Basking in the Light

I have never had the desire to be a blogger but lately I have felt the need to share.  To put it all out there.  For many years I have been enduring a secret trial.  Some of my friends and family are aware of our struggle.  But many know of it only on the surface.  The deep, personal, gory details have been kept behind lock and key.  But I am tired.  Tired of pretending.  Tired of smiling to the outside world while on the inside I am barely hanging on.  We are private people, but today we are breaking the silence on an all too familiar struggle for many couples and the deep and profound pain and grief that comes with it.  This is the truth.  It is raw and it is honest and it is graphic.  So consider yourself warned. And if talk of sex, making babies and pregnancy offends you, you may want to stop now.  Here is our story.

I wouldn't call our struggle "infertility" per se.  My husband and I are actually quite fertile, becoming pregnant by practically just looking at each other.  Our problem is the ability to keep the pregnancy.  It has been a problem that has defined our young, tender marriage.  The general population has a 40% chance of getting divorced.  If you suffer a miscarriage or stillbirth your chances increase to 60%.  Imagine if you have several miscarriages, the strain it puts on a marriage and this started for us on our first wedding anniversary.  We found out November 10th 2008 that we were expecting our first child.  We were full of joy, excitement, anticipation and fear at this news.  But these feelings were short lived, when exactly 12 weeks into my pregnancy I began bleeding heavily.  No light spotting to gently tip me off that something might be wrong.  But a sudden, harsh, heavy bleeding to terrify me and slap me in the face with the reality that I was having a miscarriage. It was January 3rd 2009.  A trip to the emergency room and an ultrasound confirmed our tiny baby no longer had a heart beat.  The baby measured between 8 and 9 weeks meaning my body carried the pregnancy another 3 weeks with no sign that anything had gone wrong.  It was a devastating time to say the least, but my doctor assured me that miscarriages are very common and everything would be fine next time.   And so in April that year, three months after my first loss, while on vacation in Hawaii, we found out I was pregnant again.  But just one week later I miscarried again.  I was just 5 weeks.  Most doctors will wait until you have three consecutive miscarriages before doing any testing to determine a cause, but I am more proactive than that and this was far too painful for me to endure again, so I sought the help of a reproductive specialist.  Dr. Dan Gehlbach, or Dr. G as he will be referred to from now on :).  Dr. G ran every test imaginable on my husband and I both and we checked out completely normal.  50% of couples who experience recurrent pregnancy loss will have no identifiable reason....and therefore no real treatment.  And so we tried a third time and in July 2009, our sweet miracle was conceived.  9 months later on April 7, 2010 Riley Grace was born healthy and perfect.  She has been the joy of my life and the source of my hope.  I thank God for her every single day.  

We then had one blissful year of happiness, watching our little baby girl grow that first year was one of the happiest times of my entire life.  And when she turned one we started thinking about having another baby.  I saw Dr. G again and in August  2011 we found out we were expecting baby number four.  Baby number four, the one that forever changed everything, the one that brought "miscarriage" to a whole new meaning.  I carried that sweet one for exactly 16 weeks and on December 2, 2011 our baby died.  This was unlike my previous two losses that were early enough I could miscarry naturally.  For this one I was admitted to the hospital and labor was induced.  But my body was as reluctant to let go of that little one as my heart was and after two full days in the hospital of induction attempts I finally had to have a surgical procedure called a D&E to remove my baby from me, the horror of which haunts me to this day.  After the surgery the doctor said he felt the loss was due to a problem with my baby's umbilical cord which was twisted and kinked and "just a mess" as he put it.  My obgyn assures me that cord accidents are random, one time occurrences and it is highly unlikely to happen again....we will see.  After my surgery the doctor went to inform my mom and husband in the waiting room of how it went and he handed my husband a piece of paper.  On the paper are our baby's foot prints, two teeny tiny perfectly formed feet with ten toes.  They are the size of my fingernail.  

When I was in the hospital those four days with baby number four, I was in a weird state that I cannot explain.  I was fine.  I scarcely cried.  The nurses kept commenting on how well I was handling things and the grief counselor who came to see me every day was amazed by how well I was doing.  But as they wheeled me down to the main entrance to discharge me, I waited for my husband to go get the car and come pick me up, I sat beside another new mother in a wheelchair waiting for her husband to come pick her up.  Except she was holding her sweet, sleeping, healthy baby in her arms and mine were empty.  And it was then that the darkness, the heaviness began to settle in upon me.  I felt it come over me and intensify on the drive home.  And it has been my constant companion ever since.  Three more babies have joined their siblings in heaven since my little 16-weeker was lost.  One at 4 weeks in March of this year, another at 4 weeks in April and as I sit writing this I am miscarrying baby number 7 at just 5 weeks.  Miracle baby number 7...did you know you can get pregnant when you aren't even trying and your husband is out of town???!!!  Yup, one determined little guy hung around from his goodbye send off and patiently waited several days for me to ovulate...like I said, no problems GETTING pregnant.  Sweet baby number 7, thank you for making us believe that perhaps God still had a few miracles up his sleeve for us yet. 

And so that brings us to today.  I look at the last 9 months of my life and they have been marked by pain, grief, sleep deprivation, anxiety, racing heart beats, a messy home, a wife and mother that has been such a mess that two days ago when Jason was playing with Riley, she looked at him and said, "mommy sick.  mommy cry".  The darkness has been so thick that light could not permeate it, not even His light.  Until Wednesday morning this week.  That was the day I woke up to find I was miscarrying again.  And the oddest thing happened...I felt relief.  I don't know why, but I was relieved.  The thing I have wanted most of all through all this is to find peace with God about it.  My soul has felt so tormented and I can't understand why He keeps letting this happen.  I don't know if I'm just becoming desensitized to the losses or if it's a defense mechanism or what but I just felt relieved.  Glad it was over.  Glad that a non viable pregnancy did not progress, allowing a baby to grow and develop, but a baby that would eventually die none the less.  My babies have made it past the milestones before.  They got a heart beat which is supposed to mean the chance of miscarriage is low, they got past the first trimester which is supposed to lower the risk even more.  But they still die eventually.  I am glad I don't have to face that again.  I took Riley to the park/ lake that day and she cuddled in my arms by the water, laying her head on my chest and just cuddling with me.  There was a nice breeze and the sun seemed to be shining down just for us, warming a heart and soul that has been cold for so long.  She laughed and played for an hour, throwing rocks in the water.  And I was overwhelmed with thankfulness for my miracle daughter, for simple things like playing, sunshine and the feeling of a little two year old snuggled against my heart, knowing that she feels safer no where else on earth but on my lap with my arms wrapped around her and my voice singing in her ear.  His light finally broke through the darkness.  I feel new resolve.  Maybe it is naive and stupid, but I feel that one day, some way, some how we will know the blessing of another healthy baby.  It may not happen this year, or even the next, but our day is coming.  I hope I am not wrong, but as the sun came down on us Wednesday, I just felt so sure it will happen again one day.  

Our predicament now is how to proceed.  We will definitely be taking a break for a few months to recoup and heal.  Like a "use-contraceptive-every-time" break!  We learned our lesson with that!  But after that, do we just keep trying and hope another one sticks.  Or do we take the biggest gamble of our lives and pursue the only treatment plan our doctor says might help (MIGHT being the operative word) and do IVF combined with Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis (PGD) and have our embryos tested before implantation to make sure all the chromosomes are normal, therefore reducing the risk of miscarriage?  Our insurance will cover none of this and it is not cheap to say the least.  I have thought this over a lot.  I have prayed about it.  There are pros and cons to both but I just don't know. And that is where we are at...contemplating what to do next.  Maybe I will fall apart tomorrow.  Maybe I will battle the heavy darkness again tomorrow, but for now I am basking in the light He shown down on me and my miracle baby this week.

That's enough for today.  I promise all my posts won't be this long (OK, maybe I can't promise that but I will try really hard!).  Next time I will tell you the reason behind the title of my blog, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".  Until then, welcome to our journey.  You will probably find out more about Jason and I than you ever wanted to know!  And to my Little Ones, I love you always and forever and no matter what.

 14 Weeks with baby number 4.  Tiny baby bump popping out. 

 Baby number 4 - 10 Weeks, my last ultrasound until the one we had to confirm there was no heart beat.

 Baby's foot prints given to Jason after my surgery.