Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?

First of all, let me do the shameful apology of explaining that I have not kept up to date and feel very bad about that. For several reasons but the main two are 1. My little Goose has been neglected in the blog world for I have not recorded his every perfect little thing for over a year and 2. My little Egg's story should have been started ten weeks ago and only now am I even mentioning him for the first time. So here we go... I'll try to get a little of each in and then I will attempt to keep up at least once a month, once again.


July 2014: My baby Elijah (Goose) is One! One year old! I cannot believe it. We decided this time around we would wait two years until trying again. But after getting pregnant every other time when the baby turned 5.5 to 6 months, we decided one year was long enough! Time to remove the Implanon and begin our trying to conceive journey for the fifth time. But this time, things were different. This time, we had to deal with birth control to leave the body and my body to return to normal. This time, I had periods 50 days long, irregular and random. This is not a good mix for an "impatient, I want to be pregnant now!" gal. August Passes. September Passes. Clomid makes its appearance to hopefully regulate me. October. November. Patience. Patience. Months. Trying. Failing. December. Christmas comes and goes. I decide to get a job to distract myself, to get myself out of the house a few nights a week, to have 'me' time and a little cash. I apply to the local BBQ joint. I am hired. I like it. It's fun. I socialize. I do well. We have one last attempt. January I pee on a stick. Lo and Behold! There's a BARELY THERE line, but a line yet the same! Seven months and a positive. Not bad. Not bad at all. The 'Egg' has made its appearance, we are pregnant! Now I am also working :/

I don't feel pregnant. I'm not sick. I'm always sick. This worries me. I go in. I request HCG and progesterone levels. HCG rises. This is good. This is positive. Progesterone is low. 11. This is bad. This is different. I have never had a progesterone problem in the past. What do I do? Lucky for me, I have a good friend who just so happens to be a fertility care practioner. She tells me my numbers are too low. She tells me to be seen immediately. I have not heard back from my doctor to tell me the same thing so I reroute things. I call the professionals in Omaha, the naprotechnologist. They see me the same day. They administer a progesterone injection. They send me home with an order of progesterone oil and some very long scary needles. From this day forth, I will inject myself in the backside with a shot every three days. This is okay. I can do this. I can endure this for my baby.

The shots hurt. Bad. The first one I almost pass out. I learn to lay on my side and inject. I learn to take my time pushing the thick liquid in. I learn a  heating pad is my best friend. I learn that if I do it wrong, I will not be walking for the next three days. Literally. They are that hard on me. Maybe this has to do with my back surgery. Maybe I am inserting wrong. Maybe I am just a wimp. I don't know. When I work, I take a vicoden and stay walking and standing and it's not so bad. When I come home and sit down in my chair, I cannot get out of it without help. I can barely put weight on my leg. I cannot roll out of my bed. This will be hard. This will be the hardest early pregnancy I've ever had. But I am still not sick. My husband says "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away" so maybe this time not being sick is a blessing. I can work through the first trimester.

At five weeks my HCG was 906. Four days later my HCG was 2,886. Good. Going up. Wonderful news. February 2nd I note that I am still not feeling sick, This still worries me in the back of my mind. February 9th I am in Colorado on a visit to see friends and family while my husband is on a submarine in the ocean out by Hawaii doing his two week 'deployment'. I have an Ultrasound today. My dear friend is with me. We wait forever. Finally we go in. The tech finds the baby right away and the yoke sac, we see a heartbeat! We see it! It's there, a live, growing baby! We are ecstatic. Happy. Relieved. 119 BPM. This is good. So good. Baby measuring four days smaller than what we thought. They date me 6 weeks 3 days instead of 7 weeks. I can deal. Implantation could be off. Doesn't matter. There's a heartbeat! Egg is thriving!

February 15:My right shoulder has been bugging me for six weeks. I think I slept on it wrong. It won't get better. I'm in so much pain from that, my back, and these shots I can barely move. I find a massage therapist. On a Sunday even! He grinds my back to a pulp. Can't say it helped. I think I asked for too much deep tissue.

February 21st: I'm home. Waiting for my husband's arrival home. I decide to chop off my bad hair dye brown job. Chop it all off. Like short. Dye it blonde. I love it! It's freeing. Easy. Sexy! ;)My friend takes the older boys for the night so I can rest a good night until Dave returns the next day. I slept the full night and did not wake up once!Amazing!

I'm taking baby aspirin, folic acid, prenatal, and progesterone. I have mostly cut out all coffee and caffeine. I have maybe one cup a week max. I increased my healthy foods intake, my milk. I get my progesterone measured again. 28, very good! Shots are working. I decide maybe it's time to go see the doctor again. My regular doctor did tell me to come see her once I got back.But I debate seeing her. I don't like how her staff never calls me back in an appropriate amount of time (four days?!) How the nurses call me back when I ask for the doctor to, and when I find out my results on my own days before the office calls me. I decide I need to check other options and maybe find someone to back her up in case there's issues (I already have low progesterone). So I schedule an appointment with a highly recommended male doctor further away, located at the same hospital Elijah was born at. I love that hospital so if I decide to deliver there it would be perfect.

March 2nd Appointment Day: I drive up early with all three boys. They are not the most obedient this morning. I have to drag Gus into the office. I am late. The lady at the desk has to tell me first that she has to go check to see if the doctor "will still see me." This sets me on edge. I drove an hour for nothing? She comes back and says he will. I am immediately taken back. We talk with the male nurse. He is good with the kids. He gets my history. Doctor comes in. I'm already a nervous wreck because 1. I am late, 2. my children are noisy and disobedient. He calms me. He has great bedside manner. He doesn't care about either. He is nice. I tell him my concerns about my original doctor. He is so nice. He says it is okay if I even just come up to see him once or twice more. He will do my 20 week ultrasound. I like him. I decide I'll keep him. I decide to ask one more silly question. How likely can you miss twins at six weeks? He says it's possible and if he wants he'll just take a peek. I said "Just like that? You'd do an ultrasound? Doesn't it cost a lot more?" Amazingly, he says he gives free ultrasounds. We could look at baby every time if I want. The only one that costs is the 20 week. I definitely like him now. Nurse goes to get ultrasound machine.

Boys are excited. Boys want to see "baby sister." How disappointed they'll be if it's a boy! Doctor puts probe on my tummy and turns machine on. Boys look. Boys ask where is baby? Nurse distracts them with blow up glove balloons while doctor and I look. The screen is fuzzy. I don't see a baby. I see the uterus. I see a blob. I can't make out blob. This is taking a long time. A lot longer than it should. I look at doctor. He looks concerned. I look at screen. He points out my heartbeat. He turns on the colors. He looks at me. I get nervous. I look at him. I said "It's not good is it?" He says, "No....(pause)... I'm sorry.... (pause).... I can't see the heartbeat." I start to cry. My belly is shaking. I try to stay still. His face is worried, his words are soft and compassionate. I say, "He's gone?" He says, "I think so. I can see where the fetal pole would be but there is no heartbeat." He says we can try again in a week, sometimes he's seen this then later seen a heartbeat. I said, "What are my chances of that? Honestly?" He says, "I'm sorry. Not very good. The baby is not near as big as it should be at ten weeks." He puts his hand on my leg. He says he is sorry. I cry. The boys ask "Where's the baby? We want to see the baby." I tell them.I tell them the baby stopped growing. The baby died in my tummy. Even Elijah catches on. He's 19 months. He says "Momma sad?" I say yes, Momma sad. The doctor turns the machine off. I ask him if I should still take my progesterone that night. He says no. He believes it is over. He says to talk to my husband and decide what we want to do. He is so very sorry. He says to call him. He will call me back and personally talk to me. I tell him I will. He again squeezes my shoulder and apologizes. He leaves. I am left to herd the boys out the door. I am left to get them safely to the van, to the store, to home. Just I am left.

March 3rd: Today. Today I write. Today I think. Today I process. I don't understand.Yes I know chromosomally, things can go wrong (yes that's a word I just said it.) But I did things right, I took all the right things, all the miscarriage preventers. And still. 5 pregnancies. 3 babies. 3 beautiful wonderful little boys. Not four. Unusual. Once you see a heartbeat the chances of miscarriage decrease significantly. I called the doctor back today. My husband wants to see the ultrasound. He still has a grain of hope that maybe it was a fluke. Now we wait. We wait for the appointment Friday. We wait for the miscarriage. We wait to schedule a D&C if necessary. We wait for me to regulate again, we wait for cycles to come and go, and we wait to try again. And mostly, we wait for the pain to lessen and the healing to begin. We wait.

I'll continue in a few days about my beautiful blessings and their growing, but now, I've exhausted all I have. I just had to get that out. Time to wait.

"You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are grey. You'll never know dear how much I love you, until my sunshine you're taken away."