As I mentioned earlier, we went in for our first ultrasound on Thursday, July 2nd. I was 11 weeks pregnant and very excited about seeing our baby for the first time, but also nervous about if the baby was okay.
Early pregnancy is weird. You can't feel the baby move and pregnancy symptoms aren't always there, so sometimes it feels like you're not even pregnant. The ultrasound was going to be my first "real proof" that a baby was actually growing inside of me and that everything was going okay.
I had no signs of a miscarriage. No cramping. No bleeding. Up until the moment of the ultrasound, I thought everything was fine. They did the ultrasound and I saw the baby, but there was no heartbeat. The ultrasound technician took measurements that indicated the baby had stopped developing at 8 weeks, 6 days. We were devastated. The technician brought in an apologetic radiologist who confirmed her findings. They told me that nothing needed to be done right away (it was about 4:30 on the Thursday of a holiday weekend), but that I needed to call my midwife on Monday to discuss my options.
Luckily, I didn't have to wait until Monday. Probably 30 minutes after we got home, I got a call from one of the midwives at my midwifery practice. The ultrasound technician had faxed my results to her. She was very sympathetic and talked to me about my options - I could wait for the miscarriage to happen naturally (which could take a couple of weeks), take drugs to make it happen faster, or have a D & C. There was no way I was waiting for anything to happen, naturally or with drugs. I wanted the D & C. I wanted it right that second, but I knew that wasn't possible. She gave me a referral for a GYN and told me that his office was closed on Friday, but I could call him on Monday to schedule the procedure.
Luckily, I didn't have to wait until Monday. Within half an hour, the GYN called me. I didn't answer, so he left a very kind message, told me that he would get me in on Monday morning, and said he'd call me again to talk more about it that weekend. He called me the very next morning...on a holiday weekend...and I'm not even his patient. Seriously, this guy was amazing. One thing I feel lucky about was that I had a very good experience with all of the medical professionals I had to deal with during this time...except for the woman drew my blood at LabCorp on the day of the procedure. She was a beeyotch.
When the shock began to wear off a bit, Drew and I e-mailed the people who knew about the pregnancy and told them what happened. Thank God for e-mail. I would have hated to have to tell everyone in person or by phone. I felt fine talking about it after people initially knew, but it was really hard to actually tell someone what happened. I only had to do that twice, and both were people I wanted to call right away - my mom and my cousin (who had gone through it herself).
The first night was hard. A lot of tears and disbelief. Trying to come to terms that the plans we'd made were not happening, at least not for this baby. Part of me thought of this child as a miracle baby who was meant to be - since I'm older, I got pregnant the very first time that I could when we decided to start trying, and it happened on our honeymoon - and that there was no way anything would go wrong. It was extremely difficult to give up our dreams and plans.
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