Just like
the post about my dad, I feel like I am finally to the point where I can share this story. If nothing else, this blog is
alot a memoir for my daughters and they need to know how they came to be.
But this is not their birth story ~ but of the sibling that came before them.
The baby I never knew I was pregnant with.
In the spring of 2002, Gregg and I had been married right at two years. Baby fever hit me with everything I had. Before that time, I would have twinges but when it the fever just didn't go away, I knew it was time.
In April I met with my ob/gyn for a consultation about getting off of the pill. I left the office with some prenatal vitamins, books and pamphlets about getting pregnant and basically was given the "green light" to go get pregnant.
Funny, it was like I went to that appointment wanting Dr. Largoza to tell me that at 25 years old, I was old enough, mature enough, and married long enough to have a baby. She just started handing me literature and pills and I was like, "she must think I can do this!"
So, that month we tried and come May, I got my period. So in May we tried again, and in mid-June (it was Father's Day), I got my period again.
One of the techniques we applied to conceiving was the every-other-day approach. Meaning Day 1 was the day of your period ~ and start "trying" on Day 7. And continue for every-other-day until about Day 19.
I remember Day 7, Gregg and I were painting our master bedroom and bathroom that day. I started bleeding (my period was over a few days before) and I called my dr. We were to start trying and here I was bleeding again!
The nurse had a quick, simple answer for me that I accepted. She said that I might be ovulating and one of my ovulatory cysts might have ruptured so that is why I was bleeding. Since I was painting and exerting myself in different ways, I chalked it up to me overdoing it.
Oh, well. No trying that month.
It was the end of June that my dad was diagnosed with Leukemia and we thought it was the end for him (again). In early July is when he was admitted to MD Anderson in Houston to begin the isolation to get him physically ready for his bone marrow transplant.
I was in Houston with my mom for a couple weeks in July. I'd go the bathroom one day, I'd be bleeding. A couple of days later it would stop. Then it would start over again. I also had cramps that I associated with the bleeding.
It was an inconvenience at the most but my mind was preoccupied with everything with my dad.
Flash to lunchtime on July 22.
I had dropped Bo off at the vet for the day probably for allergy testing or something. I was at home with my parent's dog, Daisy.
We had a two story house and I remember walking towards the half bath downstairs. I ended up laying down on the floor in sheer pain in my left side.
I don't remember how long I laid there. I ended up going up to my bedroom to call the dr.
The nurse asked if I was pregnant.
I was like, "no...I had a period on Father's Day and I've been bleeding on and off ever since. And we hadn't "tried".
She told me to go take a pregnancy test and call her back. Good thing I had one on hand.
It was positive. I knew that I was either pregnant or miscarrying.
An appointment for later on was scheduled so I took a shower. I remember I chose to wear khaki shorts and sleeveless light blue Liz Claiborne sweater with a white flower on it.
As I drove myself to my appointment, I chose not to call Gregg and tell him anything. Perhaps, there was a chance that I was pregnant, I wanted to surprise him.
At the appointment, Dr. Largoza did a trans vaginal ultrasound on me. I was off looking for something in the screen not knowing what to look for.
She told me that I was pregnant but my baby was not where it was supposed to be. Instead of being in my uterus, it was in my left tube. An
ectopic, or tubal, pregnancy.
I'm thinking, "ok let's have a procedure to put the baby where it needs to be".
Not quite. She told me that I would need to go to the hospital next door and she was admitting me for emergency surgery.
The next 18hours or so was a blur. I remember calling Gregg and telling him to meet me at the hospital ER. Poor guy didn't even know I was at the dr, so he wasn't prepared to hear that I was about to have emergency surgery. And that we had lost our first child.
When I walked up to the ER check-in, the attendants were waiting for me. Dr Largoza had called ahead to tell them I was coming. I remember needing a place to sit immediately. I think someone brought me a wheelchair and found a bed for me. I bypassed a waiting room full of people.
I remember changing in a hospital gown and the nurses putting pads under me because I was severely bleeding.
In fact, I was hemorrhaging. I was later told that if it had continued, within hours I would have died due to my internal bleeding.
Gregg got there just before I was taken off to be prepped for surgery. I vaguely remember the anesthesiologist and then I have flash of remembering being in recovery.
Gregg waited for what he said took well over an hour. He sat by himself in the waiting room waiting for me to get out of surgery. He was worried about losing me and worried that we might not be able to have more children.
Back then, it was just Gregg and me. Our families were distant so there was no one to call to come to sit with him. He didn't call any neighbors either. He just waited to call people after the surgery when he knew what to tell them.
Dr. Largoza came out to meet Gregg. It was the 1st time that they had ever met. She said the laparoscopic surgery went well. She couldn't save my left tube because it was severely damaged. And there were pictures to prove it. (I later saw them too). She said she thought I should be able to conceive more children with just one tube.
Apparently, my tube must have been damaged from the start and I had to get pregnant to find out. there was an abnormality.
Yearly physicals and pap smears don't rule out this. It should be required that every woman be given an ultrasound for all of her parts. A woman shouldn't have to get pregnant 1st to find out that something is wrong.
I laid in bed that night in sheer shock of it all. I had been pregnant. I had dreamed of being pregnant and this right of passage.
It was gone.
Gone with my severely damaged left tube. Which meant to me, half of my chances of conceiving again was gone.
I had surgery. I had never had been in the hospital for anything in my life. But I had been in this particular hospital before. It was the hospital I was born in.
So to have gone through emergency surgery, to remove a baby that was in one of my fallopian tubes was traumatizing.
I was put in a room with a woman who had a hysterectomy. I remember talking with her throughout the night with the white curtain between us.
Gregg came the next morning and I was able to check out around lunchtime.
I had to be wheeled out to the car in a wheelchair due to hospital policy. On the way to the parking garage, I passed a woman being wheeled out with her newborn.
I wondered if I would ever have a newborn to wheel out.
My mom and sister(who was visiting from Mississippi) drove to San Antonio from Houston the next day for a couple of hours.
I showed my mom my three scars and she pulled down her pants to show me her scars from where she had her tubes tied.
Not.quite.the.same.thing.
My sister, who was dealing with infertility, told me that "at least you know you can get pregnant."
Seriously. that is what I deal with with those two.
The next few weeks became increasingly difficult for me emotionally. Gregg and I struggled as a couple. While I mourned the baby and our loss, he was just so thankful that I was alive.
He didn't see the baby as a "baby" but rather just a "spirit". But, in that examining room on July 22nd, Dr. Largoza called the image on the ultrasound screen a baby.
I will always be grateful to her for validating my pregnancy.
One night while out at a restaurant while my 15 year old sister-in-law was in town, I ran out of the restaurant crying. While Gregg and Lindsey were happily eating their chips and hot sauce, I had images of my baby being pulled out of my belly button.
At my post-op appointment six weeks later, we were given the "ok" to start trying again.
Macy was born on May 22, 2003 ~ 10 months to the day of losing my 1st baby.
I was fortunate to get pregnant with both Macy and Paige the very first month of trying with one fallopian tube.
We are immeasurably blessed.
My mind does wander though to the baby that would have been born probably in February of 2003. Would it have been our boy?
And if I had that baby, I sure wouldn't have Macy Lynn. And what would I do without my Roo-Roo? And my Pumpkin?
It irritates us when people assume we (or Gregg) might be disappointed that we don't have a son. Healthy babies is all we cared about. We've had too many friends suffer infertility, had multiple miscarriages, one friend deliver a stillborn baby at 22 weeks, and one friend deliver a full-term baby only for him to die 19 hours later. (And we went to that precious baby's funeral and let me tell you ~ it was excruciating. Tears were rolling down my neck ~ I cried more then then I did at my dad's funeral.)
Two children is all we have ever wanted. And as Gregg likes to say, "you're just rollin' the dice" every time you get pregnant.
It has been six years today and I still feel that "loss". Sure, when I talk to someone face to face, I could matter-of-factly tell my story. I've done it a million times.
Then, there are times I allow myself to "go there". To remember. To feel terrified. To grieve. It doesn't happen often but it is still makes my eyes well up and my heart race, feel heavy and takes my breath away.
Just in writing this post, I couldn't do it all in one sitting. I've had to
sike myself up enough to finally write it. I had to take many breaks over the past couple of days and almost talked myself out of writing it at all. I was going to write about it
on Mother's Day but I wasn't ready.
I do feel fortunate to be able to celebrate Mother's Day because I am a mother. I was a mother in July of 2002 and I am a mother today.
In a happy place in my mind, I cling to the hope that heaven has a special place for little babies gone before they ever had a chance. It is a coping method that I chose to use and I will until I go to heaven to see for myself.
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