Wow, I had really hoped that I would never have to write another post like this one.
This week I had a whirlwind 24 hours in which I found myself surprisingly pregnant one evening, and then had a blood test the next morning which let us know that the pregnancy is not viable.
The pregnancy was a surprise - we haven’t even been trying. Also, I had my period last week, so I really had no idea this was coming. But my breasts were sore, even after my period was over, and Hawk even told me, “Your boobs are really big right now”. That’s when I got suspicious and took another test, this one positive. As I stood there watching that second pink line develop, I said, out loud to the Universe (I suppose), “shut the fuck up”.
I told myself not to get too excited, since the fact that I had just finished my period was not a good indicator that this pregnancy was a healthy one. Plus, the cycle that had just ended had been an unusually long one, long enough that I had already taken several pregnancy tests before my period started, and all of them had turned up negative. So this really didn’t seem to be off to a good start.
But I am hope’s bitch, so of course I did get a little excited. Hawk and I went out to dinner that night and alternated a hundred times between “okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves” to “I guess we won’t be taking that trip to Paris in the fall!” and “That house on the corner is for rent, we should tell your parents and see if they’re interested”. I barely slept that night, waiting for the next morning when I could call my doctor and go in for a blood test.
And test we did. And my hCG was something around 470, which isn’t remotely high enough. For being approximately five weeks along, it should have been about three times that number. But the nurse told me that until we can do a second test on Monday and confirm that the pregnancy is a loss, they want me to take progesterone supplements and treat it as though it is a normal pregnancy. I thought about it for approximately two seconds and was like, fuck it. I know that number wasn’t high enough. I’d had my period. I do not want to prolong the inevitable. This one just isn’t meant to be, I’m sure of it. I’ve started some light bleeding, and had some pretty bad cramping the past couple days, so I think my body is starting to reject it. The mindfuck is that this time around I actually feel pregnant. With my first, I never felt a thing - no sore boobs, nothing. This time my breasts are killing me, my nipples are tender, and I’m exhausted. I slept nearly all day Friday.
When I got the phone call with the blood test results, I did have a few hours of tears. The abrupt crushing end of hope can do that. There was the disappointment, and also I couldn’t believe that I was going to have another miscarriage, that I would have to go through all that anguish again.
Really though this loss is completely different than my first. I’m sad, of course, but am finding myself surprisingly okay. In this case, we weren’t trying trying trying for a year and a half only to be disappointed, not to mention put through three weeks of “maybe it’s okay, maybe it’s not” hell. This time, within about twenty hours from the time I took the test, we knew that things weren’t going to work out. I didn’t have time to get invested, attached.
The really weird thing is that this whole thing is making me more confident that I will one day have a baby. I know it should be the other way around, and for a little while it was. I told Hawk that maybe this isn’t meant for us, that maybe I won’t be able to sustain a pregnancy. But I don’t really believe that. It’s good to know that the first time I got pregnant wasn’t a fluke. That means that when we’re ready to try again with my doctor, I’ll bet it will work. It’s just a matter of finding a good egg and supporting it from the beginning to get it to stick. Does that make sense?
I just hope for a quick resolution to all this. I’ll have the second blood test tomorrow which will give us a better idea of how we proceed from here. I’m hoping to confirm that it’s not an ectopic pregnancy and I really hope that my body will just take over and know what to do. I also hope that it doesn’t take three bloody months for my hCG to go down this time, but I doubt it will.
It’s amazing how much the lessons I learned from my first miscarriage have helped me with this one. From the second that pink line appeared, I could tell myself, Whatever happens, you will be okay. I didn’t become instantaneously petrified of miscarrying, like I did the first time. I got through our first loss, I will get through this one. I have a happy life and people who love me. I am okay.
