Miscarriage - Our Story, Part 1

Our Story – Part 1                  

I woke up on December 28, 2010 with a feeling that I might be pregnant. So I got out of bed and as quietly as possible took a pregnancy test. 2 pink lines almost instantly! What?! Really?! Oh my gosh! I’m so happy! Should I wake Kerry up? No, he is not a morning person. Better to wait until after he’s had a shower and maybe a glass of sweet tea for lunch.

Lunch comes. Sweet tea is consumed. (By him, not me.) I take a deep breath and say it.

“We’re going to have a baby!” Happiness. Hugs. Whoa, this is heavy!

I get online and find out that my due date will be sometime the first week in September. Perfect. The start of fall. Still warm, but not too hot. 2011 is going to be the Best. Year. Ever.

For you formed my inward parts, You covered me in my mother’s womb.

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows well.

My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.

And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me,

When as yet there were none of them.

-          Psalm 139: 13-16

Thursday, January 20, 2011 – First doctor’s appointment. We walk in, kind of nervous excited. The nurses smile and congratulate us and gift us with a huge bag of vitamin samples, pamphlets, the tiniest diaper I have ever seen and some other things. This is so exciting! First baby gifts! Haha My doctor comes in and asks me a lot of questions, listens to my heart and some other stuff and then we move to the ultrasound room. And there it is. Our baby. He was so beautiful! Doc says everything looks great. We hear the heartbeat. The most perfect little whoosh whoosh sound I have ever heard.

My Dr. gives me a rundown of dos and don’ts. Says no need to worry, everything looks great and I am healthy as can be. We’re told to come back in four weeks for another checkup and we take our baby’s first photo and head home.

Sunday, January 23, 2011 – We meet my parents and little brother for lunch under totally false pretenses and tell them the good news. I call my other brother and sister and tell them. We swear them all to secrecy as we haven’t had a chance to tell Kerry’s parents yet. We make plans to go see them the next weekend for a surprise!

Tuesday, January 25, 2011 – I go to work and feel “different.” The dreaded loss of symptoms. I tell myself that it’s probably just my mind playing tricks on me. I’ve got no real reason to worry. I go to the bathroom that afternoon and see a spot of bright red blood on tissue. Panic. Fervent prayers. "Please Lord, let my baby be ok. Please." I walk back to my office, put my feet up and start searching the internet for any little bit of reassurance that what I think is happening is not. I read a statistic that says you have a 90% chance of carrying your baby to term after seeing a healthy heartbeat. I try to relax.

I try not to worry, but I can’t shake this ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach. I show Kerry a crib I found online that I like. I tell him that I’m not feeling well and that I’m going to lay down and relax. A couple of hours go by. Then the cramping started. I go to the bathroom. More blood. Instant tears. I know what this is. I go and tell Kerry through sobs that I think something is wrong. He suggests that we call my doctor. We do. He answers and tells me that if the bleeding gets heavy and there is any clotting to go to the emergency room. And if it stays the same to come in to his office in the morning. He says it could be nothing serious. He says not to worry just yet. I wanted to believe him so bad, but I knew. We wait 1 hour. Heavier bleeding. Clots. We head to the emergency room.

We get checked in and wait three hours to be seen. Finally the nurse calls my name and we head back to the exam room. “This is it.”, I thought. “This is the part where they are going to tell me that my baby has died.”  I tearily explain to the doctor everything that has happened. They do an ultrasound. No heartbeat. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. We are given a pamphlet on miscarriage and told to follow up with our doctor the next morning.

The next morning I saw my OB and he confirmed with another ultrasound that our baby had passed away. At my doctor’s recommendation we are scheduled for a D & C the following  morning. That evening, the cramping became severe to the point of being nearly unbearable. It was the most physically painful experience of my life. The next morning, I had a D & C and we officially said goodbye to our baby.

Yet, I will not forget you. I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands”

-          Isaiah 49:16

In part 2,  I will talk about the emotional journey of our miscarriage.

The importance of sleep

Photo Credit



Lately, I’ve been realizing that, or perhaps more accurately, I am finally coming to terms with the fact that I am stressed and I need to do something about it. After doing some checking around on how to reduce stress, I found lots of websites and articles recommending that I pinpoint the cause of my stress so that I could change or eliminate it. But the problem is that I don’t have one specific area in my life that is stressing me out. I have a whole lot of somethings combined with not a whole lot of time that are all adding up me basically walking around in a fog 24/7.

So I started evaluating. I realized that I was basically only getting about six to six and a half hours of sleep a night! It really surprised me when I figured that out, because I honestly thought it was more! So the solution seems really simple. Get more sleep, right?

But the problem with this oversimplified solution is HOW?!! I have a lot to get done in a day and only a certain number of hours to do them in! I ended up making some pretty drastic changes to my daily routine in order to get more z’s in. Here’s what I changed and why.

1)      Shower at night. This is a big one and the one that has been the biggest adjustment for me, because I have always been a “need my morning shower to get going” kind of girl. But I have to leave for work by 7:15 to get to work on time and it takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to get ready. Admittedly, I do tend to be a bit of dawdler, which I am working on, but I didn’t want to just be rushing around like a madwoman every morning trying to get out the door. Rushing makes me stressed and that’s the whole point of this little endeavor. To stress less. So I eliminated a big time drain on my morning routine, by moving it to the evening before allowing me to wake up later the morning. Bonus points that I am now primarily air drying my hair which helps keep it healthy!

2)      Quiet time in the afternoon or evening. I hate to admit this, but I kinda got sucked in by some people telling me that I needed to have my quiet time in the morning. I don’t know why. I’m not usually such a follower. So in addition to the hour + that I was spending getting ready in the morning I was also getting up an extra 30 minutes early to have my quiet time. Don’t get me wrong, I think the morning is a great time to get alone with God. Maybe it’s even the best time. But in this season of my life, it’s just not working. I felt like I was squeezing God in to my ever so packed schedule. I would look up from reading to make sure I wasn’t going over my 30 minutes so I wouldn’t be late for work! Not good. In college I almost always had my quiet time in the afternoon outside. I loved it. I’m going to try this again. I plan to use my lunch hour at work or just do it in the evening depending on the day. I do still plan to offer a short prayer to my Savior upon waking, I’m just going to save my bible time and longer prayer time for later. ;-)

3)      Set a regular bedtime. This one is hard for me, because my husband can be a bit of a night owl and I hate going to bed before he does. We have such a small amount of time together on weekdays and I felt like I was wasting it by going to bed while he was still awake. But here’s what was happening. We would settle into the living room after dinner and watch tv together and within about 30 minutes, I would be asleep at like 8:00! Yeah, my body was definitely trying to tell me that it needed rest! My husband actually said something to me about this and suggested that I need to go to bed earlier. So the new “rule” is that I go to bed at 10:00 and try to be asleep by 10:30 which will give me a nice 8 hours of sleep. My husband is so sweet that he has actually been going to bed with me at 10! Granted he is usually not asleep as soon as me, but I think we have both benefitted from the extra sleep we have been getting this last week!

There are a lot of things you can try if you feel like you’re not getting a good quality sleep, or have trouble falling asleep, but that has never been my issue. I pretty much pass out as soon as my head hits the pillow! So for now this is what I’m doing to help give my body the sleep it needs. Hopefully it helps and I am able to keep it up!