It has been a wild few months.
Go back with me if you will to the start of 2010. Things were rosy. After a few months of trying, T and I were newly pregnant. We had shared the news with our parents because we saw both sets over Christmas. I was far along in the interview process for a job I really wanted. All was swell.
And then things came crashing down. On the day I was exactly eight weeks pregnant, I started bleeding and cramping. By that night I had miscarried. We were heartbroken. That Monday I was on my way to a doctor's appointment to follow up. As I gathered up my bags at the coffee shop where I was visiting with a friend, the phone rang. The job was moving on with other candidates. He wanted to tell me why. Something about some of my answers weren't specific enough. I had the small urge to make him feel like an asshole by saying, "I'm sorry. I have to go because I have a post-miscarriage doctor's appointment." But I was cheery and gracious. I kept my head up and continued on with my crappy day.
Of course that doctor's appointment was pointless. She said she would "take my word for it," and didn't do any tests or ultrasounds to even make sure the miscarriage was complete. Frustrated, T and I scheduled an appointment for me at another clinic. They seemed to have some sort of knowledge, though not a lot of compassion. After a blood test and a particularly uncomfortable trans-vaginal ultrasound (is there any other kind?), I had my answers. A complete miscarriage, which at least spared me from a D&C. I now suspect the pregnancy ended a week or two earlier, and it just took awhile to pass. Had I known a few weeks earlier, I might have had to do the D&C.
They instructed me to return in a month to get a follow up blood test to make sure my hCG levels were back to zero. I went on with my life. I moved along in a grueling interview process for a position with a health record software company to train customers. I had a phone interview, and a first interview, and then scheduled a second.
I went in for my blood test and kept getting shuffled around the hospital. I showed up in the lab, and they had no idea I was there. They sent me up two floors to get a little print out. I was annoyed and frustrated. I almost just wanted to leave because I knew I was back to normal. Why did I need to draw this out? Finally, the lab tech poked me, and I was on my way.
Back to the flurry of preschool, exercise classes, and applesauce spills. A few days later, I was blissfully laying on the couch when the phone rang. It was the OB clinic.
"I have your blood test results."
"Oh, yeah, OK," I said sleepily.
"Your levels were 42 last month. But they're not going down. They're going up. You're at 1500. So we were wondering if you were having symptoms of being five and a half weeks pregnant."
What? "Um, not that I know of," I said truthfully. I really almost fell off the couch. Suddenly I was wide awake.
"So you think I'm pregnant again?"
"Well, either pregnant again or still pregnant."
We scheduled another blood test. Meanwhile I surfed the Internet obsessively. Could you get pregnant two weeks after a miscarriage? I knew I couldn't still be pregnant because I had seen my tiny, empty uterus during that awkward ultrasound. I found a condition called molar pregnancy that I decided I must have. I stressed over my job prospect. What if I got the job? What if I didn't? What if I was pregnant? What if I wasn't?
T brought home a pregnancy test that turned out decisively positive. My next blood test showed the hCG levels were still doubling. We scheduled an ultrasound to confirm. T met me to corral the rowdy boys. I sat awkwardly on a waiting room chair in a gown, wondering if other people had sat there without their underwear on. (Mine were still in place)
We were called into the ultrasound room and my belly was lubed. They couldn't find anything that way because the pregnancy would still be so early. Back to the wonderful trans-vaginal option. And then once that horrible wand was in place, the screen came into focus and there was a tiny white smudge in a black circle complete with a tiny flickering heartbeat. I was about seven weeks along, so apparently you can get pregnant two weeks after a miscarriage.
It took awhile to wrap my mind around the idea again. I had just gotten used to being not pregnant. T couldn't even remember the conception. And we had that lingering fear of another miscarriage. Pregnancy suddenly seemed so fragile. We didn't embrace the idea for awhile, though it was firmly lodged in the back of my mind. Especially as I completed my second interview and was offered the job. And then as I accepted and started March 1st. And as I signed up for short-term disability.
This week I had my first actual doctor's appointment, though I am already 14 weeks and out of my first trimester. It took awhile to figure out my provider with new insurance and all of that. I wondered again if maybe I was mistaken about the pregnancy. It was perhaps one of those hysterical things that I had invented in the aftermath of my miscarriage. I pictured the doctor searching for a heartbeat and then looking at me in confusion. But no, the heartbeat was there thumping along with the sound of hoof beats at 160 beats per minute.
I told my boss this week, and she was easy. I was nervous that she would be annoyed (and maybe she is, but she didn't show it). In an attempt to be productive as soon as possible, I completed training yesterday, in what my boss says is record time.
So things are back to really good from a point of being really crappy. But something still seems unstable about it all. Once you lose a pregnancy, I don't think you are ever quite the same. I feel like everything could change in an instant. And really it could.
But for now, I am happy.
--MM
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