Journey # 2

I fell pregnant just after Joshua turned 17 months.  I was so excited - I believed that my body had conquered this 'affliction' and that the combination of everything that we did had somehow cured me, and my body had learned how to do this reproduction thing properly.  After all, I have a perfect little boy to show for it.

So I got excited about it.  Knowing my body as I do, I found out I was pregnant at 3 weeks - before I'd even missed a period.  It took 3 weeks of injections and rigorous monitoring of my blood sugar, and eating right, and nurturing myself before I started to bleed.

I got really upset.  I was sad and frustrated and confused.  I also felt a little stupid - like I should have known better than to get my hopes up before I saw a heartbeat, but I don't want to miss out on any of the joy of being pregnant.   I wrote it off as a possible chromosomal defect, and perhaps this was one of those statistical 'odds' of having chromosomal issues.  Perhaps it wasn't just that I was still the same person with the same body.

I decided that I would wait it out and miscarry at home.  I didn't feel like facing the hospital or the cold steel table of failure.  Big mistake.  I was in pain.  I bled for about 2 weeks without seeing any clotting.  Eventually I miscarried, and the trauma of seeing what I imagined to be my child in the toilet still makes me want to cry as I type this.

I got sick straight afterwards (combination of stress, and Josh's creche germs) and between Mike (my husband), Josh and I, we kept sick for about 3 months and 4 rounds of antibiotics each.  Not bad for someone who doesn't usually take antibiotics if I can help it!

It does get better.  Just not always when you need it to.

The emotional upheaval

Image by Grietgriet

Each miscarriage is different for each person.  There are days when you may feel absolutely devastated, and times when you go to work the next day.  There's often no way to predict how you are going to handle it until you have to.  

There are generally similar emotions that I have come across when talking to people who have suffered through multiple miscarriages.. these are a few of them (note - the logic and sentiment is not 'true' as such - it is an emotional response to the trauma):

Shock
From the time we are children, it is drummed into us that our purpose in life is beyond work.. we are supposed to get married and have kids.  It is seen as the major distinguishing feature between men and women - women give birth.  In this modern era, we are taught that we now have the choice.  Except that some of us don't have a choice.  It is a brutal shock to find out that having children is not necessarily possible.  Thoughts such as "How do we define ourselves as women if we don't even have the option of having a child when we want to?" are normal.  

Guilt
It is really difficult to not blame yourself when, as a woman, we are the child's sole life support system.  My view used to be that my husband had done his part, as I was already pregnant, and it was me that had failed to carry the child safely.  Although everyone will tell you that it is not your fault (and it really really isn't), it takes a while to actually feel that way.

Isolation
First of all, if you start talking about your miscarriage(s), you will find that there are many many women out there who have gone through (or are going through) the same thing.  It was like I joined a secret club that I had no idea existed until I became a member. 

After the second miscarriage I began to withdraw from my husband out of guilt at losing his children.  I also felt like I didn't really have the right to grieve, because a number of people had said to me "at least you weren't further along".  My husband was trying to be strong for me, but really all I wanted was for him to grieve with me so that I could at least feel like I wasn't being ridiculous for feeling my losses so intensely.

Anger & disbelief
Strangely enough, the thing that angered me the most was the thing that comforted me the most too.  There are so many people out there who didn't even want kids, who have them 'accidentally'.  There are people out there who have actively tried to hurt themselves to abort, and still their children survive, yet here we were trying so hard to nurture our pregnancies as best we could, without success.

Looking at it with a slightly different perspective, I realised that there was nothing I was doing that was 'killing' my unborn child, nor was there anything I could do better to keep the pregnancy.  It helped me to realise that this was happening to us.. I wasn't causing it, and this helped me to stop treating my body as a traitor, and to go a little easier on myself, realising that the teaspoon of honey I ate or the fast walk I took in week 5 did not cause my loss.

There are a lot of emotions around infertility and miscarriage.  People deal with them differently.  I believe that it is healthier to talk about it than to bottle it up, because there is so much that you can tell yourself that isn't true, and it is so easy to enter into a self-destructive mindset of blame when you isolate yourself.  By talking about the things you have suffered, you help yourself to work through it, and you also help others.

The emotional journey you take is your own.  There is no-one who will know exactly what you are going through, but by sharing with others, you will find threads of commonality that will help you to get through this without losing things that are the most important to you besides your unborn child.

The beginning

It's not really the beginning, just the start of my fertility story...  for this blog, I am not delving into the emotions around the miscarriages.. rather sticking to the medical stuff.  I think that the range of emotions we went through deserves its own blog post.

Image: M_Bartosch

We had been trying for about 6 months when I finally had the first signs of pregnancy.  When I took the test I thought it was a negative (impatient person that I am, I didn't wait before I saw just one line). After a couple of minutes, I realised when I looked again that there was the faintest pink line.  Mike & I were thrilled!  I booked an appointment with the gynae, and we saw a heartbeat.  Unfortunately, I started to bleed a few weeks later, and a visit to the doctor confirmed that we had lost the baby.
At this stage I was sad, but philosophical - I knew that miscarriages were not uncommon and believed that if we tried again, I would not have any more problems. I was wrong. We had another two miscarriages before my doctor sent me for tests. She tested for antibodies, thyroid issues and progesterone levels, but nothing came up abnormal.

The tests
I had another miscarriage, and decided to see a fertility specialist. We tested for karyotypes (to make sure that my husband & my dna was compatible), and Mike had his sperm tested. I was put on chlomid and prednisone and monitored closely. The clomid made me quite bitchy - poor Mike!

I also went to a blood specialist, who did a whole battery of tests on my blood. eventually they found out that I have sticky platelets - similar to the antiphospholipid syndrome, but harder to diagnose.

I had to inject myself daily with a blood thinner (Clexane), and my husband would give me another injection of progesterone.

Blood sugars
Despite this being the only thing that they could find wrong with me, I continued to miscarry at around 6-8 weeks.  I researched a lot on the internet, as well as talking to other people who had gone through similar issues. I suspected that I had insulin resistance, although my doctor at the time did not think so, because I don't have trouble conceiving.  I went ahead and did the test privately, and my blood sugar came back as abnormally high. 

I started to eat like a diabetic and took Metformin to help control the blood sugar, which helped me to lose about 8kgs.  Despite the medicines, we did not see a heartbeat for pregnancies 2 - 7.

Life coaching
In the meantime, I'd begun studying to become a life coach, which was a great tool for managing my stress, especially around the pregnancies.  I found out I was pregnant for the 8th time. We followed the same medical routine, and I worked on good outlets for my emotions - talking, writing and helping other people who were going through the same thing. 

The shock
At about 7 weeks (over a long weekend), I started to spot again.  I didn't bother to call the doctor, because I knew what to expect.  I was going to take some painkillers to avoid the pain of the impending miscarriage, but I stuck it out, preferring to wait until the first cramp hit.  I waited and waited, and cried.  Eventually, after the long weekend, I booked an appointment with my gynae so that we could schedule a D&C. 

Mike & I went to the gynae at around lunchtime.  The ultrasound totally shocked Mike & I - there was a heartbeat!!  We cried.

The joy
About 8 months later, we had Joshua, a perfectly healthy baby, weighing in at 3.68kgs, and measuring 49cm.

Images courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net