Miscarriage #2- Our April Angel

Well, here we are again. I'm heartbreakingly writing this the day that my second miscarriage is confirmed by the start of my cycle again...the morning after Shane's grandma passed away. One of the main ways I cope and feel better with struggles is through writing, so this is very healing for me to write and share this with you. I'm warning you that this post isn't as upbeat and positive as I usually am, and I apologize for that. Please bear with me.

I shared about our first miscarriage here.

I miscarried at 6 weeks (last time I miscarried at 9 weeks, but the baby stopped growing at 6 weeks). Our baby would have been due April 22/23- right before my good friend's Sam birthday (who is the BEST ttc support), also right before Grandma Christensen's birthday (Shane's grandma who passed away the night before our miscarriage was confirmed) on April 28. 

This miscarriage had a LOT of uncertainty, which made it super frustrating and full of doubts and equal parts hope.

Of course I am not just the 1 in 4 that miscarry, but I am one of the 2% of women that have recurrent miscarriages.

 I don't know why I dared to even slightly think that it could go any other way. Health has been a nonstop challenge for me, meeting Shane later than most was a challenge, military and long-distance days of not being able to talk (due to the military) has been a challenge, long-distance engagement was a challenge, postponed weddings were a challenge, deployment was a challenge, getting into our home is a challenge, and now of course having a family is a challenge. How dare I even think any major life event might slightly be easy, or at least not heartbreakingly, often unusually difficult? Shane has dealt with his own extremely difficult, unusual for the majority, life challenges. How much are we expected to handle? How much can two people, or one couple together, take? Life has been a major struggle for well over a decade, time after time after time again. When is it our time to enjoy and deserve happiness with these milestones without intense work?

That being said, this miscarriage is definitely hard, but I'm nowhere near at rock bottom that I was with my first hip surgery and with Shane deciding to do the military. My life experiences have strengthened me, hardened me, prepared me, made me strong, and somewhat numbed me...to where this is tough, but it's tolerable and not debilitating. It's nowhere near the feelings of despair I had during my first few major life struggles...and for that, I'm thankful. I would be absolutely nowhere without my faith. There are, understandably, times where I get into my head or feelings too much and have a little pity party, or wondering why my struggles are so much more in comparison. I know there are many out there, even if I don’t know them personally, who have it way worse and could look at my life and wonder the same thing about theirs. So basically, I have perspective… but it can be tough to keep a grasp on that perspective when my emotions overwhelm. 

Ironically, when I was still (secretly) pregnant this second time, my friend Mere sent me this that made her think of me. How true this is.

For this baby now, we conceived end of July (right before moving from North Carolina). I found out I was pregnant on August 12, and I told Shane when he got home from work that day. Last time, I took a test before my missed period, but even though I suspected pregnancy this time, I was skeptical/hesitant/scarred from our last miscarriage, so I waited until a missed period before testing.

I snapped pictures of my face as I looked and was finding out. You can tell that once again, I'm thrilled, ecstatic, so grateful and excited. My reaction once again was just "Thank you, God" over and over. However, I wasn’t naive that getting pregnant isn’t the hard part for us…it’s staying pregnant.

Like I said, I told Shane that evening when he got home from work. Last time, his reaction was PURE SHOCK. This time, it was enormous relief. We had tried for 2 months/3 cycles this time, which I know isn’t a long time, but he was relieved after our last miscarriage. He threw his head back and said "THANK YOU GOD!" before smiling a huge smile when looking at the positive pregnancy tests. Since we're still in our temporary apartment/slightly homeless living, I didn't have all the bells and whistles to tell him in an exciting way again this time (like the first time, but we also knew not to celebrate and be too happy just yet), so this was his lame way of walking in, seeing this on the kitchen island, and finding out.

After this, Shane told his best friend and I told Stephanie a few days later. Again, to want to tell our families in person and to not want to tell them until we for sure had good news (or for sure had bad news), we mostly kept it to ourselves. When I went to Tampa with the family I used to babysit for, I had to tell them because the first thing Allyson asked me to do when I got there was go in the hot tub, haha. It was exciting having them know- Sammi and Allyson were SO thrilled and talking about it excitedly all weekend, so it was fun for me to able to get to chat about it. I also ended up telling my best friend from high school, Kyle, (even though we don’t happen to talk frequently) because we started chatting about miscarriages and it felt good to share with someone that could connect about it.

After using the pacifiers to break the pregnancy news to Shane, we tried to see how big bro and big sis were going to feel about it. When we were in North Carolina, I was walking them down the sidewalk one day when Cash found a pacifier like this and put it in his mouth the right way...and proudly strutted for probably 10 minutes around the neighborhood with it in his mouth. I was CRACKING UP. If you know Cash, you know he has the personality of a BIG BABY, so it was just so fitting for him. We wanted to see if he would take this pacifier this time...but since it was forced on him, he wanted no part of that! (I know that’s a bad habit to start and now he’s going to go over them when we hopefully actually do have babies, but let us have our little joys over here…)

We didn't take many bump pictures this time because I was skeptical and again, scarred from my last miscarriage. The pic you see as the cover of this post was taken by Sammi, the girl I used to babysit for in Florida. The ones below were taken a week before that in our apartment.

My symptoms for this pregnancy were lots of headaches and NOTHING sounding appetizing at all. I was starving all day, every day, but I could barely force myself to eat. Things just didn't sound good, and once I started eating, I didn't want much. I would get lightheaded when standing up and queasy overall- but not enough to throw up ever.

Cash had to interrupt the bump pic, of course. He must always be the star of the show!

And then he has the gall to look grumpy...

If we ended up deciding to announce by Halloweentime, we thought this costume was a cute idea.

However, I started spotting, and was completely surprised by that, on August 26- 6 days before my birthday, of course. It stopped after a few days, and I started spotting again on September 22. I took 2 negative pregnancy tests then, but I could have been far enough along to get a false negative from the hook effect.

This miscarriage was confirmed on September 22 when my cycle fully started. We held out some slight hope that entire month. With our first miscarriage, my pregnancy symptoms stopped well before I actually miscarried. This time, my pregnancy symptoms continued past my miscarriage. Also, with my first miscarriage, it was VERY EVIDENT and no mistaking it that it was a miscarriage, this one wasn't as obvious at all. 

Caylor was there to give kisses on the days or moments where it felt hard, overwhelming, hopeless, and like it was going in the direction of for sure being a miscarriage.

When I started spotting, I called around at least 10 OBGYNS in the area to set up an appointment, especially to see if this bleeding was a miscarriage or not. None of the places could take me...either at all (due to being full already for the month of my due date) or not until October 3 at the earliest. At this point, it was still the mid/end of August. I had a previous miscarriage, I have multiple health factors that made this a high risk pregnancy, but since I was a new patient since we were new to the area, no one cared. I had to wait over a month to find out if I was miscarrying or not- or to find out what to do to see if we could prevent a miscarriage. Absolutely ridiculous.

About 3 or 4 days after I started spotting for the first time, which was the Monday of my birthday week, we wanted answers and since no OBGYN would help us out, Shane called a military nurse hotline thing (they're supposed to help/find an area of help in the area you are in) and they directed us to a nearby urgent care. We went to that urgent care to be told to go the ER since they'll want to do an ultrasound. 

We had to go to the ER on an Army base in Washington DC, about 25 minutes away. Shane and I headed there at about 6 PM and we were there for over 4 hours. The doctor diagnosed it as a Threatened Miscarriage- aka we left with no more answers than we got there with. It could have been plausible that it was a viable pregnancy, it was just further behind the dates that my app had, but he needed another HCG blood test to check with the blood test levels they measured that day.

Okay, so we didn't get any answers, but we just needed to get 1 simple blood test. Easy, right? NO. I didn't want this to overshadow my birthday, so we put it off until the following week. Well, weeks later, none of the places could still get me in for a simple blood test. We had many doctors just not call me back, others gave us the go-around, etc. These were normal doctors and military doctors. Shane spent almost 2 hours on the phone with various military doctors/hospitals/OBGYNS and they kept directing us to call someone else- where we'd ultimately get a voicemail. I needed ONE SIMPLE BLOOD TEST to see if I was miscarrying. We recently moved to the area, I wasn't an established patient yet. Extremely frustrating.

One of the military hospitals finally called us back and since I have the "good" military insurance, they couldn't see me for blood again at the hospital I was at for the ER. Instead, my orders were sent to Maryland, as in the state of Maryland. We live in Virginia. For that blood test and for my pregnancy and labor/delivery, I would have to go to ANOTHER STATE for all of my doctors. I refused to drive that far for a blood test, so Shane and I said we would wait until Oct 3 or until my period came.

Shane and I spent hours looking up other places to get bloodwork done around us, and I found a place that would do quantitative HCG and not just qualitative HCG levels. I figured it was iffy, but I brought my ER paperwork to the appointment I set up saying I needed an HCG blood test follow up (that should have been done weeks prior), but of course they couldn't accept that without an official doctor order. They called the ER, the ER said they couldn't get ahold of the doctor I saw since he was a night doctor, and that I needed to go back on base for the bloodwork...aka Maryland this time though. So, that was also a fail.

Throughout all of this, I was thinking it's a miscarriage but having very hopeful days. Just like my previous miscarriage, I Googled probably 900000 times a day every specific question and variation of every single thing/symptom I was experiencing. As always, there was evidence of it going either way. It was hard not to get caught up in my feelings.

Once again, once my cycle started and I accepted the reality, I had to plug in a miscarriage on my pregnancy apps. That's truly so sad to watch all the progress simply disappear.

Until the day we, God-willing, have human babies, we are loving on and appreciating EVEN MORE these sweet, sweet fur babies of our that have our entire hearts. There is nothing that lifts our mood like they do. As you can see in these pictures below, they clearly think they're human babies, and LORD KNOWS they're sure treated like that, so we'll just continue to go with it. I would be absolutely lost without them.

Although this pregnancy wasn't as far along as our first, this miscarriage is much harder emotionally and mentally. As with anything, I have good/hopeful days and more challenging days. My mom and Shane's mom also both had 2 miscarriages, and I know 3 people that have had recurrent miscarriages, but having more than one miscarriage creates a whole set of issues and potential problems.

The good news is that I can see a fertility specialist now that I've had 2 miscarriages, but after doing some research, it appears I was a candidate for a fertility specialist from day 1 due to my autoimmune disorder and/or my blood clotting disorder. Obviously, we didn't know if these risks would actually be an issue or not so we didn't feel the need to start at a specialist, but here we are. So now, lucky me, I qualify THREE TIMES for a fertility specialist based on their few items of criteria. Do I get some kind of award?

I'm feeling defeated, discouraged, worried we won't be able to have kids, sad about the timing that all of this takes and how this will be prolonged even more and how we want a big family, and mostly feel like I'm drowning from ONE MORE MAJOR LIFE THING piling up. 

 If you've known me since I was 5, you know this is truly the only thing I've ever put my whole heart and being into working for and truly the one thing I have always wanted. Being a mom or working with kids/babies is the one underlying thread of my entire life's hobbies, goals, passion, jobs, career, etc. 

How much more does God need to teach me through my recent struggles? Clearly a lot...I'm eager to see the good that comes from this, as I need to keep reminding myself.

This post isn't as positive as the last miscarriage one, or as any of my other posts, but I'm writing it when it's still raw and real. I'm sure I'll be able to put a more positive spin on it soon. I need to lean into prayer, my Bible Study, and get my faith as strong as it usually is. I know God is up to something and He's using this to make me better or to eventually allow me to help others. Im so so grateful for my close friends and family who have held us up through this, yet again.

 Praying for our hopefully soon to come double-rainbow baby. We’re going through the woods to get to that rainbow baby.

Until then, we now have two babies in Heaven- our November baby and our April baby. <3