February 13, 2009
It all began in April 2005. Dan and I had only been married for seven months and were enjoying our new life together. I had been on birth control for over 5 months and had recently gone off of it due to irritating side effects. Instead of birth control side effects I began to feel the typical pregnancy symptoms. I started feeling tired, nauseous and was noticing changes within my body. I began to wonder if I could possibly be pregnant? I had only been off the birth control for a few months? Was it possible for me to conceive that quickly? I couldn’t be pregnant, could I??? We weren’t ready to have a baby. I decided to take a test. Dan would be home in a few hours, but I couldn’t seem to wait. The test was just sitting there in the bathroom. So, I took it. As I waited for the strip to show up, I was nonchalant about the whole deal, because I couldn’t be pregnant!! To my surprise, it was positive! I was terrified, yet very excited! As I stood there, shock consumed by body and a weak feeling came over. I needed Dan to come home. I was tired and exhausted already, so I lay down and waited for Dan. When he walked through the door I shared the news with him. We were having a baby! Dan was so excited. He hugged me tightly, picked me up and swung me around. We were going to be parents, a little earlier than anticipated, but we were so excited nonetheless.
Little did we know this would be the first stage of a very long and painful journey that would not easily be walked. Instead of an exciting 9 months looking forward to the birth of a healthy child, we were embarking on a long and difficult journey that would take over four years and would lead down many paths, with few answers. At the time I didn’t realize it, but the birth of our child was not only a long ways off, it was potentially only a dream.
For anyone who has gone through the pain of early child loss, I’m sure this story will be familiar in some ways, yet each is unique and personally very painful. The life of a child has been anticipated, looked forward to, dreamt about and now will not be known. With early child loss, being during the first trimester; a child will never be held, a cry will never be heard, even the gender is generally not know. All that was anticipated will never come to be.
It now has been four years since that first miscarriage. I am looking back and trying to remember what I felt at the time. I did not journal then. I actually didn’t journal my thoughts at all throughout the last four years. I should have, but I constantly thought it wouldn’t be necessary. I constantly thought we were going to have a child and what good would writing this stuff from my past down. Unfortunately, here we are four years later and all I have are my two dogs that are laying beside me keeping me company and and keeping my legs warm.
The first few weeks of my pregnancy seemed to be “normal”. I was experiencing the expected exhaustion, breast soreness, nausea and hunger. I was working at the time, so I tried to take it easy and slept all that I could. I remember almost losing breakfast at work a couple times and being greatly affected by the multitude of awful odours that I regularly came in contact with. Then, around 10 weeks or so, I felt different. I went to work and I felt great. I remember people asking me how I was feeling and I felt really good. No nausea, no breast soreness. I felt normal again. I didn’t know it then, but that is a very bad thing in pregnancy. I know now that if symptoms disappear, something seriously wrong has happened. I had convinced myself that I had made it past the ‘nausea’ stage and that things had progressed quicker than I had expected.
Then, one evening, I noticed a small drop of brown blood. I called a friend and then I called the telehealth. Both advised that I go to the doctor if it continued or if it became deep red. When I went to the washroom, the bleeding had worsened. We went to the E.R. At the hospital we were reassured that many women experience spotting during the first trimester. The doctor examined me and said that my cervix was not opened, so the bleeding could stop and the baby could be fine. He told me to go home, rest and to come back for an ultrasound the next morning.
The next morning, the ultrasound was a painfully quiet ordeal. The technician was silent as she looked for our child. When she was finished, she just walked away with no answers. When she returned five minutes later, she handed me a folded paper, that was stapled shut! What were we to think?? All she said was to go to the emergency and bring this to the tri-age nurse. What??? We just wanted to know what was going on. I didn’t want to open the paper, but Dan felt it was his right to know what it said. It was our right. I’m not sure what the stapling it shut was all about. We both peeked. It was difficult to read the physician’s writing, but we could make out enough to understand. Empty sac. That was what we could understand. Our child was gone. They believe that the baby died around 6 or 7 weeks and then was absorbed into the placenta, so that there was no evidence of a baby at all. The sac continued to grow, so it was the size of an 11 week pregnancy, but completely empty. They ordered a d/c for me. Unfortunately while I was waiting for the d/c, the hemmorraging started on it’s own. I can remember waiting in the hallway on a stretcher for hours while the blood poured out of me. The cramping was so severe I asked for pain medication and they gave me morphine. While I waited in the hallway, I did lose most of the blood and fetal tissue. I’m not sure what the d/c was for since it was all pretty much over when they performed the procedure. It was a traumatic experience for a newly married 21 year old.
After this first experience, we took our time to grieve the loss. We were so excited about this child. We had talked about names, we were looking at moving to a bigger apartment, we had already been given some baby items and gifts from family members. We already had memories. Dan took a day off work to spend with me. We went out of town for the day, went for a walk, cried together and just sat quietly together. There weren’t a lot of words said. We were just together.
We soon moved to the new apartment, that did have that extra room that was for ‘baby’. It was good to have the distraction of a move. Now, looking back ‘moving’ has been a distraction a few times and we are currently getting ready for a big move. Which is interesting now looking back. Anyways, we moved into the new place and made it feel homey. I continued to work for almost another year, when finally we decided that if we were going to have children we would have to get used to a smaller income. I was not finding fulfillment with my job, as we desperately wanted to have children. In January 2006, I quit my job with Christian Horizons. I wanted to branch out into a different field, I was thinking either senior care or being a mom. Whichever came first. Strangely though, conception was not taking place. It had been months since the loss and conception just was not happening. I ended up going to see an obstetrician, because I had been with a midwife for our first pregnancy. With these difficulties of losing one and not being able to conceive again, we felt we needed some medical intervention. (little did we know). The doctor who saw me felt it was strange that so much time had passed and no conception. She concluded that I needed some help with my ovulation. She prescribed “metformin” a drug that is used usually in diabetics to regulate their insulin levels. In doing this, it regulates menstrual cycles. My cycles did become regular but still conception was not taking place.
Then, finally in the fall of 2006, a year and a half after our first loss, we had conceived. We both had almost given up on thinking we could conceive again. It was the fall, a beautiful time to enjoy pregnancy. But once again, we were getting ready for another move so it was busy with packing and all that goes along with a move. After getting moved in, my body did feel different again. I wasn’t as familiar with the feeling as I am now, but at the time I wasn’t sure if there was a problem. I had an ultrasound. On October 3rd 2006, which is Daniel’s birthday, I received the call from the doctor. They couldn’t find the heartbeat. They wanted to do another ultrasound to verify things. We went to church and shared our news and our prayer request. It was the most emotional prayer meeting I’ve ever been to. Dan stood up to share our prayer item. The heartbeat was not detected, but it might be on the second ultrasound. As Dan shared, his words began to falter and crack. He sat down and was unable to finish. Our Pastor Steve stood up to pray for us. He prayed that God would indeed give this little one a heartbeat and that we would hold this child in our arms. As he spoke, his words cracked and he began to weep for us. He too knew very personally the pain we were going through. His words were so meaningful and the prayer so sincere. The whole congregation was weeping on behalf of our child and crying for the Lord to give this child life. We were praying for a miracle to take place. We were desperate for God’s power to revive this little heart, as only He could. The ultrasound confirmed that our little child had not made it. The heart was silent. On the ultrasound you could see the shape of the child this time. It was right there on the screen, just very, very still. The d/c was scheduled for Thanksgiving Monday. My family was planning on coming for thanksgiving. It was good to have them around. My Mom did a lot of the preparation, so it was very helpful to have them there; they were all very supportive as well.
A couple weeks after this, as we tried to cope with the devastating news we were also getting ready for a big overseas trip. We were going to visit some friends in the Middle East for a couple weeks. This created another big distraction from the reality of losing our second child.
While overseas though, on our third day, we received an email from my husband’s mother. They were looking after Oliver for us, he was our springer spaniel who was like a child to us. Oliver had chased a bird right onto the road in front of their house. His shoulder was seriously damaged and would not be able to be repaired. He needed to be put down. When we received the email, it was all over. Oliver was already gone. This hit me hard. Oliver was a tangible loss and was more than I was able to bear. The children that we had lost were intangible, we hadn’t the chance to hold them. It was a deep grief, but with Oliver, he was our tangible son. The grief over the miscarriage was intensified with the loss of our dog, who at the time was our child. It felt like everything meaningful was being snatched from me. It felt like a cruel joke.
Our third pregnancy occurred relatively quickly after the second. When I found out I was pregnant I went right away to my doctor and had blood work done. All looked good. At this time, I was referred to a fertility specialist, or whom I thought was a fertility specialist. It turns out he a very good gyn/Obst., but not the specialist I needed. He wanted to do an early ultrasound so he performed it as early as he could. No heartbeat. So, once again, he wanted to do the ultrasound again a few days later. Still no sign of life. The d/c was scheduled for Valentines Day. So, on that very romantic, very special day of the year, there we were spending it in the hospital. I don’t remember much of that hospital visit, except that I did wait almost all day for the procedure. Fortunately they had me wait in a room and I did have an excellent nurse looking after me. This was the loss of our third child. We were becoming very accustomed to this type of death. It was no longer a matter of great concern at our church. It had become an issue of awkwardness with many. After one or two of these types of losses, people do not know what to say or how to say it. Instead of being the supportive community, church started to become an isolating atmosphere filled with tension and awkward relationships. There were a few who were continually supportive and a shoulder to cry on. For those relationships, I am eternally grateful for. For a lot of the relationships, our losses placed a wall between us and those whom had children. We were on our own. We didn’t fit into the perfect little happy mold that Christian families were supposed to look like. God is sovereign was the prominent teaching at our church and this made no sense to me. The things that people would say to encourage us, just began to make me very angry.
Attending church functions and being surrounded by my friends who had no trouble having children began to become very difficult. It began to look less and less hopeful for us to have children. I began to get very skeptical to think it would ever happen. Then we conceived again. You would think that conceiving three times in a row would give a good survival rate. Not in our case. This pregnancy lasted about the same amount as the last three, about 8 weeks was the average. The symptoms would disappear almost like clockwork and I knew it was over. I would almost wake up in the middle of the night or not be able to sleep and ‘know’ that things had changed within me. A life was lost. The next day I would feel ‘unpregnant’ again. I became increasingly aware of the feelings in my body and could read my physical symptoms like a book. I knew without even the ultrasound that things were not looking good.
I was at choir practice. We were practicing for our Easter Presentation that was to be in just over week. It was the day before Good Friday and it was not a ‘good’ day. While standing there during choir practice, I knew that I had started to bleed. It wasn’t heavy though, so I just continued to sing. After the practice was over, I went to the washroom. With no cramping and no warning, the sac that contained my child fell out of me. There wasn’t a contraction or a feeling whatsoever, it just fell out and there it was before me in the toilet bowl. It was a horrendous experience. I didn’t know what to do. I was in shock. I left the bathroom to find Dan. I needed him to verify what I was seeing. Apparently when I found Dan I was as white as a ghost and didn’t even know what to say. I brought him to the bathroom and showed him what happened. He also didn’t know what to do. We had to flush the toilet. There weren’t any other options. What a horrible thing to do though. I couldn’t believe I had to do that. We left the church without saying a word to anyone for fear of crashing. We needed to be alone. I was in shock for some time from that experience. It left me numb.
After this loss, the doctor started to think he might need to look for something more. This was not coincidence that we had lost 4 babies. The doctor took many pictures of my uterus and determined that I had a uterine septum that could be what was causing problems of implantation. He said that my uterus was shaped like a heart and needed to changed. He needed to remove the tissue at the top to widen the uterus. So a surgery was scheduled for 6 months later.
September 2007 finally came and Dr. Maskins performed a hysteroscopy on my uterus. He told us we needed to wait a couple months for healing before we could try to have another child. The next time I saw him, however, he informed us we needed to wait until after I was healed and then examined again and given the okay to ‘try’.
For months, nothing happened. Darkness began to settle in. I needed to be distracted. It was vital that I start thinking about other things. I decided at this time to return to work. I returned to Christian Horizons and this was a very hard decision to make. When I left, we thought we were moving into a different stage of life. We thought that we were progressing and moving on the 'children' stage of married life. When I went back to work it felt like we were back tracking. It was becoming a reality that possibly we would not have children. It was a very difficult decision to make. Finally in January 2008 I reapplied. I started working, started becoming very distracted and started to forget the pain. I started to feel that I had healed, at least this was what I thought.
Then, I found out I was pregnant only a couple months after starting to work. This had to be it. We had waited so long. God would surely bless us with a child now that I had obeyed Him and returned to work! God surely would give us a child this time, wouldn't He?? We lost our fifth baby. Dr. Maskins did not know why we lost this child. He didn’t perform a d/c as I had had three already. This time, he prescribed a tablet that started the natural process of abortion. It was a painful and messy ordeal that lasted a few hours and then was over.
After seeing us through five miscarriages, he decided to refer us on to a doctor in Toronto who specializes in recurrent miscarriage. Dr. Carl Laskin is a rheumatologist, endocrinology, gynochologist and obstetrition. He has many letters after his name and it the man behind the LifeQuest Center in Toronto. I had my hopes very high for this doctor. I was told that if anyone could find the answer, it would be him. He specializes in cases such as mine. I truly was thrilled to be referred to him. He would help me, if anyone could.
In September of 2008, I went to Toronto and had 19 blood tests done. They were going to find the answer in my blood, I was sure of it. After all these tests, which cost close to $300.00 (not covered by OHIP) I was very hopeful that they found the answer. I had to wait two months for the answer though.
When Dan and I returned in November, we were really hoping to hear good news. We were hoping to hear that all I needed to do was give myself some heparin shots and the clotting wouldn’t take place and the baby would survive. Or we were hoping that there was something else in my blood preventing the baby from living. If only they knew the problem they could easily come to a conclusion. Dr. Laskins in the best of the best. Surely he would have some answers. Dr. Laskin walked into the room and these were his words to us: “I have some good news and some bad news…the good news is: you are completely normal, the bad news is: that is not what you wanted to hear.”
I wanted to cry right then and there. Our hopes dashed just like that. We were so hopeful for an answer, so depending on Dr. Laskin. How could the blood work lie like that??? There has to be something there, they must have missed something? How could this be? I had 19 tests and they all came back normal? How have we lost five babies then? It was not computing properly. I thought I was going to lose it. Our last chance shattered. The doctor then went on to explain that he wanted to try progesterone with me and baby aspirin, then if we did miscarry again, he would do further genetic testing and egg quality testing. As a last resort there is invitro-fertilization and egg selection. But that is not an option, since I am not going to choose which egg is implanted and which are disgarded. Playing God is not my idea of how to make things work.
While sitting there in front of that doctor, I could feel my eyes beginning to water. I could sense that I had let my heart become so set on hearing an answer that this doctor had truly let me down. It wasn’t his fault though, it was my blood’s fault. My body was the attacker. Not the doctor. The doctor was trying to help, but my body is a killing machine. It is not a safe place for a baby. They have no chance of survival, unless a miracle takes place. I have not lost my faith that this still could happen. But, my faith has been shaken.
I cannot understand why conception would take place and life given; only to be snatched up so quickly. I cannot understand the purpose of this, for what reason? Our first child would be close to four years old right now. When I see a four year old, I imagine our own child and it is too painful. Our life has been on pause for four years. We have been waiting and hoping and waiting some more. I have been to the best doctor in Peterborough and now the best doctor in Toronto and still no answers. We have waited for appointments and then waited for results and then waited for more appointments. We are tired. We both are just tired of it all and yet our desire for a child is still there. No matter how distracted I become, no matter how busy I make myself, the desire is still there and the reminders are still all around us. At one time, I counted my friends who were all expecting at the same time. It was 15. Now those who have already had their first are on their second or third child. I have watched from a distance and have become more disconnected from those I love. The connection is lost. The walls get higher and higher with each loss and with each birth announcement. The isolation and the lonliness increases with each day.
Dr. Laskin prescribed progesterone and baby aspirin. The progesterone is to help thicken the lining of the uterus and the aspirin to help prevent clotting. So far, I have been taking everything religiously including a multivitamin. I don’t think I have forgotten a day. I have been meticulous. It has been three months since my last appointment with Laskin. Nothing yet. I’m wondering if it might be another year and half stint. I hope not. We are moving in less than three months. Things are not looking positive at this time.
We keep on walking though. We cannot stop, we must continue up the hill and hope that we make it to the top soon. When we reach the peak we will see the horizon before us and know where things are going, I hope.
Light will make the night burnout. Hold On….Day Light is Coming, to break the dawn. Daylight is coming….
