Wednesday, September 4, 2013
"So what have you been up to lately?" "Oh, not much.......just moving halfway across the globe"
First off I want to thank everyone for all the love and support regarding my last post. I was amazed at the amount of people that thanked me for sharing and shared their own stories of loss. Bringing the stigma and guilt of miscarriage out of the dark ages is something that will always be important to me because of that experience.
Soooo...its been an interesting week. Like I wrote in last weeks post, we are moving to Spain. In fact, Im surrounded by boxes as I type. The movers come tomorrow morning and our wonderful townhouse that we've made our home will be empty and we will move in with my parents until the time comes to leave America. A LOT of people have asked me if Im scared to move overseas, and I can honestly say no. Im going to miss our friends and family so much but living in a foreign country doesnt scare me, it excites me. Life is an adventure and I dont intend to spend the next three years being a "base rat" (for you non-military readers--base rat: a servicemeenber or dependent who NEVER leaves base to experience the culture and community of their duty station) There are so many things in Spain and Europe that I want to do during our three years there. So Im working on a European Bucket List. I'm a big fan of the bucket list! Last Christmas during a painfully slow day at work a co-worker and I realized we are both turning 30 next year and devised this great plan. I was going to trailblaze into my 30's with a 30' Before 30 list. I made the list and I was able to do quite few things, but the pregnancy, miscarriage and orders to Spain caused me to revamp my list. My idea even inspired my cousin, who is turning 40 next year to create a 40 before 40 list! Sooo below is my list. HELP me add to it if you've ever been to Europe.
1. Learn to Speak Spanish (duh I know, but I want to be fluent enough to haggle with the Gypsy's at the market)
2. Run with the bulls! Jonathan is absoluetly againist this.....come to think of it I need to check the life insurance policy to see if being gored by a bullhorn entitles my beneficiaries to benefits haha
3. Go to Paris, and drink wine and eat cheese in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.
4. Climb the Rock of Giblratar.
Stay tuned for next post. "I got PCS problems...." (sung to the tune of Jay Z I got 99 problems)
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
"All things work together for my good"
The word instills fear in every woman hoping to start a family. Miscarriage. "The expulsion of a fetus from the womb before it is able to survive independently, esp. spontaneously or as the result of accident" about 10 to 20% of know pregnancies end in miscarriage, and more than 80% of those losses happen before 20 weeks. This past February I became a part of these statistics. This is our miscarriage story, told more to help with our grieving process but also for other women who are experiencing the same....may you find peace during your loss and dont feel as if you have failed....."all things work together..."
December 2012 was a busy month. My brother got married and we celebrated the holidays with family and friends as usual We had been so busy and I was feeling super run down. I just figured I was tired and maybe fighting a cold. Never did it cross my mind that I might be pregnant. On Sunday January 6th s omething told me to take a pregnancy test. I have never seen two lines pop up so quickly! Even though I had been off birth control since October I never expected to get pregnant that suddenly. My doctor had prepared me for a minimum of 6 months before we conceived due some previous complications with abnormal pap smears and a LEEP. After those two pink lines stopped my heart, I very calmly walked out and said to my husband "babe I'm pregnant". His repsonse "Yeah right!" and he got a positive pregnancy test thrown towards him.. The look on his face was priceless when he caught it; a mixture of shock, fear and pride all in one! I have no idea why we were both so shocked. I had been off contraception since October, but with the possibility of me taking a new job and him being deployed in the Spring of 2013 we had discussed me going back on birth control. I was actually planning on discussing options with my doctor at my yearly visit in January. So after a night of no sleep and another instantenously positive test the next morning we made an appointment to see the obgyn for later that week, with an agreement that we weren't going to tell anyone until we got confirmation from the doctor that I was indeed pregnant.
Later that week at my apt they did the typical work up, and much to our surprise they did an ultrasound. Sure enough I was pregnant! Although too early to see a heartbeat or embryo we did see a gestational sac. The doctor wanted to see me back in two weeks to get a better idea if how far along we were. Based on our visit he thought we were 5 weeks along, but I was too early in my pregnancy to nail down a due date. Even though we didn't have a due date we left with prenatal vitamins and enough brochures about becoming parents to supply a health department. The excitement hit us and we told our parents, siblings and a few very close friends. Although we were excited we were cautious. Because I was so early in the pregnancy at our first appointment my doctor wanted to do an HCG count to try and determine fetal growth and get an idea of a due date.. I had blood drawn every other day for a week and although my hcg levels were increasing there were a few samples that were not doubling. My doctor didn't seen too concerned but just wanted to keep an eye on things. Google medicine freak that I am, I reasearched HCG levels till I was blue in the face and the truth is..its a crapshoot. Some women's HCGs run low their entire pregnancy and some double, even triple everday. Finally, Jonathan banished me from all things googled medicine or Web MD and we decided just to wait and pray. We went into our two week follow up not knowing if our baby was growing. I remember laying on the ultrasound table with my eyes closed too scared to look at the screen because my greatest fear would be there was nothing there. The most wonderful sentence I ever heard was "We have a healthy heart beat" coming from the ultrasound technicians mouth. This was it! The presence of a fetal heartbeat reduces chance of a miscarriage by 60%...that heartbeat became "permission" for us to get excited. Our first born child was due on September 17th 2013.
A few days after appointment, and after we blabbed our exciting news to everyone, I started to FEEL pregnant! Exhaustion, food aversion, nausea, extremely sore breast, major craving for citrus fruit. ;Even though we were still in the first trimester I felt so confident that everything was going to ok because of the presence of my little ones heartbeat. The job I was interviewing for fell through and my husbands deployment was cancelled due to sequestration. I felt like God had lined it all up for us to expand our family with what I was certain would be a little girl named Madelynn Ann Palmer in September. On Sunday, February 3rd, at 7 weeks and 5 days pregnant I went grocery shopping. As I was finishing up, I got a very sharp pain, and then another. I physically couldn't move the pain was so intense. I had a full cart at the commissary and I left without buying groceries, just left a full cart there.......in the commissary, on a payday weekend. (you military people understand how significant that is) Since it was the weekend we called the ER to see what we should do. They advised me we could come in but there wouldn't be much they do if I was miscarrying. MISCARRYING...that word filled my heart with dread. I had a routine apt scheduled that following day so we decided to wait it out. and By the next morning I had started to spot but was holding out hope that is was just due to my uterus expanding. At my appoinment, laying on that table watching the ultrasound tech desperately searching for my baby was the most heartbreaking thing ever. That same screen that showed our tiny baby with a flickering heart just two weeks before was now full of nothing but a clouded uterus filled with blood. No baby, no gestational sac.........nothing. At 8 week I had lost our baby.
After the ultrasound confirmed the baby was gone, we had to wait to see the doctor. I remember sitting in one of the small waiting rooms with Jonathan sitting next to me holding my hand. I think he was waiting for the breakdown.......but I couldn't cry, I couldn't speak, I couldn't get angry, all I could do was sit in the most numb state I had been in since my mother died when I was 13. My doctor pulled us into his office and gave us sincere apologies..I'll never forget how the situation seemed to affect him the same way it did us; like his heart was breaking for us. We went over a lot of information that I don't remember but what it boiled down do was that my body had already started the process of a natural miscarriage and he felt that allowing my body to continue to terminate the pregnancy on its on versus a D&C was the best approach. Jonathan and I agreed and we scheduled an appointment for two weeks to follow up.
Jonathan and I had driven separately holding out hope that everyhting was ok and after appointment we would head off to work. Jonathan wanted to leave one of the cars and drive me home but I needed 20 minutes to myself. I asked him to call our parents and my boss and let them know what was going on because I couldnt verbalize what had happened. . Honestly, I made Jonathan field phone calls for several days because talking to people was too painful. I didn't want to talk to anyone, him included about what happened. And if you are going through a miscarriage please, please dont shut people out, especially your significant other. This awful thing didn't just happend to me, if wasnt just my baby that died, it was my husband's as well. His grief, while not as apparant as mine was just and real and tangible. The 20 minute drive home was a blur. I haven't cried that hard in my entire life. I'm always the person who feels like I have to be strong for those around me and I was falling apart.bI knew driving home that getting through this would be one of the most difficult things I had been through.
The next few days were a blur. I only left the bed to shower and use the restroom. Physically, I was not in a lot of pain but emotionally I was felt like I was being tortured. That Wednesday, two days after my doctors appoint, I forced myself tog go to work. I was sooo grateful to be doing something other than thinking about what had happened. I did a good job of putting on a brave face that week and telling the girls at work that I was going to be ok, and I was...eventually, but at that point I wasnt, I was just doing a halfway job of faking it. Wednesday of that week one of my closest friends gave birth to her second a baby girl. I did something that most people in the midst of a miscarriage would never consider, I went to visit her and her newborn in the hospital.. My friend was so gracious and asked me if I wanted to hold her newborn daughter. Holding that precious miracle was the most wonderful feeling in the world. Seeing that new life gave me so much hope and I knew that one day it would be our baby I was holding. She will never know what holding her baby did for me. I left that hospital still with a broken heart but a heart that had hope. Later that evening I passed our baby completely in tact in her gestational sac with her eyes and umbilical cord recognizable. As strange as it sounds it gave me peace to see what most would call an "embryo", to me it was just my tiny baby that had already left her body and was being taken care of in heaven by my mother and grandparents. . I gave her to my husband and asked him to take care of her as well as the positive pregnancy tests and ultrasound pictures we had. I didn't feel that hanging on to those items was healthy for me and I knew that the baby I had passed was just a shell of the person she would have become.
So here we are 5 months later. How am I? Good and Bad. Physically my body handled the miscarriage fantastically. I did not have to go through a D&C and I didn't suffer through weeks and pain and bleeding like a lot of women do. My body was back to its normal routine within 5 weeks. Emotionally, my heart is still healing. I have a friend who is due the same week I was supposed to deliver and watching her pregnancy grow was very difficult at first. There was a lot of "that's supposed to be me" attitude running through my head but at the same time I was and am excited for her and her miracle. All expecting mothers deserve every second of joy their pregancies and babies bring them. Slowly, over the days and weeks my intolerance towards growing bellies has grown into hope that someday my belly will be the one that is filled with life. One of the turning points to cease my self-pity was watching another friend of mine go through the process of learning she will never be able to have children. Watching her go through those emotions was awful. My heart hurts so much for her and her husband. Talking to her about her experience helped me realize that I am blessed to even have to possibility of having children and that the likehood that someday I will get to hold our babies is high and Im blessed ot have that oppurtunity. .
My faith in God has never wavered throughout this process. I have ALWAYS been a firm believer that ALL things (even things that hurt us or things we consider bad) happen for a reason. I have had a few angry conversations with God but at the end of the day I KNOW that he makes ALL things work together for my good. Controversial viewpoint or not, I truly believe that my baby had a soul and is in heaven being loved on by her grandma, great-grandparents and Jesus. Someday when the blessing of children come and they are old enough to understand I want them to know that they have a big sister in heaven that we didn't get to meet herw on earth.
The scripture that got Jonathan and I through this was Romans 8:28 "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.." Its always a miracle to me when you can see God's plans in action, sometimes it takes years to see God in action...God revealed himself to us in a big way in the middle of June. Jonathan received orders to Rota, Spain on a hot fill billet and we will be leaving the United States to spend three years living in Spain at the end of August. I'm not sure what God has planned for us in Spain but its something big! .if I were still pregnant with that baby, Spain would not be happening, or it would and Jonathan would have to miss the birth of our first child. So for now we are in the midst of processing an overseas move to Spain and yes, the plans to start a family are still in progress. I know that when the time is right, God is going to bless us with a beautiful baby. For now we are just gonna let God do his thing and hold on for the ride. His plans tend to be a lot more amazing than mine, especially when I let go of my need ot control every aspect of life. In the meantime I'll lean on God, my wonderful husband, family and friends when the hurt of losing our first baby hits me, I'll know that the pain is only temporary.
December 2012 was a busy month. My brother got married and we celebrated the holidays with family and friends as usual We had been so busy and I was feeling super run down. I just figured I was tired and maybe fighting a cold. Never did it cross my mind that I might be pregnant. On Sunday January 6th s omething told me to take a pregnancy test. I have never seen two lines pop up so quickly! Even though I had been off birth control since October I never expected to get pregnant that suddenly. My doctor had prepared me for a minimum of 6 months before we conceived due some previous complications with abnormal pap smears and a LEEP. After those two pink lines stopped my heart, I very calmly walked out and said to my husband "babe I'm pregnant". His repsonse "Yeah right!" and he got a positive pregnancy test thrown towards him.. The look on his face was priceless when he caught it; a mixture of shock, fear and pride all in one! I have no idea why we were both so shocked. I had been off contraception since October, but with the possibility of me taking a new job and him being deployed in the Spring of 2013 we had discussed me going back on birth control. I was actually planning on discussing options with my doctor at my yearly visit in January. So after a night of no sleep and another instantenously positive test the next morning we made an appointment to see the obgyn for later that week, with an agreement that we weren't going to tell anyone until we got confirmation from the doctor that I was indeed pregnant.
Later that week at my apt they did the typical work up, and much to our surprise they did an ultrasound. Sure enough I was pregnant! Although too early to see a heartbeat or embryo we did see a gestational sac. The doctor wanted to see me back in two weeks to get a better idea if how far along we were. Based on our visit he thought we were 5 weeks along, but I was too early in my pregnancy to nail down a due date. Even though we didn't have a due date we left with prenatal vitamins and enough brochures about becoming parents to supply a health department. The excitement hit us and we told our parents, siblings and a few very close friends. Although we were excited we were cautious. Because I was so early in the pregnancy at our first appointment my doctor wanted to do an HCG count to try and determine fetal growth and get an idea of a due date.. I had blood drawn every other day for a week and although my hcg levels were increasing there were a few samples that were not doubling. My doctor didn't seen too concerned but just wanted to keep an eye on things. Google medicine freak that I am, I reasearched HCG levels till I was blue in the face and the truth is..its a crapshoot. Some women's HCGs run low their entire pregnancy and some double, even triple everday. Finally, Jonathan banished me from all things googled medicine or Web MD and we decided just to wait and pray. We went into our two week follow up not knowing if our baby was growing. I remember laying on the ultrasound table with my eyes closed too scared to look at the screen because my greatest fear would be there was nothing there. The most wonderful sentence I ever heard was "We have a healthy heart beat" coming from the ultrasound technicians mouth. This was it! The presence of a fetal heartbeat reduces chance of a miscarriage by 60%...that heartbeat became "permission" for us to get excited. Our first born child was due on September 17th 2013.
A few days after appointment, and after we blabbed our exciting news to everyone, I started to FEEL pregnant! Exhaustion, food aversion, nausea, extremely sore breast, major craving for citrus fruit. ;Even though we were still in the first trimester I felt so confident that everything was going to ok because of the presence of my little ones heartbeat. The job I was interviewing for fell through and my husbands deployment was cancelled due to sequestration. I felt like God had lined it all up for us to expand our family with what I was certain would be a little girl named Madelynn Ann Palmer in September. On Sunday, February 3rd, at 7 weeks and 5 days pregnant I went grocery shopping. As I was finishing up, I got a very sharp pain, and then another. I physically couldn't move the pain was so intense. I had a full cart at the commissary and I left without buying groceries, just left a full cart there.......in the commissary, on a payday weekend. (you military people understand how significant that is) Since it was the weekend we called the ER to see what we should do. They advised me we could come in but there wouldn't be much they do if I was miscarrying. MISCARRYING...that word filled my heart with dread. I had a routine apt scheduled that following day so we decided to wait it out. and By the next morning I had started to spot but was holding out hope that is was just due to my uterus expanding. At my appoinment, laying on that table watching the ultrasound tech desperately searching for my baby was the most heartbreaking thing ever. That same screen that showed our tiny baby with a flickering heart just two weeks before was now full of nothing but a clouded uterus filled with blood. No baby, no gestational sac.........nothing. At 8 week I had lost our baby.
After the ultrasound confirmed the baby was gone, we had to wait to see the doctor. I remember sitting in one of the small waiting rooms with Jonathan sitting next to me holding my hand. I think he was waiting for the breakdown.......but I couldn't cry, I couldn't speak, I couldn't get angry, all I could do was sit in the most numb state I had been in since my mother died when I was 13. My doctor pulled us into his office and gave us sincere apologies..I'll never forget how the situation seemed to affect him the same way it did us; like his heart was breaking for us. We went over a lot of information that I don't remember but what it boiled down do was that my body had already started the process of a natural miscarriage and he felt that allowing my body to continue to terminate the pregnancy on its on versus a D&C was the best approach. Jonathan and I agreed and we scheduled an appointment for two weeks to follow up.
Jonathan and I had driven separately holding out hope that everyhting was ok and after appointment we would head off to work. Jonathan wanted to leave one of the cars and drive me home but I needed 20 minutes to myself. I asked him to call our parents and my boss and let them know what was going on because I couldnt verbalize what had happened. . Honestly, I made Jonathan field phone calls for several days because talking to people was too painful. I didn't want to talk to anyone, him included about what happened. And if you are going through a miscarriage please, please dont shut people out, especially your significant other. This awful thing didn't just happend to me, if wasnt just my baby that died, it was my husband's as well. His grief, while not as apparant as mine was just and real and tangible. The 20 minute drive home was a blur. I haven't cried that hard in my entire life. I'm always the person who feels like I have to be strong for those around me and I was falling apart.bI knew driving home that getting through this would be one of the most difficult things I had been through.
The next few days were a blur. I only left the bed to shower and use the restroom. Physically, I was not in a lot of pain but emotionally I was felt like I was being tortured. That Wednesday, two days after my doctors appoint, I forced myself tog go to work. I was sooo grateful to be doing something other than thinking about what had happened. I did a good job of putting on a brave face that week and telling the girls at work that I was going to be ok, and I was...eventually, but at that point I wasnt, I was just doing a halfway job of faking it. Wednesday of that week one of my closest friends gave birth to her second a baby girl. I did something that most people in the midst of a miscarriage would never consider, I went to visit her and her newborn in the hospital.. My friend was so gracious and asked me if I wanted to hold her newborn daughter. Holding that precious miracle was the most wonderful feeling in the world. Seeing that new life gave me so much hope and I knew that one day it would be our baby I was holding. She will never know what holding her baby did for me. I left that hospital still with a broken heart but a heart that had hope. Later that evening I passed our baby completely in tact in her gestational sac with her eyes and umbilical cord recognizable. As strange as it sounds it gave me peace to see what most would call an "embryo", to me it was just my tiny baby that had already left her body and was being taken care of in heaven by my mother and grandparents. . I gave her to my husband and asked him to take care of her as well as the positive pregnancy tests and ultrasound pictures we had. I didn't feel that hanging on to those items was healthy for me and I knew that the baby I had passed was just a shell of the person she would have become.
So here we are 5 months later. How am I? Good and Bad. Physically my body handled the miscarriage fantastically. I did not have to go through a D&C and I didn't suffer through weeks and pain and bleeding like a lot of women do. My body was back to its normal routine within 5 weeks. Emotionally, my heart is still healing. I have a friend who is due the same week I was supposed to deliver and watching her pregnancy grow was very difficult at first. There was a lot of "that's supposed to be me" attitude running through my head but at the same time I was and am excited for her and her miracle. All expecting mothers deserve every second of joy their pregancies and babies bring them. Slowly, over the days and weeks my intolerance towards growing bellies has grown into hope that someday my belly will be the one that is filled with life. One of the turning points to cease my self-pity was watching another friend of mine go through the process of learning she will never be able to have children. Watching her go through those emotions was awful. My heart hurts so much for her and her husband. Talking to her about her experience helped me realize that I am blessed to even have to possibility of having children and that the likehood that someday I will get to hold our babies is high and Im blessed ot have that oppurtunity. .
My faith in God has never wavered throughout this process. I have ALWAYS been a firm believer that ALL things (even things that hurt us or things we consider bad) happen for a reason. I have had a few angry conversations with God but at the end of the day I KNOW that he makes ALL things work together for my good. Controversial viewpoint or not, I truly believe that my baby had a soul and is in heaven being loved on by her grandma, great-grandparents and Jesus. Someday when the blessing of children come and they are old enough to understand I want them to know that they have a big sister in heaven that we didn't get to meet herw on earth.
The scripture that got Jonathan and I through this was Romans 8:28 "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.." Its always a miracle to me when you can see God's plans in action, sometimes it takes years to see God in action...God revealed himself to us in a big way in the middle of June. Jonathan received orders to Rota, Spain on a hot fill billet and we will be leaving the United States to spend three years living in Spain at the end of August. I'm not sure what God has planned for us in Spain but its something big! .if I were still pregnant with that baby, Spain would not be happening, or it would and Jonathan would have to miss the birth of our first child. So for now we are in the midst of processing an overseas move to Spain and yes, the plans to start a family are still in progress. I know that when the time is right, God is going to bless us with a beautiful baby. For now we are just gonna let God do his thing and hold on for the ride. His plans tend to be a lot more amazing than mine, especially when I let go of my need ot control every aspect of life. In the meantime I'll lean on God, my wonderful husband, family and friends when the hurt of losing our first baby hits me, I'll know that the pain is only temporary.
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