Road to Parenthood

So when we left off on part 2, we had just been discharged from the ER.

The following week after my ER stay, I had an appointment with my doctor on July 14 and she did an ultrasound and saw that everything hadn’t come out so she wanted me to do one more dose of the medicine. I went home that day and did the medicine. I passed what I believed was what she saw on the ultrasound. After that, I had no more bleeding and I was glad everything was out and ready to move on.

I had an appointment on July 20 to make sure that what the doctor saw on the ultrasound on July 14 was out. It was another ultrasound and after this ultrasound, I met with the case manager who wanted me to have an appointment with my doctor ASAP. She got me in and the doctor informed us that everything was still not out. The doctor said at this point, the best option for us would to be to have a D&C immediately. She was scared that I could get an infection. I had some crackers that morning so we had to wait until 5PM to have the procedure done. They did some pre-op blood work, had me sign a consent form, and sent me home. They wanted me to come back later that day for the procedure.

We got to the hospital and they were waiting for me. I got checked in, got my IV started, and then Sean was able to join me. Everything moved so quick and at 5PM, they started the first dose of anesthesia, I kissed Sean, and they wheeled me back. I started giggling and they said that is one of the side effects of this medicine. I remember being in the operating room and the nurses and anesthesiologist telling me to think of a place I wanted to vacation and the next thing I remember, I was in recovery. Because this was my first time under general anesthesia, it took me a while to come out of it. We got discharged around 7:45PM. I came home and slept it off. Sean took such good care of me!

Final Thoughts…

Had I known that I would have to go through all of this, I would have opted for the D&C at the beginning. I was told, however, that cytotec works 87% of the time. I was hopeful I wouldn’t have to be one of the 13% it didn’t work for. I’m glad that everything is done now. Sean and I are ready to move on, do some healing as a couple, and try again. We definitely want to try again and document our journey on the road to parenthood.

So when we left off on part 1 of our miscarriage story, we were counting down the days until our first appointment with the doctor.

June 29 came and I was counting down the hours until we could leave. We ended up leaving earlier than we probably should have because I was so excited. We got there and had to wait a little while and they ended up having no rooms so we had to wait even longer but I finally got called in. I go to Kaiser and the way they do it is they call the mom in, check her vitals, bring her in the room and the doctor asks some questions. After that, they go get dad for the ultrasound.

After the doctor asked me my questions, she was prepping me for the ultrasound (which happened to be transvagional) and the nurse went to go get Sean. As she started the ultrasound, I could see her body language change from excitement to kind of a blank stare. She didn’t show us the screen for a few minutes and when she finally did, she had news we both didn’t expect.

At this point, I was a little over 8 weeks along. She told us that at this stage, she should be able to hear a heartbeat and see a baby that is moving around. However, all she saw was a tiny fetus and the sac. She said that I would more than likely end up miscarrying. She did want to send us in for a formal ultrasound the next day to confirm. We went to that the next morning and went back to her office and she confirmed that I had a blighted ovum. She told us we had three options:

1. The first would to miscarry naturally. We wouldn’t know when this would take place since it is up to my body to figure out the pregnancy wasn’t viable and miscarry on its own.
2. The second would to take medicine at home to speed up the process. I’d still miscarry at home but we would be able to decide when to do it.
3. The third would to have a D&C at the doctor’s office. This option would be the quickest, but there are some risks with any surgery.

I knew I didn’t want to have a D& C and I was leaning more towards doing it naturally, but she put the prescription in for the medicine just in case.

We got home and started mourning the loss of the baby we were so excited to meet. I ended up getting a call from a RN case manager at Kaiser. She told me that she was looking at our ultrasound and said she saw a fetus that measured 6 weeks and to not take the medicine and come back in for another ultrasound in a week to see if the baby had grown. At this point, we didn’t know what to think. I wanted to be hopeful but I was also scared to be. After researching blighted ovum, I read that there is no fetal pole when you have a blighted ovum but my ultrasound showed a fetal pole.

We waited a whole week and every time I went to the bathroom, I was afraid that I’d end up miscarrying. Finally the day of the ultrasound came (July 7) and the ultrasound ended up showing that if there was a fetus, it disappeared. My gestational sac ended up growing over that week so my body still thought I was pregnant. Once we got the confirmation that there was indeed no baby, we decided that the best route would be to take the medicine.

The rest of this post details my miscarriage. If you are not interested in reading that, I’d stop here!

We got home and ended up taking the medicine that day. The medicine is called “cytotec” and the way my doctor wanted me to take it was to insert one pill vaginally and take three by mouth and would need to repeat this the next day. I did the first dose on July 7 around 1PM. The doctor also prescribed me Norco and Ibuprofen. Around 3PM, I was cramping pretty bad. Around 4PM, I started bleeding pretty heavily. At around 6PM, I passed what I believed to be the sac. It was about the size of my palm. Prior to passing that, the cramps I felt were the worst I had felt so far.

We repeated the dose the next day at 1PM. At this point, I was still bleeding. Later that night at around 10:30PM, I started to feel really dizzy and weak. Sean called the advice nurse at Kaiser and they recommended I go to the ER. We went to the ER and the wait was 3 hours long. I knew that I couldn’t be in the hospital waiting room for three hours. We even went to another location and their wait was also three hours long. We decided that I’d go home and sleep it off. If I still woke up feeling like that, we would go back to the ER.

I woke up the next morning and still felt pretty dizzy and weak but now I had the worse migraine. We called the advice nurse again and she recommended we go to the ER. So we went and this time there wasn’t a long wait. I got seen fairly quickly. They hooked me up to an IV and gave me some fluids and some pain medicine for the headache. The doctor wanted another ultrasound to make sure that everything had passed, which it did. She also ran some blood work to make sure that I didn’t lose too much blood, which I didn’t. After my pain went down, they discharged me. I came home and slept it off and woke up feeling much better.

Stay tuned for Part 3!

At the end of May, Sean and I flew from Los Angeles to Chicago and this was the first time I would be visiting Chicago. We flew out on May 19 and Sean took me around Chicago and I was having a great time being in his hometown and seeing where he lived all these years we talked.

On May 23, something felt different and I happened to have a pregnancy test with me. I took the test and it came out positive. I was shaking and I probably didn’t break the news to Sean in the best way but I came flying out of the bathroom and asked him if he also saw a line. He said he did. However, I still wanted to do another test to confirm so when we were out that day, I picked up a Clear Blue Digital with the weeks estimator. I wanted something that said “pregnant” or “not pregnant” so there was no guessing. I took the test and it said “pregnant”.

The thought of being parents combined with the fact that at this point, we had only been together for a little over a month (even though we’ve known each other for a lot longer) freaked us both out. We weren’t sure what to think and it took us both time to process everything. Even though we flew out together, the plan was that I would fly back to Los Angeles by myself and we would figure out what the next step would be once I got back. So on May 25, I flew back to Los Angeles by myself. I didn’t realize that I would take being away from Sean as hard as I did. At this point, we had been together every single day since April 15.

We continued to talk and Skype everyday. We didn’t really talk about the pregnancy too much. I had my first intake appointment with the nurse on June 2 and she confirmed my pregnancy. She gave me a bunch of information and set up my next few appointments. My first appointment with the doctor and ultrasound was scheduled for June 29.

During all this, we decided that I would fly back to Chicago on June 3 and he would be coming back with me and moving to California. We decided that we would rent a car and Sean, Bella (Sean’s dog), Persie (Sean’s cat), and myself would drive from Chicago to California on June 10. During that week I was back in Chicago, we had time to really talk about the baby and we ended up getting really excited for the pregnancy.

When we got to California, we started talking about all the things we wanted to do before baby got here. I was feeling super tired all the time and I was so thankful to have Sean here because he definitely took the best care of me. We were counting down the days to our first ultrasound so we could see the baby for the first time.

Stay tuned for Part 2!