Welcome

Welcome to my blog! I've found that writing can be therapeutic so I decided that a blog might provide a great outlet to begin the healing process for myself in addition to providing support to other women who've experienced miscarriage by sharing my story.

“It doesn’t look good. I’m sorry, I think it died”… In the brief moment it took for my doctor to utter those awful words, my life changed forever. My heart sank, my face felt hot, I thought I would vomit. This couldn’t be right. I wanted desperately for him to be wrong. Check again! I thought to myself. I wanted to wake up from what I was certain was just a terrifying nightmare. How? How could my baby be dead? I’m not bleeding; I’m not in pain!! And more importantly, WHY??? I thought that day would be a day of joy and excitement. I was told I might be carrying twins. How can this be? Sometimes I still don’t believe it.

My mom, on this most painful day, her birthday, leaned down and put her arms around me as I still lay on the table with the paper sheet draped across my lap, stunned and sobbing. She cried with me. Only two weeks before, I experienced what could only be described as the most beautiful day of my life; the day I saw my baby’s heart flickering on the screen and heard the beautiful whooshing sound it made. I was in awe; amazed at how all your life you hear that a baby is such a miracle but realizing that you never really knew it until you saw that tiny heart beating and realized it was beating in you.

Now... realizing that my baby’s tiny heart just stopped, without my consent, without my knowledge; I felt like the heart in my own chest would surely stop beating but it didn’t; it hasn’t. It’s still beating, against my will, just as this earth is still turning and people are still living and laughing. How did I feel joy before that beautiful day? How would I ever feel joy again?
My baby has tiny elbows and eyelids and fingers and toes but doesn’t have a beating heart anymore. What else in this world could ever matter again?

I was 9 weeks pregnant and my baby was measured at only at 8 weeks gestation meaning the baby had died a week earlier. They called it a "missed miscarriage",meaning that my baby had already died but my body was not recognizing that the pregnancy was not progressing so my placenta continued to grow and produce hormones continuing to give me some morning sickness and other pregnancy symptoms. My uterus was continuing growth as well, as if this were a healthy pregnancy. I'd had no bleeding prior to this horrible news so I was in complete shock. I was told I would need a D & C to remove the "products of conception"... MY BABY. I'll explain the D & C further in another post.

I wish now that I'd begun this blog earlier on while I was trying to conceive (TTC) because my story is long and complicated and so much has happened prior to my pregnancy loss. The short version (for now) is that I have been trying to conceive since July 2009 through donor intrauterine insemination (IUI) I achieved pregnancy on my fourth IUI and was absolutely in love from day one... especially the day I got to see my little beaner's heartbeat at 7 weeks. Since I'd been trying for so long and worked so hard to achieve this pregnancy the loss of my baby was all the more painful and devastating... not just for myself but for my family members as well. We were all crushed by this loss and I especially am having a very difficult time coping.

My intention is to share my healing process with you (as I go through it... because I am not yet healed) - to tell you what is working for me and what is not working for me. This will be a "learn as I blog" type of thing since I'm new to blogging and desperate to find my way through this dark time in my life. At the top of my page I've added three links to excellent resources on pregnancy loss. One: pregnancy loss info - is INVALUABLE... to my knowledge, this is the BEST website you could find. This sight has taught me a lot about compassion and patience with MYSELF as I struggle through the grieving process and it is rich with information on what to expect as you navigate the dark valley of miscarriage. There are places on the site where other women share their stories which has helped me to learn that I am not alone. The other link I added is one to the pregnancy loss section of the Fertile Thoughts Forum. Fertile Thoughts (FT)is a forum that was invaluable to me during the TTC part of my journey. Lots of wonderful and supportive women. We call it a sisterhood because we all have such a strong bond. The third link at the top of my page is a youtube link to a miscarriage vlog that I found extremely helpful. This was created by a women who went through a missed miscarriage herself only a few weeks further into her pregnancy than I was in mine.

The link to the Pregnancy Loss Info website, there at the top of my page, has several suggestions on how you can honor your baby's life. I have chosen several ways to honor the loss of my baby. #1 I named her (I never got a confirmation on the sex of my baby but deeply feel it was a girl so I have given her a girl's name. Pamela Joelene. I would have called her PJ. The whole time I was pregnant my mother had a nickname for her and still to this day calls her "Sweet Pea". #2 I purchased a necklace in her honor. It's a tear drop shape (which seemed fitting) and I will try to post the photo on here if I can.

Please feel free to leave comments or message me with any questions and click "FOLLOW" on the left to receive updates on my blog.

That's all for now... more tomorrow.

Charity
xoxo