Getting pregnant with Peanut was kind of a whim. I had not yet found an OB/GYN in DC yet, and my prescription for birth control was about to expire. I remember it so clearly--it was a Saturday Ben was taking me to the Metro--I was going to a mall in Silver Spring to attend a reading of the book Prep (the author's aunt was a co-worker of mine at the time). We were discussing my prescription and somehow came to the decision that we would suspend the b.c. for a little while and see what happened. We were officially "not officially" trying.
I got pregnant before I ever got a period, and it seemed right from the very beginning that things were not ok. First, I didn't get a positive result until a week after my period was due. Then, a week later I started getting horrible, woke-me-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night pains very low in my abdomen (cyst from the pregnancy). When I went to the doctor to see what it was, the sonographer was unable to find Peanut's hearbeat on the ultrasound. She was a little worried and I was VERY worried. I also hadn't been able to reach Ben, so I had no one to calm me down. I think I spent half the day in that doctor's office.
We went in together the next week and lo and behold, Peanut had a heartbeat. It was 113, which seemed low, but no one seemed worried. I remember saying that it was now safe to tell people, even though I was only six weeks, because we had seen a heartbeat. I had read somewhere that once a heartbeat is detected the chance of miscarriage goes down to like 2%. We went to Borders afterwards and bought some baby books.
I had never been pregnant before, obviously, so I didn't know what a NORMAL pregnancy felt like. I was exhausted all the time with Peanut, but that's a first trimester thing, right? No matter that there were days I didn't want to move I was so tired. I felt like I was starting to show earlier, but that was just neat. I didn't feel quite right at all when I was pregnant with Peanut, and I was totally preocuppied with miscarriage, but I chalked that up to first-time mother stuff.
I was looking forward to my 12 week appointment because I would get to hear Peanut's heartbeat on the doppler. People at work kept asking if I was going to get an ultrasound and I said that I hoped not, because that would mean they couldn't find the heartbeat. My mom miscarried at 11 weeks and they found out because they had taken me and Annie to the OB to hear the heartbeat, the doctor couldn't find it, and an ultrasound revealed the baby had died. I was terrified of that happening.
When the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat she wasn't concerned. She said it was normal, could be due to baby's position, etc. So she sent us in for an ultrasound "just to be sure". It was a different one than the earlier one, a man. He turned on everything and there was Peanut, looking like a baby. But no heartbeat. He looked at the screen and said "well, folks, I don't have good news for you today." Just like that. While our hopes and dreams for that baby collapsed, he pressured me to have an amnio (because the risk of miscarriage was now negligible--his words--and he could see there were chromosomal abnormalities).
We walked a little through the city after that to get to the Metro. We got the car at Pentagon City, called our parents, went to lunch. I wanted a turkey sandwich because I had abstained for so long (lunchmeat, you know?), so we went to Panera. Then we got home and I ran straight to the bed and collapsed. I think I cried myself to sleep that night. I know I did the next night. Ben wrote a sermon--one of the most beautiful ones I've ever read--about Doubting Thomas and feeling God's presence even when it seems He's gone.
The second half of Peanut's story is one of the reasons I am so passionate about causes related to women's health. My doctor couldn't perform second trimester D&Cs, even though ours was a confirmed intrauterine demise. So I was referred to another doctor, but even that was a nightmare. I ended up on the phone with my old doctor's office, begging their help in getting an appointment. I was terrified that I would begin to bleed and miscarry at home before I could get surgery.
God was looking out for us with the doctor He sent us. Dr. Larson was wonderful. He showed us on the ultrasound what was wrong with Peanut--pointed out all the things he saw that indicated Peanut was never meant for this world. It was a great healing time for us. He performed the surgery without a hitch and I was feeling better--physically--in no time, and 8 months later I was pregnant with our little Amelia.
Women are so secretive about miscarriage...it's almost as if it's something to be ashamed of, rather than something that happens in 25% of all known pregnancies. I made a conscious effort to tell people I'd had one, rather than admit it in a whisper, like so many women did to me. I have often wondered if it has something to do with the fact that in the past 100 years or so women's medicine and pregnancy, especially, have come to be ruled by men, rather than women. A man can never know the way it feels to feel like your body has betrayed you, like it's done something wrong--hasn't protected the way it should. I watched The Business of Being Born today. Maybe I've drunk the kool-aid. All I know is that when I would hear of women who'd miscarried and were referred to our Planned Parenthood affiliate for the D&C--because Kaiser didn't want to pay for a hospital, or they didn't have insurance--and they had to walk through the gauntlet of protesters begging them not to kill their babies---that I would feel sick inside. I wish there was something better for everyone.
I'm in a mood tonight. Maybe I need to go wake up a sleeping baby. She's so big now---crawling, babbling like crazy, pulling up and standing. We fall more in love each day. She is so amazing.
If anyone's made it this far, thanks for reading my disjointed ramblings...
