This is going to be a hard post to write.  I thought for a while about if I would share this and what I would say, but I think oftentimes writing about an experience is cathartic- and I need some therapy now.  Please be warned that this is personal and graphic.


As anyone who knows us already could tell you, Gerry and I always planned to have a big family.  We recently built a new 5 bedroom house to accommodate our grandiose plans of babies and celebrations and family.

It was last May that we decided that our family was ready for another addition.  We decided then not to try, but to not not try.  Since we conceived Catie Grace in just a month, we figured it would take longer for baby #2, but not much longer.  In July we finally moved into the new house. We were fine with the lack of progress and figured things would happen in God's own time.

When school started back in August, I realized I had a hellacious group of students and my stress levels would be at a max this year.  I see my general practitioner every three months to monitor my thyroid levels. As the months passed, I saw my cycles go from about 27 days to only 20 days. I finally asked my GP if she thought anything might be wrong with my fertility. Because I had one healthy pregnancy, she thought it was probably due to stress.   I agreed with her because school really didn't let up- it was a struggle to go each day.  She put me on a low dose of progesterone and told me not to worry about it.  I followed my "fertile" days on an app I had on my phone and even did ovulation tests for a month or so, but they never came up positive.  I thought that was weird, but my GP felt like we just needed more time.  Every few months when I would go to get my thyroid levels checked, she kept saying she thought it was stress and that it would all go back to normal once I wasn't stressed.  Since the stress was coming from my job, there was not much I could do about it.

At the beginning of April, I got amazing news- I was asked to teach at Spring Creek Elementary.  Not only is elementary where I wanted to be in the first place, but I did my student teaching at Spring Creek, so I know that it's a great school.  I cried on the phone to the woman from HR that offered me the job (so she probably thought I was insane) and, for the first time since August, I felt I could breathe again.  There WAS a light at the end of the tunnel- and it was just a few short months away.  I was ecstatic.

Fast forward to the end of April (this year) when we realized it had been a full year without any progress on the baby front.  My OBGYN had originally told me to wait until trying for a year before coming back to her, so I went ahead and set up an appointment with her.

When I got to the appointment, we sat down and talked and she said she really didn't think anything was wrong and that she would do some blood tests just to be sure.  Although she felt we would get pregnant on our own, she prescribed Clomid for me to take on my next cycle (it's a drug that makes you ovulate).  The next day the nurse called after they got my blood tests back and told me that after looking at my blood work, my OBGYN had diagnosed with me polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).  I know several people with PCOS and without even doing research, I knew what it meant- it would be extremely difficult to conceive, and PCOS babies have a high miscarriage rate.  I was crushed.  I actually took the call during lunch at school and cried to my fellow teachers.  They were all reassuring and positive and even gave me the option of covering my classes so I could go home, but I toughed it out and finished the day.  That was on a Thursday.

So, with or without PCOS the next step was to try out the Clomid, so I waited for my cycle to come so I could start the medicine.  My cycle was due the next week, and on Tuesday of the next week, it hadn't come.  I took an at home pregnancy test and it was positive.  I absolutely couldn't believe it.  I took a few more and just stared at them.  I re-read the directions several times- 2 lines is positive, right?  Right!  I was so excited and overwhelmed- how could this happen after getting such bad news?  Yikes- I just took a new job and I'll have to ask off for maternity leave in January!  Right away I had an ominous feeling about the whole thing- but I assumed it was because we had just taken a few days to really consider our chances of infertility.  Bad feelings aside, I went ahead and told Gerry that I was pregnant in the way I had wanted to for a long time- I had helium balloons and each balloon had a reason why I loved him on it.  The last balloon had a card.  When he opened it, it was a series of pictures with Catie Grace that said, "I'm going to be a big sister."  His reaction was great- he was shocked and asked how it could happen.  I really didn't know either!  We were very excited that day.

We thought we might tell our families on Mother's Day, which was the following Sunday.  It seemed like the perfect surprise!  Then on Friday, I started spotting.  Just the tiniest bit, but I didn't do that at all with Catie Grace and I knew something was wrong.  I called the doctor's office and though the front desk person assured me that was normal and not to worry, my doctor asked me to come in the next week for blood tests on Tuesday and Thursday.  Just to be on the cautious side, Gerry and I decided not to tell everyone just yet.  We thought it would be better after we got the blood tests back so we could see how it looked.

I didn't have any more issues, so when I went in for the blood test on Tuesday, I figured everything would look OK.  I made a conscious choice early on to keep myself separated from this pregnancy- I don't know if it was mother's intuition or just being paranoid.  I didn't start dreaming about how the nursery would be decorated.  I didn't start picturing this little babe.  I didn't even wonder if the baby would be a boy or a girl.  I just tried not to think about it.  On Thursday morning the nurse called and said my progesterone levels were really low and they prescribed me a progesterone supplement.  After a search on the internet (P.S.- if you are having any fertility issue DO NOT search the internet.  It was more unsettling than not knowing) I found that this is fairly normal. Of course I was freaking out inside but kept it together.  I went to the lab and did my blood test on Thursday and got a call Friday.  They had originally scheduled the ultrasound for 7 weeks and they wanted to push it up to the next week which was 6 weeks.  She said my levels were just really low and my hcg wasn't doubling (which it should in a healthy pregnancy).   I asked her if people had this issue and went on to have healthy pregnancies.  The nurse paused and said, "Um, sometimes."  I think it was then that I knew this just wasn't going to work out.  I was crushed.  I had done enough research to know what all this meant.  I knew I would have a miscarriage.  My co-workers sat with me and let me cry and offered comforting words.  Those were really the only people I told because they always happen to be right there when I got the calls and just had to cry.

Gerry was positive over the weekend.  He kept assuring me that since I had many of the early pregnancy symptoms, surely everything is ok.  He just kept telling me to stop worrying.  It felt like eternity from Friday when I got the news of my levels until Wednesday when we went to the ultrasound.  On Tuesday, the day before the ultrasound, I went to the bathroom at lunch and saw blood.  Not spotting, like bright red blood.  I almost lost it.  My co-workers knew something was up. I just sat at the table and stared at my lunch.  Then I threw it away, untouched.  Finally, one of my friends pulled me out in the hall and I fell apart.  I started crying and I told her what was going on. She had me call my doctor.  When I called, the nurse almost seemed like they were expecting this (with the low hcg numbers).  She told me to call if I lose a ton of blood, but that they would see me the next day for the ultrasound.  Since it was the last few days of school, we were just showing movies, so one of my colleagues took my kids and told me to go home, but I couldn't.  I couldn't sit and cry and feel sorry for myself, so I went to the teacher's lounge and laid on the couch (random, I know).  I chatted with some 6th grade teachers during their lunch because I found doing that better than thinking about what was really going on.  After school, I picked up Catie Grace and went home and waited for Gerry to get home.  That afternoon the spotting really picked up and I started cramping.  That was when I knew it was over.  I knew I was having a miscarriage- it all came together.  Of course, I was upset because I knew it was over, but I am a bit of a planner, so I started looking at what I could expect from a miscarriage.  Again, although I found some horrific stories on the internet, I quickly realized that this early miscarriage is not the worst thing that could happen to me.  I read the most heart-wrenching scenarios about women who saw the baby's heartbeat and went back for a follow up ultrasound and it was gone, or stories about women who had to deliver a stillborn.  Yikes.  I cried for a little bit, but I realized this was a much less terrible thing to go through than the horrible stories I read.  By the time Gerry got home that night, I already knew (somewhat) what the ultrasound would show, and I was at peace with it.  It could be worse.  We would get through this together.

The next day, Gerry and I both took off work to go to the ultrasound.  I always find my strength in Gerry, so, even though we were going to get some sad news, I kept my spirits up by making jokes and laughing.  I know that sounds mental, but that's how I've always worked.  We waited a while in the ultrasound room for my doctor to come do the ultrasound.  Like all normal adults in a terrible situation, we giggled about the jar of condoms on the ultrasound tech's desk.  We tried to keep the mood light.  The doctor came in and started the ultrasound.  She didn't say much at first, but having had an ultrasound before, I knew what I was looking at- nothing.  There was just nothing there.  No sac, no fetus, nothing.  She told us that this is a type of miscarriage called a blighted ovum.  It's where there is conception and implantation, but then nothing else happens.  Like, the baby just doesn't grow.  As I was already prepared for bad news, this seemed to be the best bad news we could get.  So- we could get pregnant (yay!), I had ovulated on my own (yay!), it's just that sometimes these chromosomal abnormalities happen.  It actually comforted me knowing there wasn't like a tiny little baby that just didn't make it inside of me.  It just wasn't meant to be.  It wasn't God's plan.  I could live with that.  My doctor did mention the slight chance of an ectopic pregnancy (where the baby implants somewhere outside of the uterus, usually in the fallopian tube) but she said we would usually see fluid on the tubes or some indicator, but that she couldn't see anything.  She told me to call the office immediately if I had excruciating pain on one side of my pelvis, but that it was so rare she wouldn't worry about it.

I spent the rest of the day shopping for a bit and I had a drink with some co-workers to celebrate the end of school.  That moment was a little difficult because I had been training my brain to remember to be a good host to the new little one- alcohol not allowed- and making that conscious effort to drink really meant the end.  I had my moment and continued on.  I just thought- it's ok we will get pregnant soon for sure because my stressors are gone and it's summer.  It's all uphill from here.  As if on cue, I started having what seemed like a heavy menstrual cycle that night.  I also thought this was a good thing because my body would naturally get rid of all of this without medical intervention.  Again, it was the best bad scenario it could be.

The next Tuesday I went back for a follow up on my blood tests.  At that point they would want to see my HcG levels drop since I was miscarrying.  I got a call from the nurse on Wednesday that they wanted to go ahead and do another ultrasound on Thursday because my Hcg was exactly the same.  I thought this was kind of odd, so to the internet I went again.  I knew that only two things would cause the HCG levels to still be high- an ectopic pregnancy and a situation where my body wasn't able to naturally miscarry so I would have to have a medical procedure called a D&C.   Again, I wasn't having excruciating pain in my pelvis, so I didn't think it was ectopic, though I was having a nagging pressure on my right side.  It wasn't too bad so I ruled out the idea of an ectopic.  I did research on a D&C and I knew if that's what my doctor suggested, that's what I would do.  At this point, I was just ready to be done with all of this and move on.

On Thursday I went to the doctor for the ultrasound with a bad feeling.  I had trouble sleeping the night before, but I thought I was being dramatic.  I told Gerry not to worry about going to the appointment because I could do it alone.  The ultrasound tech did the ultrasound and wasn't really saying much.  I asked her if it looked like there was still stuff in my uterus and she said no, it was totally clear.  She kept going back to my right tube and measuring and taking pictures, but she didn't say anything to me.  When the ultrasound was over, we had an awkward exchange where I was trying to (nicely) make it clear that I didn't want to leave without seeing the doctor, and she wanted me to stay to talk to the doctor, but she didn't want to tell me that and freak me out.  I ended up in a exam room for a long time- just waiting.  In my mind I knew she was about to tell me that it was an ectopic pregnancy, but another, more rational, part of me said I was being dumb.  There's like a 2% chance of having an ectopic and I don't have any of the indicators- I don't smoke, I'm under 35, never had an STD, etc.

My doctor finally came in and asked if I was having pain.  I told her about the pressure in my right side and she told me that the ultrasound showed an ectopic pregnancy.  There was an embryo in the right tube.  She then explained that an ectopic pregnancy is not viable and there is no way to move the baby from the tube (where it can not grow to term) to the uterus (where it should have been).  She continued to explain that if the fetus is not removed, it would eventually cause my tube to rupture, which would cause internal bleeding and possible death.  It looked to me like the surgery was what we needed to do.  She told me that she would try to save my fallopian tube, but if it was too stretched or damaged, she would have to remove the entire tube. Tears streamed down my face as she explained the surgery and the risks and benefits.  She told me that she was setting up  my surgery for the next morning.  When she stepped out of the room, I called Gerry with the stunning news.  I so wished I had made him come with me that day. He was so comforting and supportive and gentle with his words.  He asked if he should come now and I told him no since he would have to take the next day off for my surgery.  I felt better after talking to him.  After almost an hour of waiting, the nurse came back and told me that my surgery would be at 8:15 in the morning and to get there at 7:15.  I walked downstairs to the surgery ward and filled out some paperwork.  They took blood and left a HUGE bruise on my arm (thank you, nurse who has obviously never taken blood before).  My friend Courtney, who is a nurse, met me at the hospital and we went to Chick fil a to have a drink and talk.  She told me all about how the surgery would be and the recovery and I began to calm down.  We talked about fertility and where I would go from here.  It was calming and soothing enough to get through the day.

I went to my parents house and had dinner so I could see Catie Grace (they were keeping her for the night so we didn't have to disturb her in the morning).  I went home and finished up some sewing projects that needed to be done, as I didn't know when I would feel up to sitting up and sewing again.  Gerry and I went to Walgreen's and got a prescription from my doctor to help me sleep and not freak out in the morning, and an ice cream from Sonic.  We really didn't talk too much about the surgery; we just enjoyed time together.

The next morning we went into the hospital and got checked in.  The staff was extremely nice.  Gerry helped me into my stylish hospital robe and the nurse came in to put the IV in.  She did it quickly and without much pain, for which I was extremely grateful.  The anesthesiologist and nurse anethesist came and talked to me as did my OB who was doing the surgery.  I was calm and collected.  Then they told me I would have to walk down the hallway from my room into the operating room- and Gerry couldn't come with me.  I immediately started crying, but at least it was silent tears rather than loud sobs.  Gerry hugged me and reassured me that everything would be ok.  As I walked down the hall, crying, the OR nurse told me some corny jokes that made me smile.  Then we were in the OR.  I've never had surgery so the entire thing was overwhelming to me.  I laid on a table and they started wrapping these things around my legs that would simulate walking to avoid blood clots.  The nurse anethesist told me he was going to give me something in my IV to calm me down.  I watched him put a needle in the IV and that was it.

I woke up in recovery and I was in pretty bad pain.  I thought it was weird because the pain was in my right thigh (which obviously wasn't part of the surgery).  The nurse (a different, not so nice one) told me she couldn't give me medicine until I stopped moving around.  She gave me some pill with Sprite and left the Sprite in my hand.  As I was still all messed up on medicine from surgery, I fell asleep and spilled the Sprite all over me.  That irritated mean nurse.  I was still in pain- Just for the record, I wasn't like writhing and flailing about like a crazy person, I was just kind of moving my legs up and down.  She eventually gave me some medicine in my IV that made the pain bearable- not go away.  I remember asking her multiple times if they had taken the entire tube, but I couldn't ever remember what her answer was.  The last time I asked her if they had taken the tube, she very rudely said, "yes!" Even in the post-surgery haze, I knew that really sucked.

They let me back in the room with Gerry to get dressed.  I told Gerry that I had flipped off the mean nurse, but I think I was kidding.  At least I hope I was- that really isn't in my character to do that.  Joke about it, yes.  Actually do something that rude, no.  The nice nurse from the beginning got me a wheel chair and wheeled me out as Gerry came to pick me up.  I vaguely remember getting in the car.  I know we stopped at Publix to get me a few snacks I was requesting which included ginger snaps (for the record, I have never eaten a ginger snap in my life and I don't know WHY I was asking for them).  We got home and I passed out.

When I woke up, my leg was still killing me, but I had my wits about me (more or less).  I did a quick internet search and saw that the pain in my leg was from the air they push into your body during laproscopic surgery.  In most people, the air rises into the neck and shoulders (which I had read about), but for me it was in my legs.  WebMd said to stop drinking carbonated beverages (thank you post-op mean nurse that gave me 2 cans on sprite because I was so thirsty) and to walk around.  Although I didn't want to, I got up and walked around.  Within 10 minutes the pain in the leg was gone- Hallelujah!

I was so blessed to have many friends and family members bring us food, flowers, ice cream, and other fun treat. We had so many people call and text to check on me.  I know what a wonderful blessing it is to have so many people that support and love us.   I was mostly just happy to have visitors that distracted me from everything that had happened.

Over the past few says, I feel like I have been all over the place.  I felt like last week when we thought this was a miscarriage, I already grieved for the little life we lost.  Then this week, when it was my life on the line, I had to think about things like what would happen to Gerry and Catie Grace if I was no longer around.  One minute I will be fine, and have hope, and feel that this had some (unknown) purpose in my life.  The next minute I will be a crying mess because this is so unfair and I only have one fallopian tube, so how will we ever have any more kids.

I think we have had a while to grieve this miscarriage (if that's even what this is considered), so I don't think that is what is bothering me now.  Now what's bothering me is that I only have 1 fallopian tube, and a diagnosis of PCOS, and an ectopic pregnancy (which puts me at a higher risk for repeat ectopic pregnancies).  My fertility is completely unsure.  I know so many people think I should just be grateful that we have Catie Grace because there are so many people out there that can't have any children.  Please believe that I do understand the immense gift that Catie Grace is to my life.   And believe that I have many friends that are currently struggling with infertility and I hurt for them.  I think about them often and I am beyond grateful for Catie Grace. I enjoy her immensely. But also understand that when you have a dream for your life, it is hard to just give that up.  Gerry and I both dreamed of having a house full of kids. Having them run downstairs on Christmas morning and have slumber parties in the living room.  It's everything we have ever wanted in our lives.  I want Catie Grace to have a brother and a sister, so she could experience the special bond and relationships that siblings bring.  Now, I'm just not sure if that's in the cards.  And maybe one day I can be at peace with that.  But that day is not today.  Today I am grieving for a circumstance  that may or may not come.  Today I will get out of bed, and take a shower, and pretend that everything is OK, because if I stay in this bed, I know things will not get better.  Today I will be a mom and play with Catie Grace (although I can't pick her up for a few weeks).  Today I will push on, and smile, and maybe today, I will really mean it.