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I'm still in hell, but no longer in the absolute straits.

The nine week ultrasound went well, so I'm having a "normal" pregnancy, as far as we know right now (short of any genetic test results).

So I'm coming out of the gestational closet.

Nervewracked

It's just so nervewracking.

On Saturday, I would have been 8w3d -- the anniversary of the last baby's in utero death.

It's Monday morning and it's 4am and I am waking up NOT nauseated. What the hell is this? Has the baby died? Every night this past week, I've woken up in the middle of the night feeling like absolute shit. Now, I don't feel sick, I can walk around my house upright instead of hunched over, and to top it off, I have some neat lower abdominal cramps to consider. Is this IT?

I don't have an ultrasound scheduled until Wednesday. Wednesday is a significant day because it would be (should the baby still be alive) the beginning of the mythical Week 9. Dr. W. says that if we can just make it to Week 9, then we should all be able to breathe more easily. But as it is, we're just at the beginning of 8w5d (hypothetically), with more than two days to go before that ultrasound.

And just in case I should ever "relax" about this pregnancy, I have the horrible realization that I felt sick throughout my last pregnancy, even after the baby had died. Now I'm wondering, in a brief trip toward "vaguely reassuring" if that might have been an effect of the progesterone supplements. Perhaps they made me sicker than I would have been?

I can't remember when/if I stopped taking those progesterone supplements during that pregnancy. If I didn't stop taking them, then perhaps that explains why I had nausea the entire time.

I think about my friend A., who is also pregnant now. She accidentally skipped a dose of her progesterone supplements and she felt GREAT.

Oh, here comes a wave of nausea. Meaningless, but reassuring in its own way.

Well, this is the week we find out. This is the week that the baby either is found to be gone, or that we are reclassified as a "normal" pregnancy rather than a "high-risk" pregnancy.

Oh, to make the days fly by between now and then!

Cursed

Lately I feel like Sleeping Beauty's dad.

Remember how, at her baptism, the evil witch Maleficent curses her, that "on her 16th birthday, she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel... AND DIE!"

Although a good fairy works to alter the spell, such that she'll only sleep, not die, her parents are mortified by this curse, and they wonder what they can do to reverse it.

Her dad then orders for every spinning wheel in the land to be BURNED in a big bonfire. His logic is adequate -- if there are no spinning wheels available, then his beautiful daughter can't possibly prick her finger on one! Right? Right???

I'm the same way. Basically, either my new in-utero-child is cursed by Maleficent, or he's not. He's either suitable for life outside the womb, or he's not. But that doesn't stop me from trying everything in my Muggle-like power to keep him alive.

For example, white underwear. EVERYONE knows that if you put on white underwear, you're just asking to get your period. So I'm wearing dark underwear with a pantyliner every single day. If I never wear white underwear, then I can't start bleeding, yes?

And I do this with 1,000 things. I am not telling anyone I'm pregnant, just in case the volume of people's expectations might do something to keep this embryo down. I'm not even looking at infant clothing (or infants, if I can help it), so that I don't burden him with expectations of my own.

I'm not pulling out my maternity clothes. None of my normal pants fit me anymore, but I'll be damned if I'm going to unload those boxes in the pursuit of something comfortable to wear. That's a sure way to sign up for another miscarriage, right? So I'm wearing long sweaters draped over my open flies.

I'm not thinking about birth or nursing or all of those things that I enjoyed contemplating when I was pregnant with Chebbles. I just think, OK, if he shows up, he shows up. I don't have anything new to learn on the subject of newborns, so let's not run around assuming that I'll ever have one again.

It's so damn TRICKY, being at this perilous eight-week mark. It's just long enough to start potentially anticipating a baby, but not long enough to be out of the "danger zone."

Is the baby cursed by Maleficent? JUST IN CASE, you won't find me planning for other alternatives.

D-Day approaches

I have to keep reminding myself that we are NOT there yet. One can have a hearbeat one day, and NOT have one the next day, particularly if one is an 8-week-old embryo.

I find myself having dreams about baby names ("Sierra???") and accidentally figuring out the logistics ("After the baby is born...")

Therein lies DANGEROUS thinking. It is so perilous to go down those roads, because you have to walk BACK UP them once you find out that the baby has died, and you will be lying there in the surgical center thinking, "No, this child will not need a name," and "Are we ever going to conceive a normal baby?"

Yes, if you go down those fun roads of thought, anticipating a real baby at the end of a pregnancy, you have to walk BACK UPHILL and it's a horrible trudge. It's lonely and shitty and I don't want to do it again.

So every time I see myself blithely start down a path of excitement or anticipation, I yank myself back up. No! Do NOT be happy about this pregnancy, because the last baby died at 8w3d or thereabouts, and we aren't even past that point yet!

Today, if the baby is still alive, it's 8 weeks. So Saturday is "D-Day," kind of -- the anniversary of it's sister's death.

The doctor said that sometimes a baby who is going to die in utero will still have a heartbeat for awhile, but it will stop growing once it begins to die. It's kind of like patients on life support, I guess. Once you unplug all of the machines, the heart can keep beating for a good long time. It's just in the habit, I guess.

So even if we have a heartbeat, the trick is to see growth too. You've got to see that kid getting bigger and bigger, or else it's time to prepare yourself for its demise. So the heartbeat isn't my major concern anymore -- once we see it, we then have to measure the embryo and make sure it GREW. And if it doesn't, well, then it's just the wait for it to die, or to hope for a miracle? Ugh, pathetic. I don't want that to happen.

Can we fast-forward time, please, and tell me what happens on the other end?

Good ultrasound

I don't want to think about it.

Yesterday's ultrasound indicated that the baby's heart was still beating, and he was still growing. But it's only at 7w5d. I keep accidentally getting excited, almost like the old guy at the beginning of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," who has been put in a wheelbarrow as a dead victim of The Plague... the baby's looking out at me and saying with a Cockney accent, "But I'm not dead yet!"

YET. YET. YET. The last pregnancy ended at 8w3d, only to be discovered as such at 10w3d. So why in the HELL am I getting excited? These are the killing times! These are the danger times! This is the week of DOOM, and yet I sit here looking out the window, thinking about its darling little body and thrumming little heart.

Mystery cramps

I don't think I can stand it anymore. It's Sunday morning at 4:35am, and my next ultrasound isn't until Monday at 3:30pm. The last ultrasound was on Tuesday and I can't help but interpret every small symptom as the end of this pregnancy.

I keep thinking about it, what my blog entry would be ("Strike Three") and how I'd have to get a D&C at the faraway hospital where my OB-GYN has privileges. Or maybe he'll say I shouldn't have a D&C because the pregnancy is still too early, and I'll have to wait it out until I lose it naturally.

Welcome to my HELL!! I just felt so foolish after the last pregnancy -- the baby had been dead for two weeks and I just didn't pick up on it. How could I have not known something that terrible had happened in my own uterus? And there were only the vaguest signs, in retrospect, that something had happened.

But the thing is, I threw up until the very last day. The day before the Ultrasound of Doom, I was vomiting into a gas station toilet near the Pittsburgh Airport, feeling the lowest of low. How could I have known that it was the placenta responsible for the continuation of the pregnancy hormones, not an actual, live, in utero baby. That baby had given up the ghost two weeks before and given no noticeable indication of its departure.

So when I feel sick now, it is absolutely no consolation. I don't think, "Well gee, I'm SO SICK, there is no way I could have lost this baby." No, I think, "I could be vomiting for no good reason."

Worse yet are the times that I don't feel sick. That was the only small indicator that something had gone wrong with my last pregnancy. I felt less sick. I was still sick, but something had taken the edge off. I attributed it to my having taken Robitussin DM -- it must have kept the excess mucus at bay, allowing me some good mornings.

Basically, last time I lost a baby, the only indication was that I didn't feel quite so sick anymore. I was still very sick, and holed up on the sofa, craving and barfing and sleeping. But I was ever-so-slightly less so.

Talk about a recipe for paranoia! Now that I'm almost 8 weeks pregnant, and the last baby died in the 8th week, I am feeling powerless to determine whether this pregnancy is continuing. My only true indication of a continuing pregnancy is watching a hearbeat on an ultrasound machine. That's it. And I won't have that luxury for another day and a half.

I woke up in the middle of the night tonight with cramps. They seemed to be rhythmic, these cramps, not digestive but menstrual in nature. So of course that ended my night of sleep. Perhaps I could have continued sleeping under normal circumstances, but my mind went crazy when I felt those cramps. Is this it?

Is it any consolation for me to look at the statistics, that 1 in 3 pregnancies end in miscarriage, so I'm now "due" for a healthy pregnancy? Or that even when a woman has recurrent miscarriages, her chances of another healthy pregnancy are still about 66%?

No, those numbers are not nearly high enough -- even if I knew my chances were 90%, I would still be dwelling in the straits of hell.

So, as I sit here cramping (was it the minstrone soup I ate yesterday? or my body expelling a deceased embryo???), perhaps I will find some consolation in the worst case scenario? Perhaps by embracing the potential bad outcome, I can live through the next day and a half?

So, if I miscarry...

I will have my energy back within a week. I will be able to do all the fun summertime activities I wanted to do with Chebbles. I can reclaim my ramshackle house and re-organize it to my specifications. I can lose all of these pregnancy hormones that are making me aggressive and impatient. I can stand for long amounts of time.

I get to go to a nice hotel with Hub-D, and probably Chebbles and my mom. He has very nicely acquiesced to this "consolation prize," so that I might fantasize about it. I will frolic on the beach at this hotel and drink wine at night with my husband and chat about the future.

I should also admit that I will be in a dead reproductive panic if I lose a third pregnancy in a row. I have a friend who lost four pregnancies in a row after having two healthy kids -- so it happens, and it kind of ends your reproductive career, particularly if it's a damn mystery as to why you're losing the babies.

Then again, my OB said that some couples just have to roll the dice more than other couples -- "rolling the dice" meaning get pregnancy several times before producing an actual baby. So we just might be people that have to roll the dice more often.

It just sucks that rolling the dice for me means losing my mind. It means obsessing over my fertility cycle, bullying my husband into uterine servitude and feeling LOW when I get my period. THEN when I finally do get pregnant, after the initial five minutes of celebration, I hunker down immediately into war mode... I am at war with my own expectations and love for this potential child. I bleed excessively, even when I'm not miscarrying, so I'm in a perpetual state of thinking I'm miscarrying due to the blood in my underwear.

Then there is the nausea. It can be very strong, like with my pregnancy with Chebbles and my December pregnancy, or it can be a lighter but still overpowering, as with this pregnancy. I have a little more than a month of worrying my ass off, cordoning myself off in my house and limiting all of my activities. And at any time, I could lose the baby and not know it.

The trick, according to my OB, is making it to the magical 9 weeks. Every so often, with this pregnancy, I fantasize that we WILL get there -- that I will still be pregnant with a live embryo at 9 weeks, and we can turn the corner to a more optimistic outlook for this pregnancy.

But then I get mad at myself for having a feeling like that. Optimism is the pathway to extreme heartbreak -- I know it sounds negative and terrible and possibly unloving, but I'm speaking from experience here -- there is no reason to count on a pregnancy until it's at 9 weeks. Until then it's a source of potential future joy, but something to be dismissed and denied until it's a "fact."

Two weeks to go

Yesterday I had another ultrasound, which indicated that this embryo still has a heartbeat, but I'm not impressed. It's hard for me to be impressed with a 7 week old embryo that has a hearbeat, because I've seen a heartbeat then before, then it stopped and I had to have a D&C to remove the embryo from my body.

The best guess, last time, is that the baby died at 8.5 weeks. Now I'd like to know these things more precisely... was it eight weeks five days? Eight weeks and three-and-a-half days? So today I'm at about 7w2d, give or take a few days one way or another.

So these are the straits of hell. This is the two weeks wait. Dr. W said that we can be more confident about this pregnancy, and treat it as a "normal pregnancy" once we hit the 9 week mark. It would be a great thing for us to still have a heartbeat then, but I just can't look forward to that eventuality. I am safest assuming that something will go wrong.

When we went in for that fateful checkup last December, I didn't have any inkling that something could be wrong. I was still throwing up every day -- I had felt a *little* better, but there was still the barf and the fatigue. As it turns out, my body was still interacting with the placenta, which was working its ass off to nurture a baby who had died. Dumb placenta!

Well, I'm being a little harsh with the placenta here. It was probably the best thing that it kept doing its job. It made me know that I did everything I could to keep that baby alive, and the fact I didn't miscarry before then meant that we could test the dead embryo's tissue and discover that it was a "normal" girl.

I've learned more in the last few weeks about what that "normal" diagnosis means, by the way. I asked the doctor (practically with my worried hands around his neck) what the heck might have killed the last baby. Now that I'm pregnant with another one, it is absolutely essential that someone explain this to me better than, "We don't know."

Thank goodness he had a better answer for me. He explained that the only thing that can kill a baby before 9 weeks is a genetic defect -- an assembly of DNA that is not compatible with life. So, what of the "normal" diagnosis? Get this... when a lab tests the tissue of a deceased embryo, they are simply counting chromosomes. That's it. They add them all up, and if they get the "normal" number, then they declare it normal.

This does not mean that the child is genetically normal -- it just means that the number of chromosomes is correct. The chromosomes can do a lot of things to screw it up from there. They can be half-assed, not doing their job, not connecting right, split apart. Basically, they can pull all kind of tricks, particularly when these chromosomes are issuing from people in their mid-30's and older. And the lab can't test for these things yet. All they can do at this point is count.

So how will I spend the next two weeks? How can I avoid being subsumed by worry? I can't. I can write about it here, and I can do my best to "escape" from these straits of hell. I can think about the things I can do if/when I lose another baby (wine, running, eating, cleaning, clothing, hormonal normalcy) and I can just try not to think about it. It's hard not to think about it when you're feeling so nauseated and tired, but that's what I have to do or else I'm going to lose my mind.