Life isn’t fair

‘Life isn’t fair’ plain and simple. I heard this phrase a lot growing up, usually as a response to a complaint about the trendy shoes another girl has that I wanted or the fact that my sister got a bigger scoop of ice cream.

As I continue to search for answers about our recent miscarriage or the slew of bad infertility luck we’ve been dished out, I keep coming back to this phrase…Life Isn’t Fair. I realize no matter how hard I try, I will never find an answer to the ‘why’ question that consumes me. We’re experiencing some serious bad luck in the area of fertility. It sucks big time and there isn’t much I can do about it. 

I been hearing a lot of stories about miscarriages lately. Or maybe I’ve just been more tuned into listening to what has always been around me. My sister told me about a friend who had promising betas, but then couldn’t find a heartbeat at her 7 week scan. I caught a bit of Oprah last night and heard Celion Dion speak of her 6 IVF tries and her miscarriage. Also on that Oprah show was another women who tried to get pregnant for 3  years to finally conceive twins who died at birth. My first instinct is to hear those stories and compare them to mine…a loss at 12 weeks is sadder than one at 7, or what that  woman felt to lose her baby at birth must be so much harder than what I just went through. As my mind spirals into this place of  comparison I am quick to stop myself. Bottom line is it all hurts. No matter if you’ve been trying for 3 years or 10 years the failure of a cycle is fustrating. If you lose  your baby at 6 weeks or 12 weeks, regardless it is heartbreaking. It doesn’t matter what the details of the story are, when a women struggles with infertility and suffers a loss of a baby that is 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 months old, it is all painful. There is no reason for comparison, just an opportunity for sympathy.

It has been a bit over 2 weeks since everything has happened although it seems like forever. Life is going on and I am doing my best to move on, although honestly the sadness still remains. A friend announces their pregnancy and it all rushes back so quickly. I think about her due date and what mine would have been… A friend posts the news of their 20-week ultrasound (it’s a girl!) on Facebook and the tears well up again. I look down at the extra 4-5 lbs I am still carrying and I remember a time when it wasn’t just fat, it was a baby. Life isn’t fair.

One Week

One week ago today we found out we lost our baby. Ugh. I found myself out for a brisk evening walk with Maggie at the exact time last week we got the news and my thoughts wandered back to that ultrasound room and the dark days that followed. With the cool air blowing on my face and the day’s sun setting in the sky, I found tears welling in my eyes, but today, they did not fall.

I’ve come along way in a week and honestly, it’s taken some effort. I’ve make a conscious effort every day to try to move forward, one foot in front of the other, one day at a time. As comfortable and safe as I was at home I knew I couldn’t live in isolation or in PJs forever so I headed back to work as soon as I was physically ready, even though I knew emotionally, I was pushing it. I’m also encourage myself to do the little things that used to make me happy…new jeans, painted finger nails, blogging, crafting, acupuncture…

There is no doubt that it will take some time for the sadness to subside, but I’m trying my best to help move it along.

G&B

Giuliana and Bill Rancic. Some may know her as the host of E! News and him as the winner of the first Apprentice. Others may have no idea who they are at all…I’ve come to know them as a likeable celebrity couple whose struggle we can certainly relate to…

Last year they got their own reality TV show on the STYLE network and on that show they’ve openly shared their struggles with infertility. They’ve been through a lot and have had a similar journey to ours: 2.5 years of trying. Multiple IUIs. 2 rounds of IVF. An early miscarriage…They’ve been so open about the emotions of infertility on the show and in the press and we’ve certainly been able to relate to them every step of the way.

They recently released a statement about ‘taking a break’ and a few of their quotes really hit home with us.

“For two and a half years we tried to have a baby. Almost every day there was either an ultrasound, blood work or a doctor was looking at me. It just got so invasive,” she notes. “And the thing is, IVF does work. It worked for us the first time but we miscarried, sadly. It’s very easy for women — when they fail a couple of times, when they’re not getting pregnant or not having a baby and they’ve been trying for a long time — to get into a very dark place. It’s very hard to crawl out of that place.”

Discussing their joint decision to cease actively trying for a child, Rancic says, “We realized we’re healthy, we can travel and first and foremost, we’re a family, Bill and I. Baby or no baby, we’re a family and we love each other. And we had to come back to remembering who we were before this whole baby journey — a fun couple. We’re now back doing that.”

Our recent loss is still very raw to us, but I hope we’ll have the strength one day soon to ‘remember who we were before this baby journey’ too.

A LOT has happened

I’ve been delinquent in updating this blog. And for the few friends who religiously checked this blog every day for the past several months, I thank you for your patience and dedication to me and my journey. I’m not quite sure what has been keeping me a way for so long. I think at first it was that I really had nothing to talk about…I was waiting and waiting sucked and I got tired of hearing myself whine about how much it sucked so I decided to spare you the complaints. But then something miraculous and special happened in early December and what kept me away was fear and superstition. In hindsight that fear was stupid, and I realize that now.

A lot has happened over the past few months so here is an update. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Its been a crazy few months for us. Filled with the highest of highs and unfortunately the lowest of lows. Last time I checked in we were on a ‘break’ heading into the holidays. We had just met with a new doctor and she had me on a new drug ‘metformin’ to help regulate my hormones a bit before our next IVF scheduled for January. I started it in October and in late November I spontaneously ovulated on my own and we got pregnant. We were shocked and felt that the pregnancy was such an unexpected gift just in time for the holidays. My first three betas looked good and on the eve of Christmas Eve we heard our baby’s heartbeat at 6.5 weeks. We were so happy to have the gift of a baby in time for Christmas. Our dream had come true. It was a nerve-wracking pregnancy for me. I had some spotting early on, but generally felt good and the Husband was amazing at keeping me calm and positive. We had our first prenatal apt at 8.5 weeks and again things looked great. It was a long wait between the 8.5 week apt and our 12 weeks and although I had moments of fear, I felt in my gut things were alright and this was it. We were finally to have our baby. We shared the news with our parents at around 10 weeks as well as a few of our close friends.

We were so looking forward to our 12 week apt. It was meant to be the happiest day of our lives when we would finally hop over the first trimester hurdle and be able to broadly share the news and breathe a sigh of huge relief. That apt was scheduled for last Thursday afternoon. We were both sooo excited and couldn’t wait. All day long I just kept thinking about how excited I was. I got a text from the Husband 30 minutes from the appointment time. “So excited. Can’t wait.” Me too. I responded.

However, it was at that apt that we found out our baby was no longer alive. I could tell right away something was wrong. I had done my fair share of research online and through the Google Images I had a pretty good idea of what a 12-week old fetus looked like. The image on the screen did not look like those images. I was first relieved to see a baby on screen, but then I quickly noticed it was small…and not moving…and did not look like those images. “Something is wrong, isn’t?” I said. ‘Yes” the tech responded. “It appears that your baby is no longer alive.”

The heart was no longer beating and it had stopped growing at 9.5 weeks. It was a ‘missed miscarriage.’ All this time and through all of these weeks, had no idea that our baby had died. We were and still are shocked. Devastated. Angry. That moment in time with our eyes locked on screen and the tech confirming what we knew in our hearts was true, has become a nightmare for me. It is ingrained so firmly in my mind and creeps into my conscious at the most inopportune times. A nightmare is the only way I can describe it.

I got dressed and collapsed into the Husbands arms. We both sobbed and I just kept saying aloud “This isn’t happening. This can’t be true.” We couldn’t believe it, in a flash our dream for this baby was gone.

We went home and spent the night sitting on the couch holding each other and crying. The room was silent with the exception of my sobbing and our voices trying our best to rationalize and process everything that happened. Finally, at 9 pm, I decided it was time to go to bed. I wanted this day to be over.

The doctor called in the morning and talked us through out options. We scheduled a D&C producure for 10 am that morning and had just 30 minutes to get ready and get to the office. We found a quiet corner of the waiting room and sat hand in hand staring out at the sea of pregnant women, bustling in and out for their appointments. In that moment, I wasn’t jealous of them, I was just so deeply sad for us. I had to fight back tears so many times as I prepared for what was about to happen to me and our baby in the next few minutes.

The procedure itself wasn’t too bad. The worst part of about it was that we couldn’t be together for it at a time when I think we both needed each other. I was out for the procedure, I hear it only takes about 10 minutes. When I woke up an hour later it was over and I was being ushered out to the Husband and sent on my way with antibiotics and pain killers. It took us 3 years to make this baby, but only an hour to dispose of it completely.

We spent the entire weekend alone. We had moments of normalcy as we watched TV or did dishes, but also shared lots of moments of tears and discussion.  We made it out for a walk with the dog, lunch at a favorite restaurant, a movie on Saturday night and a trip to the grocery store on Sunday. We never left each others side. We had social events to attend but neither one of us were up for it. We acknowledged that with the baby gone, it was just “us” again. And as we worked to recover, ‘just us’ was what we wanted.

As I try to move on, I just can’t understand why this unexpected gift was given to us only to be taken away in this horrible way. Why give it to us in the first place? The loss of this baby, in this way is so devastating to me. We were so joyful and so excited, we had started to plan our future and really felt like our dream was here. The due date was to be 2 days after my 33rd birthday.

Life just isn’t fair.