankets, a crib sheet (thrift store), and a pack of 2 really good quality soothers that I found on clearance for $3.
It's to a point now where my friends, family, and co-workers are split down the middle as to whether I'm nuts or awesome for buying things so early. My husband was convinced that I was nuts at first, but I think he's coming around. As the person who always reigns in my excitability, he's managed to keep the purchases to a minimum but has allowed me to spend $40 on baby things during all the christmas/boxing day baby sale things. It's still a little but difficult to buy clothes, though, since I have no way of knowing what the gender will be.
It turns out that the mat leave at my work is not very good, even though they claim it's amazing. They advertise themselves as having a 93% top up, but what they don't mention is that this is only for 4.5 months, then it's just EI which is only 55% of your salary but only up to less than $900 per payment. This means I'll actually get less than 55% of salary, which isn't good at all and probably means we'll have to move. I'm trying to just be excited
While it's nice that it wasn't a new string of kidney infections (I had a good 4 in a row in 2008/2009) which would seriously throw a wrench in the baby plans for next year, the though of having an internal organ removed didn't exactly comfort me. However, as of today I seem to be working through what looks like a flu.
I'm happy to get such a thing out of my system now before it gets dangerous, but it's still kind of shit. I miss work pretty desperately since I'm bored to tears here by myself. Although now that I'm typing this I'm realizing that I could easily begin some work on the cloth diapers before my sewing machine gets here. Perhaps I'll take a feverish trip down the street to the thrift store to see if I can scrounge up some materials. I found some good (free!) patterns from various websites while I was on a free sample stint over the weekend and I'm hoping to get some stuff going.
I'm hoping that cloth diapers are something that I can actually use and that I won't simply give in and buy disposables. The laundry part of it is going to be somewhat of a hassle, but I'm going to try to commit to this. When I mentioned it to the secretary at work she sort of laughed at me and said she knew people who had tried them and gave up because they're so inconvenient. There are certainly more steps involved, like a wet bag for the diaper bag, a pail with a solution where they can soak before laundry time, covers, etc.
In the meantime, I am catching up on the fourth season of Breaking Bad. I was expecting non-stop excitement from the reviews I've gotten from friends but this seems to be dragging for the first half of the season and it feels like I'm just getting through it. Disappointing.
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