***Details regarding miscarriage…do not read if you don’t want all the gross details.***
It’s a funny thing…death. We live just on the line. It’s common for people to say, you never know if today will be your last…
On December 19th it was the 14 year anniversary of the day Zach proposed. In 2017, it also was the day we’d schedule our first appointment to check on the baby and then Zach was called in for jury duty. We wavered a bit…have Zach reschedule jury duty so he was guaranteed to make it to the appointment or take a chance of him getting sent home before the appointment. In the end we decided to push his jury duty out. It just felt right.
Isaac had to go to school, so we told him we’d record the ultrasound so he could see and hear the baby too. Unfortunately, we were told we couldn’t record. 😦 We were so excited to see the baby, hear the heartbeat. And then….nothing…baby was measuring 2 weeks behind where we expected…and was just too small for a heartbeat yet.
Disbelief. Heartache. Empty.
The rest of the appointment was saddening. We were told maybe we had the timing off, but their was a high probability that I would have a miscarriage and to prepare for that.
The next day (Wednesday), I had jury duty (side note…we had jury duty back to back for different courts, city and county…just days before Christmas…how does that happen?). I sat in the jury room…I went through the motions…but I kept tearing up, crying off and on…I was so relieved when I was dismissed. I wasn’t in the right emotional state to be a productive member of society.
Zach had taken the morning off to get the kids to school and we decided to spend the rest of the morning together. We did some Christmas shopping, but we mainly cried.
One of the hardest things was having just a little bit of hope…maybe our dates were off and the baby was still alive. By Friday I had fully convinced myself of this fact. I was having a great day and then I got off work and went pee…
Spotting. I called Zach crying, “I’m miscarrying.”
Saturday I continued to bleed, nothing too bad, similar to a normal period. We’d explained to the kids that the baby hadn’t made it, but otherwise we tried to continue with our lives.
Sunday was Christmas Eve and we had plans to go to dinner with Zach’s mom and stepdad. As we were getting to the car to head that way I felt a gush. I rushed to the bathroom and I was definitely bleeding more, but I just added in an extra pad and brought some stuff with us.
When we arrived at the restaurant I immediately went to the bathroom. I pulled my pants down and a clot got on my pants, soaking them, there was blood everywhere. I started crying and called Zach. He asked what he could do and I said I needed him. So into the woman’s restroom he came. We got me cleaned up, thankfully, at the last minute I had decided not to wear a dress and instead opted for jeans and a really long sweater. The toilet and the floor were a different matter. As I was washing my hands, a waitress walked in. At first she was just chatty and then she realized that Zach was just walking out the door and holding it for me. So she asked…
“Oh, I’m just in the middle of a miscarriage. He came to help me clean up, but you still might want to get someone in to clean the toilet.”
“Oh my gosh. Do you need me to call anyone?”
“No, I’m fine, thanks.” As I rushed out the door.
We had dinner. I went back to the bathroom on our way out. Soaked another pad.
In the car, I told Zach I felt dirty and really would love to go back to the house for a shower before going over to his Mom’s. This required an extra hour of driving, but everyone agreed and we headed home.
I took a quick shower and dressed in comfy clothes. I was learning how to pull my pants down and get the clots in the toilet verse my pants. Still no pain. We’d get through this.
Before heading back to my in-laws, we let the kids open their Christmas Eve gift (jammies), and headed back across town. The evening had a sad undercurrent. We all were trying to continue, but we were all sad.
Zach got Christmas ready and we all went to bed.
The next morning, I was still bleeding a lot. I was feeling dizzy and just not right. After calling the doctor (again, we’d called her the night before), we were told we should go to the ER. After letting the kids open their stockings and one gift we took them over to my parents house and headed to the ER.
Spending Christmas in the ER is not on anyones bucket list. Having and miscarriage AND spending it in the ER on Christmas is really not on the list. We didn’t want to be there. They checked me out, but ask stupid questions: How many pads are you going through an hour? None…like 1 every 1.5 hours. Oh, your fine.
They did an ultrasound and determined the miscarriage was complete, but determined that I had a clot in my cervix that needed to be removed. We the MALE doctor was going to do it. I started to panic…I’d never had a man besides Zach see my Vaginal area. Thankfully, I had Zach to calm me down and tell me it was okay…but it was awkward. He didn’t know what he was doing and in the end I don’t think he removed the clot completely (more on that later).
We were told I was slightly anemic, and to get some iron at the pharmacy and I should be fine. Zach stopped at a pharmacy that was open on the way home and we picked up the kids.
We attempted to have a good rest of our Christmas. I sat on the couch and the kids opened their presents. I was still feeling dizzy, but I was anemic, that was to be expected. I remember going to the bathroom at one point and running into the wall on my way. I decided it was time to head upstairs for the night.
Zach walked with me up the stairs. I was winded and dizzy….it was getting worse the longer I stood up. Somehow we got me upstairs and I sat on the toilet.
I wanted to take a shower, so we devised a plan for Zach to stand in the shower with me and for me to sit on a stool. It felt so good to get clean and thankfully we have a huge shower that allowed this to easily happen. We turned off the water and I dried and put my undies and a shirt on before standing up. I started to step out of the shower and the next thing I knew Zach was asking me if I could hear him and I was laying in a pile of dirty blankets next to the shower.
After some negotiations, that included me proving I could move and knew my name and birthdate, I was allowed to stay on the floor. I’d asked Zach to setup the air matress in the bathroom so I didn’t have to go but two steps to the toilet.
Lyznie brought her new lego set to me. I laid on the floor with her and we put together the lego set. It was oddly perfect. I can’t remember what Isaac was doing.
After a while, I told Zach it was silly to have the bed in the bathroom, but if we put it in our room the kids could sleep with us without bothering me. And so, that’s what we did.
The next few days are a bit of a blur, but I can tell you some facts. I never left the bedroom for the next two days. But I ate and drank and did everything I’d been told do do. I told my boss I couldn’t work on the 26th and Zach already had the day off. On Wednesday (27th), I attempted to work from bed and Zach went back to work, but Zach’s parents and my dad came over throughout the day to ensure everything was okay. We had multiple conversations with the kids on what do to if Mommy passed out…and we still had Christmas presents left to be open.
By Wednesday evening I had a pretty bad headache. I told Zach if I still had it in the morning we needed to go to the doctor.
By morning it was worse. I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want to drink. And when I stood up the headache got so bad….I honestly don’t remember ever feeling pain that bad.
We called my OBGYN and they scheduled an appointment, but then called us back because they didn’t think it had anything to do with the miscarriage and they didn’t handle migraine. I was pissed, but had Zach call my primary care doctor, who agreed to see us, so we cancelled the OBGYN appointment.
When we got to the doctor, everyone was compassionate and kind. I wasn’t just a person making things up….I looked like death and they could see it. They took a simple finger hemoglobin test and immediate determined that I needed a blood transfusion. She tried to get me to eat something and called the OB to see if she could get me admitted to the hospital.
It was determined that the fastest way to get blood into me would be to go back to the ER. The doctor told us if we promised to go straight to the ER Zach could drive me instead of calling an ambulance.
We’d left the kids at the neighbor’s and they agreed to keep them overnight. Zach doesn’t like to leave me at the hospital alone and honestly, I don’t like to be left alone.
Back at the ER, I was in such pain. It’s a slight blur, but I do remember this….the OB found another (or maybe the same) clot and needed to remove it. She was working on that at the same time they were starting to give me blood and my head was killing me and it was painful having the clot removed. There were like 100 people in the room and I wasn’t being the most cooperative. The doctor suggested Fentenol and OMG…my whole world changed the second that hit my system.
The pain was gone.
The clot was removed.
The bleeding slowed.
I was given blood.
My color started to come back.
I started to be able to think….did I forget to mention I couldn’t think to work earlier in the day and it took me about half the day before I notified my boss. I definitely was not all there.
As I began my second unit of blood I was transferred into the hospital for an overnight stay. It took them a while (no beds) and they finally asked me if I was okay being on the maternity floor. I said I was fine.
As strange as it is, we’d dealt with the loss of the baby. Going back to the floor where the kids were born was healing.
Because I was there only for monitoring, they didn’t bug us throughout the night, but I wasn’t able to eat or drink after midnight. If my numbers weren’t good, they were going to perform a DNC to get the bleeding to stop.
By morning, my numbers weren’t exactly where they wanted them so I got another unit of blood, but a DNC wasn’t in the plans. We were discharged in the afternoon of the 29th….exactly 9 years to the day after we went to the same hospital to have Isaac.
When we got home, Isaac sat with me while Zach and Lynzie went and got Rogue at my parent’s house. I was pretty tired so we all headed to bed once they were home…only Isaac didn’t sleep.
At 3AM, Zach woke me up. He told me that Isaac had been up all night crying about his ears and he didn’t know what to do. I texted my friend who is a pediatric ER doctor and she must have been on call because she responded within a few minutes, calming me down and providing direction to get us to the morning.
In the morning, on Isaac’s 9th birthday, we headed to the doctor where he was diagnosed with a double ear infection….so bad that the doctor wanted him back in 10 days to ensure it had gone away….which happened to be the day before we would be leaving on our first cruise.
We spent Isaac’s birthday recovering…watching movies and playing video games.
All along we were thankful for the small things…that Isaac slept fine at the neighbors, not showing any signs of an ear infection, that we had neighbors that we trusted and were able to watch our children for almost 48 hours no problem, for our parents that could take the dog and watch over me, the fact that I had no pain through the miscarriage and experienced such peace, for the fact that I changed my clothes last minutes, for our jobs that had the flexibility for this to not be a big deal in our job security, but most of all, at the end of it all, we are thankful I’m alive and thankful that we had a cruise to look forward to and to separate the bad, crazy end of year with a fresh beginning.
