Loss #4

I have a zillion things I need to do today but I feel like this is one of them. We lost our fifth pregnancy (fourth miscarriage) and I feel weird for even thinking of writing "but it hasn't been that hard to handle." I really think a lot of it was the timing. Right at Thanksgiving and the busyness that ensued. Don't get me wrong. It sucked. I definitely let myself have a few days to move through the stages of shock, numbness, and pissed off. I cried. I thought "this isn't fair." I didn't want to do Thanksgiving.

I was scheduled to go in for a pregnancy test on November 14th, following our round of Femara, hcg shots, and progesterone. I really didn't think it had worked but the night before my test, the 13th, I got really nauseous as I was going to bed. Hmmm. I took a test that next morning and it was positive but that didn't mean anything to me because I'd gotten a positive a few days before that and felt that the chance of the shot still being in my system was high. So I went in for the appointment. Blood work at 8:30 AM, results by 4:30 PM. Long wait. My hcg was 20 which to me was still inconclusive, though the nurse assured me there was no way that it would still be the shot by then. I got off the phone and was pretty neutral. Disappointed? Little did I know I'd feel that way for the next week and a half. More tests. More phone calls. She told to come back in Monday morning for another blood draw.

That weekend was spent wondering, waiting, thinking, hoping with at least one freak-out of "I don't feel pregnant." Monday finally came and my hcg was 38. It hadn't doubled in 3 days. But, the nurse said it was close enough to what they would have liked to see so I should come back in on Friday to re-test. I googled everything under the sun and prayed a little. I didn't let myself test though so as not to drive myself further crazy with examining line darkness.

Friday. Hcg was 81. This time the increase was over four days and it yet again wasn't where they wanted it to be, which was 96. I asked her what they usually saw in situations like this, and she said it could go either way. I asked what my progesterone was and it had dropped from 35 to 25. With a little nudging from me, because I wanted to know and suspected, she said,

"So it's really not looking good."

 One more blood draw on the upcoming Tuesday. I took a test Monday morning and it was a pretty nice line. I was cautiously optimistic. I woke up Tuesday morning, the 25th with what I thought were increased symptoms and really felt like I'd get a good report that day so I was flabbergasted when she told me my number had dropped to 63 and I needed to stop taking the progesterone. I started bleeding the next morning.

Finding out you're pregnant after so many losses? It's just not the same. Do we get excited? Talk about baby names? Stay neutral? Expect to lose this one too? I told myself not to go look at my maternity shirts hanging up in a separate closet but I did anyways. This after just days before (when I thought the cycle was a bust) me shoving every last baby item into trash bags and into the closet so I wouldn't have to see it when I opened that door.

How can losses get easier and harder at the same time? Easier because we've done it before. Because I've spent so much energy being upset that I don't have much left. The tears have all been cried before. Harder because we're even less hopeful that this will ever work for us again. Harder because you immediately estimate a due date, and think about your baby names, and pray a prayer asking God to let this be it.

Harder because your almost four year old wants a baby just as bad as you do and wonders why God hasn't answered her prayers in that way. At least the way we want them answered.

*****

I feel done with fertility drugs. And while we've talked about adoption, neither of us is full-steam-ahead, gung ho, let's adopt. And I kinda think you should be before starting that process. All I know is...pretty much nothing. I don't know why this keeps happening. I don't know if we'll ever have more than one child. I don't know if there is something health wise, supplement wise, that I'm missing. And I'm honestly a bit tired of thinking about it all. I wish I knew the answers but I don't. I wish we were gearing up to announce a pregnancy this Christmas but we aren't. I wish miscarrying didn't seem so -

normal now.

But it does.