On a sunny Saturday in July this year I stood with Neil in our bathroom staring at a pregnancy test willing a second line to appear. You have to wait 3 minutes and we'd waited 1 minute and no second line was showing. We were starting to think this, our 3rd attempt at transferring a frozen embryo was going to end in a negative test as the first one had. Then I looked again and was sure I could see a second line appearing. I thought it was just wishful thinking at first. But sure enough after we'd waited the full 3 minutes there were definitely 2 lines. A second test came up positive straight away. I was pregnant for the second time ever in my life.
6 months previous to this attempt I had been in hospital having a surgically managed miscarriage after the second frozen embryo we implanted had stopped developing at six weeks. I carried my baby to 10 weeks but scans showed no heart beat from 8 weeks onwards. So as we took in the news that I was pregnant again we were understably cautious that this may again end in miscarriage. We were still hopeful though. I was pregnant again, this time we might get to meet our baby. We might finally get to hold a baby in our arms rather than our hearts. I was already feeling signs of pregnancy and started to let myself think about the future as Mummy again.
Little did I know, standing in that bathroom, that I would not even get to be knowledgably pregnant for a week this time. On the Thursday after the Saturday I took the test I was at work and had a niggling feeling that something had changed, something was different. I can't really explain it, I just knew I wasn't pregnant anymore. I was discussing pregnancy symptoms with a colleague and realised I didn't actually feel any of these things anymore. I actually found myself lying and pretending I still felt sick etc. I'm not sure why exactly, I guess I just wasn't ready to think this might be over yet. I know pregnancy symptoms come and go but I just knew. I was on a sleep in shift so I couldn't do anything about it till Friday. I got home on Friday morning exhausted as I'd had a disturbed night so I thought a sleep might make me feel better. If not I'd buy a test when I woke up. I didn't feel any better when I woke up so I went out and bought a twin pack of tests. I remember seeing a sign on a door on t.v. that said 'do not enter if pregnant'. I burst into tears and said to myself that I could go in there because I wasn't pregnant anymore! The test was as negative as they come, this was over. The following week provided 6 more negatives and my clinic finally let me come off my meds. 10 days after the first negative test I began bleeding. As the loss occurred around 5 weeks it's known as a chemical pregnancy. Implantation occurred and my hormone (chemical) levels were high enough to be detected on a test but development halted and miscarriage occurred almost immediately after implantation. If this had been a natural pregnancy I probably wouldn't have even known I was pregnant. It would just have been like a late, heavier period. But I did know I was pregnant; I did know I was having a miscarriage not a heavy period.
Physically this loss was not as big a deal as the first but emotionally it was huge. Due to my dodgy chromosomes our embryos have been through genetic testing and they are only transferring embryos that are chromosomally normal. These embryo transfers are not meant to end in negative cycles, miscarriages and chemical pregnancies. It may be that all three occurances are just 'one of those things'. It may be there's something else going on. I'm now going to have tests to find out. But at the time it felt like the bottom had fallen out of my world again. We had worked so hard to recover from losing our baby and getting a positive again meant we could start to hope again. But it was over before it had even begun. It felt so cruel. I felt I was having to grieve for a lost pregnancy as well as a lost baby. I sank into a depression deeper than I've felt throughout this whole process. I am now coming out of the depths but I'm still sad that I keep losing my babies. When we had the miscarriage there was a process to go through and an obvious event to mark. With this chemical pregnancy I just stopped being pregnant. It all happened so quickly which I think is why it hit me harder. This was supposed to be the pregnancy that brought hope into our grief. Instead it piled grief on top of grief. I struggled to find God in the dark places but I knew that He is sovereign and knows what He's doing. I can now see that I sank into his arms and I am letting him rebuild my heart.
We have one more chromosomally normal embryo left in the freezer. I'm having some tests before we transfer it. I don't know how that will go but I know that God loves me and is all powerful. I don't know why I keep losing my babies and why we are struggling so but I hope that by sharing my stories others will know they are not alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment