The Trying Trying

I mentioned in my last blog post that Derek and I have been trying to get pregnant for a while and that I’d write more about that. So here it is, our journey to baby so far.

I stopped taking birth control in October 2012. We decided that we weren’t really going to be trying to get pregnant, but we weren’t going to prevent it either. After all, Derek was getting close to 30. 🙂

I found out in January 2013 that I was pregnant, and I was really excited and Derek was really nervous. Haha. We told my parents and sister and brother-in-law about the baby when I was about 6 weeks along, and then we told Derek’s dad and his wife and a couple friends around 8 weeks. We were going to tell the rest of Derek’s family when we saw them and the rest of our friends after my first ultrasound.

My first ultrasound was in the middle of February. I should have been around 9 weeks, but the ultrasound wasn’t showing a heartbeat and the doctor said the baby had stopped growing around 6 weeks. They never used the word “miscarriage” at that first appointment, but I later found out that it was called a missed miscarriage, meaning that the pregnancy was no longer viable, but my body hadn’t caught on yet.

There were no signs that anything had been going wrong, like no bleeding, loss of pregnancy symptoms, etc, so it was a pretty big, and terrible, surprise. Of course, I knew that miscarriages are pretty common and that it was a possibility, but I don’t think people really expect something like that to happen to them. Since that time, though, I’ve talked to and learned of many women I know who have gone through miscarriage.

So anyway, my doctor gave us three options: I could get a procedure done that would basically remove all the tissue and everything, I could use a medicine that causes the cervix to contract, or I could wait for everything to pass naturally. We decided to let things happen naturally.

So we waited and waited and nothing really happened. After a couple of weeks, I didn’t feel pregnant anymore, but still nothing happened. After almost a month, I went back to the doctor, had another ultrasound (same results), and the doctor had me take the medicine to avoid any infection or things like that.

It was painful and it took til May for my body to get back to “normal.” We got the okay to keep trying, though, and then I had another positive pregnancy test in October 2013. We found out about that pregnancy around 4 weeks and then I miscarried again around 5-5 ½ weeks (I guess this is technically called a chemical pregnancy).

I was so sure that that pregnancy would have a better outcome because two miscarriages in a row are quite a bit more rare. When I had a second miscarriage, my doctor said that we were “probably just unlucky twice.” Not very reassuring! At this point, even though my doctor didn’t think so, I was starting to think that maybe there really was something wrong and maybe we wouldn’t be able to have kids.

Throughout this time, we didn’t really tell a lot of people what was going on. At first, I felt like I couldn’t even talk about it without being really emotional, and then it just seemed like an awkward thing to bring up. I’m a lot more private than Derek is (or would probably like us to be) too. And if I’m really honest, I think I felt at least a little bit ashamed.

I think a lot of people want to know why there’s suffering in the world. Not really having suffered, I would explain that there’s sin in the world and that makes it imperfect, or something like that, and I could be okay with that explanation. Going through something that really hurts, though, causes problems. I had a hard time, especially during the first miscarriage, knowing that God knew what was happening and how we were feeling, and yet it was still happening.

Through these miscarriages, I’ve come to know God as a loving Father who really does grieve with me and comforts me, where in the past I haven’t really had the opportunity to come to know him that way.

Even from the beginning, from when I had that first ultrasound, I felt like I was going to be okay. I was sad and disappointed, and I grieved—the time and the baby and the life that we lost—but I was okay. The Bible says that God is close to the broken-hearted and rescues those whose spirits are crushed, and I really felt that. I had a lot of questions and worries about what would happen in the future, but God was there and I was okay.

So now fast forward to this past April: another positive pregnancy test and a little bit of cautious hopefulness. 🙂 I had early hcg testing to make sure my numbers were doubling as they should (they were), a brief scare with spotting around 5 weeks (super nerve-wracking for me, but it turned out to be nothing), an ultrasound at 6 weeks where we got to hear the heartbeat and see our tiny…blob, an ultrasound at 8 weeks where we got to see our little wiggly bean and his/her heartbeat, and then a 12 week appointment where we heard the heartbeat on the doppler—such a reassuring sound!

It’s been so exciting to share this pregnancy with our friends and family! All is going well so far, and we pray that it continues! I know that we have been so much more fortunate than a lot of people, couples who go through miscarriage after miscarriage after miscarriage or couples who are never even able to conceive at all, but I hope by sharing about our experiences we can be an encouragement to other women and couples who are going through miscarriage and infertility. There’s hope!