Not a Blog I Wanted to Create

This certainly isn't a club anyone wants to join. That's the very reason I decided to start this exercise in therapy. I've always been a writer at heart, and talking things out is supposed to make it easier eventually. I'm doing plenty of talking to other people. I think if I hear the phone ring with a message of sympathy one more time, I might open the window and throw it as hard as I can, and hope it breaks into a million little pieces of plastic.

So, I'm going to start my story here. It's not a story anyone wants to tell. It might be a story that no one but myself ever finds or ever wants to read, but that's equally fine. This isn't for anyone else but me, a place to remember what I've lost and what might have been.

We conceived in early January, probably on a vacation to San Diego. I found out about two weeks later - really early, actually, thanks to how sensitive the at home pee-on-a-stick tests are. I couldn't have been happier. At my seven week appointment, we saw the little heart beating on the monitor, and my worries melted away. I knew logically that there was still risk. We hadn't reached the end of the first trimester, after all. However, I started telling people, after seeing that little tiny heartbeat.

I had a dream around that point that I was going to have a little boy. I don't know if I was right, of course. We wouldn't have found out until ten weeks after that appointment or so, but in my mind I started to call the baby 'him.' I was having trouble coming up with boy's names. Girls were easy, but I just couldn't find the right name.

Something happened at eight weeks. We don't know what. We'll find out when the results of a few tests come back, but it was probably a 'chromosomal abnormality,' which is such a complicated phrase for saying that something just didn't match up right. For some reason, he couldn't grow anymore, and the little heartbeat that I'd fallen in love with stopped.

I didn't know. That's probably the thing that hurts the most. For three more weeks, I thought my little baby was doing fine. Blood tests and urine tests came back okay at nine weeks. My mother purchased some maternity clothes for me when she visited. My mother-in-law was so excited that she bought baby clothes every time she saw a sale. My mom and I bantered around names, and I finally found one that, in my mind, sounded perfect - even though my husband and I never had any chance to discuss it. Mark.

The eleven-week appointment came. I woke up that morning and almost cancelled it because of an overwhelming feeling of dread. I was supposed to try to wake my husband up to go with me, but for some reason, I didn't. I just got in the car and went to the appointment.

The dopplar machine couldn't find the heartbeat. The regular ultrasound couldn't find the baby at all, and at eleven weeks, he should have been large enough to find easily. When the nurse stepped out to go find the doctor and get the more sensitive vaginal ultrasound, I already knew. When they found him on the other ultrasound, I got to see his little face for the last time. There was no heartbeat, and the hushed tones of the doctor said even more than his words.

The D&C procedure, the surgery to remove the oh-so-medically labelled "contents of the uterus" was the next day.