Seriously, I’m pretty much done with this. As I type, I’m sitting here feeling dizzy and nauseous and a little bit in pain even though I’ve taken some pretty serious painkillers. I’ve been on antibiotics for a week now and I’m really ready to be done with feeling sick. It’s been a rough couple of weeks. First there was the initial shock of finding out that I’d miscarried, and the emotional pain that went along with it. Then there was the surgery the following Monday, followed by a few days of working from my couch while I tried to shake off the after effects of anesthesia and physically recovered. I went back to work last Thursday, but by late Friday afternoon I wasn’t feeling right.
Saturday started off crappy – I felt tired and was starting to feel what I thought were normal side effects from the surgery. I took some Advil and started to get ready for Carrie and John’s son’s baptism party. I was feeling really out of it, though, and didn’t remember that our super huge mirror that usually hung on the wall above my dresser was off the wall and propped up behind the dresser while we painted the bedroom. I moved the dresser to get out a pair of jeans and ended up smashing the huge mirror into a thousand pieces. I called Alex crying – it just seemed like a huge deal to me at the time and all I could think (besides how much cleaning up all of those tiny shards was going to suck) was that we really, really, really didn’t need 7 years of bad luck. Alex told me that I was being rediculous – all a broken mirror meant was you couldn’t use it anymore. I pulled myself together and finished getting ready and headed up to Clifton Park, pausing to layer on some extra strength Tylenol with my Advil.
As the day progressed, the pain I was feeling intensified. I ended up leaving the party early and went to my parents’ house. I spent most of the day on the couch or pacing when my pain got too much to bear laying still. I was getting frustrated that even though I was being diligent about taking my pain meds every four hours, I wasn’t feeling any better. I was feeling progressively worse.
By the time guests started arriving for my dad’s going away party, I was feeling really bad. I tried to not look as miserable ad I felt, but I don’t think I was terribly successful in that endeavor. A couple of hours later, I had to bail out early and Alex and I headed home.
When we got home, I popped a couple of Tylenol with codiene and layed on the sofa with Alex while we watched Netflix movies. I still wasn’t feeling any better. I whined and moaned as we layed there and Alex told me he wa calling my dr in the morning. Finally we decided to just go to bed. Alex gave me an Ambien in the hopes that I’d pass out and not feel any pain.
Unfortunately, that plan didn’t work out too well. I woke up at 3:30 in the morning in pain. I got up to go to the bathroom and ended up in so much pain that I actually screamed. Alex came rushing out to me and I started to pass out. I kept moaning, “we gotta go… we gotta go to the ER…”. Alex got me in the car and took me to Ellis.
The ER was not busy when we got to Ellis and I made it through triage and into a private room very quickly – which meant that I got morphine fairly quickly. I was incredibly thankful for that. I was comfortable there in my hospital gown on my bed, hooked up to an IV and getting good pain meds. I was sent for a CT scan which showed that I fortunately had no injury from my surgery, but that I was inflamed, which was evidence of an infection. They gave me antibiotics by IV and then sent me home with prescriptions for 2 different antibiotics and for Percocet for my pain.
I was so out of it from the infection and Percocet that I don’t remember much of Sunday or Monday. I followed up with my dr on Monday, who seemed pissy at the ER for some reason. I was still in a lot of pain then, but she wouldn’t give me anything else for pain because I was taking a lot already (2 Percocet every 4 hrs) and she felt that after the antibiotics started to kick in that I’d be in less pain. She was right. By Tuesday I was feeling better, but still pretty sick. I went back to work Wednesday, which was really too soon. At my follow up appointment with my doctor on Thursday afternoon, I was chastised for returning to work so soon and “ordered” to take the next day off of work and rest.
I’ve spent a lot of time on the couch the last couple of days, but I think I have this irrational expectation that I should instantly feel better after this investment of couch time. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. At this point, I really am (really!) “over” the whole miscarriage part of it. Because I’ve been so open with everyone about what’s been going on, I’ve been able to hear about other people’s experiences and been able to see how common it is, even among my friends, to go through this. What’s been really great to hear is how many of them have gone on very quickly to have successful pregnancies. So yeah, I’m over that part. What I’m really having a problem with now, is that I’m still feeling so incredibly crappy. I’m just done with this. I want to feel better and just move on at this point.
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Filed under Health | Comment (0)I haven’t posted publicly about it, but I found out I was pregnant in November. I was beyond thrilled and Alex and I were really excited for July, when our baby was expected to arrive. We slowly told family and friends as I neared the end of my first trimester and everything seemed fine. Well, today we received terrible, terrible news. Our baby had miscarried. It came as a complete shock as I’d never had a lot of pregnancy symptoms when the pregnancy was confirmed, and so there was no noticeable difference in how I’d been feeling. We found out when we went in for our twelve week ultrasound. I could tell right away that something was wrong. The tech couldn’t find anything and instantly looked worried. The images that I could see didn’t look right – what I recognized as the uterus didn’t look big enough, compared to the pictures that I’d been staring at online for weeks. Alex was oblivious to the fact that something was going wrong. He asked the tech what we were looking at and if it was too early to be able to make things out and her answers back to him confirmed my fears – she was red cheeked as she stammered something about the doctor needing to look at the images. We waited to see my doctor upstairs and when the nurse brought me directly to her office instead of the scale I really knew. The doctor came in and told us what I expected to hear by that point, that the ultrasound showed no heartbeat and that it didn’t measure up to the 12 week mark. She left us for a few minutes and I fell apart.
I’d been so excited for weeks for that appointment. All day today at work I was planning on how I was going to tell my boss and coming up with a maternity leave plan that I was super proud of. I had no expectation of anything but good news at this appointment, and so I was shocked. I couldn’t ask the doctor any questions and could only half listen as she explained that I would need to have surgery to remove the placenta and fetal remains. Apparently I’m looking at a good few weeks of unpleasantness, and then will need to wait for my body to get back to normal before we can even think about trying again. It’s so depressing.
I feel betrayed. I don’t know by what – my body I guess. I feel stupid for believing that everything would, of course, be alright. I feel sad for the loss of our hopes for the summer. I feel dread for the next few weeks of unpleasantness. I feel worried that it will take months and months before we can start trying again. I’m worried that once we are able to start trying again, it will take us months and months before we are successful again. And I dread that if/when we are successful again, that we’ll go through this pain another time.
I remember that as we told people, I kept thinking that we were going against advice to hold off until we were out of the first trimester, “just in case”. We were so happy and excited, though, that keeping it to ourselves wasn’t an option. We’re not private people, Alex and I. That’s just not the way we are. And now that the worst has happened, I don’t feel terrible about having to tell people about it. I’d rather people know why I’m sad or looking depressed. I’d rather people know that we’ve had a loss than unknowingly insensitively ask us, “when are you having kids?” I’m an over-sharer with most things in my life, so I just didn’t see why this should be any different. And frankly, talking about it helps. If I couldn’t talk about it, I’d internalize and get extremely depressed – that’s just my nature.
I took all of my pregnancy books and the few baby things we were given over Christmas upstairs to the nursery where I put it in the closet and closed the door. That was really hard, but I needed to make sure that I didn’t have a bunch of “emotional triggers” laying around the house. I’m trying to stay positive and distract myself as much as possible and focus on the fact that we were able to achieve one time (and really quickly) – so we should be able to do it again. I can try and lose some weight in the meantime and the longer we wait the more we’ll have in savings (theoretically). I know, rationally, that there are a lot of positives that I can focus on, but it’s hard. Hard to see past the immense disappointment, sadness, and shock. Hard to not think of the next four or five months as time wasted – a terrible purgatory of waiting when it was supposed to be an exciting and happy time.
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