Hope for a Happy Ending

I just really want this to have a happy ending.  We just might have pulled this thing off.  On June 1^st, I was going out for happy hour after work, but I just had this nagging feeling that I should really take a pregnancy test before I went.  If by chance we’d had success this month, I certainly didn’t want to celebrate by intoxicating my developing embryo.  So I took it and it was positive.  We’re pregs.  The amazing thing is that in all honesty, it is the first cycle we have set out with laser focus to accomplish this and we did it!  At this point, Brett’s ego is ever expanding.  “Twice in less than a year,” he brags.

And so like most good news I’ve received during any of this voyage to Babytown, the positive feelings last for about a 24-hour period, until I find some tidbit on the Internet that throws me into a nosedive tail spin of worry and anxiety.  And so it has been since we found out I was pregnant.  I was reading another woman’s blog who had miscarried 5 or 6 times before she finally carried a baby to term and I just don’t want to be her! Please universe, god, whoever is sitting up there, please do not let that be me.  

She also pointed out a feeling I know all too well – I know more about what can go wrong in a pregnancy than I do about having a successful one.  I could be a real doomsday of information as far as that stuff goes.  I won’t, for my own sanity, go into it now but if you are interested, you should see about getting inside my head. 

I think that one of the sad side effects of having a miscarriage is that it makes it incredibly hard to be ‘excited’ about being pregnant again.  It is as if the innocence we had before, the naïve sense that the difficult part of actually getting sperm and egg to meet, was over.  I imagine that once we make it successfully past each little milestone and hurdle, we will feel more confident, more celebratory.  But until then, it is so very hard to feel sheer, unadulterated excitement and confidence.  

About two weeks ago, I started having some strange spotting business and immediately called my OB and demanded (Yes, that is exactly what I did) a blood test to measure my HcG levels.  This hormone, if it doubles over 48 hours in early pregnancy, is a good indicator of whether your pregnancy is progressing.   Unfortunately, the woman who ordered the blood test, did not order the correct one and so there was a huge snafu.  I had to wait another day for the number to come back and then had to return two days later to give blood again.  They will compare the two numbers to see how things are going.  My number was high for the first and although it wasn’t doubling, was increasing.  Once your numbers are over 6000, they stop doubling every 48 hours and take much longer.  So, according to my OB, things looked good. 

She asked if I wanted to come in for an ultrasound that same day.  I did and I didn’t.  I knew that if we didn’t see a perfect little sac and baby and heartbeat, I would be a bloodhound on the Internet searching for answers that are never there or if they are, never satisfying.  So I went in.  And there was a perfect gestational sac, measuring exactly 5w1d, but nothing else. 

“Looks exactly like what we should see,” she assured me. “Come back next week and we should see a lot more.”

However, I wasn’t assured.  And so we came back last week to hopefully see a lot more.  The gestational sac had grown over that week and was measuring exactly 6w1d.  The tech had a hard time seeing anything inside.  At one point, it seems like she might have finally found the yolk sac (where eventually we will see an embryo) but it is still very small and sort of wedged against the side so is hard to see. 

Our OB either has an amazing poker face or she really is hopeful.  She didn’t seem too upset by this, but rather said, “I’ve seen it go either way.” So we wait and we go again on Wednesday.  By then, we should see something for sure. If we don’t, then it is likely that I will miscarry this pregnancy, too.  Seems pretty cruel of the universe, but then I think of the other woman, with her 6 miscarriages and I think if she can do it, I can, too? Problem is, I just don’t want to. 

We had decided when I found out I was pregs that we weren’t going to tell but a very few people.  But as Wednesday approaches, I feel like I need all the hope I can gather in the universe from the folks who are keeping tabs on us as we go on this journey.  I just really want this story to have a happy ending, not only for us, but for any woman out there who has been through a miscarriage, worried about if she will be able to get pregnant again and once she is worry about staying pregnant.   I want to be hope and not despair.  So we will wait until Wednesday and continue to hope and pray that this baby is healthy and growing. 

Maybe you all could you do the same?