Still 10W4D

I have definitely noticed some strange sticky yellowish mucous today for the first time.

Is something happening???????????????

Still nothing..... 10W4D

Nothing, nada, zip, zilch.

So here are the things that I have tried to do to bring on this miscarriage that have not worked:
- rubbing peppermint oil on my lower abdomen
- drinking peppermint tea
- visualisations
- having sex
- abdominal massage

OK, admittedly I haven't tried any of them particularly hard.
But still!

Christ!
What will it take to get this thing to let go???

Last night I asked the near-full moon what I can do to make the miscarriage happen sooner and it told me that you can't rush the cycles of nature. So I asked for patience. And I asked not to hemorrhage when it does happen. It also told me to shower my husband with love (in response to a different question).... aah the moon is wise.

Speaking of the moon, tonight, being on the Eastern Seaboard of Australia we are in a prime position to witness the Lunar Eclipse. A blood red moon is expected. Surely there could be a no more auspicious sign to herald the long-awaited Miscarriage.

(OK, maybe I have lost my mind now!)

Just wanted to add I will be away on a conference for the next few nights so won't be able to post updates. Don't get too excited... Just because I'm not posting doesn't mean I'm finally having the miscarriage!

I miss our baby too 10W3D

No sign of anything on the miscarriage front. Over the weekend M and I talked a little about it and he said that he misses our baby. I cried when he said that. We did have a baby, for a few short weeks.

Pregnancy breast-tenderness has all but disappeared. I have stopped thinking so much about what the actual miscarriage will be like since it seems like such a remote event. I wonder if my body is busy all this time breaking down the gestational sack etc so that when the m/c happens it won't be much more than a period. God I wish that were the truth of it. I have stopped being all panicky thinking the miscarriage is going to happen any minute, because frankly it's not.

My Pity Party 10W

10 weeks of this fucking nightmare.

WARNING

I am feeling a little emotionally unbalanced at the minute.



I was reading pregnant-husband.blogspot.com and his wife's first pregnancy was a blighted ovum. But then I went on to read about their next pregnancy which happened pretty soon after their (D&C) miscarriage and resulted in a healthy baby boy. I saw the picture from their 12 week ultrasound and instead of being happy and hopeful I was upset thinking that's what I should have inside me about now, instead of this fucking empty sack that will not budge.



Then I get an email from M stating that next month will be a big one in terms of his family commitments, as it is his birthday, his dad's birthday and his brother's birthday. Not to mention with his brother coming back from London there will probably be a big "welcome home" party for him. His brother, whose wife is pregnant and due in December, who announced they were 12 weeks pregnant one week before M & I were finally able to start "trying" (health insurance waiting period....). So No, I don't fucking want to go to your brother's Welcome Home Party. Excuse me, but I just don't feel like it. I am having quite the little pity party today.



Maybe I am being silly and stubborn in waiting for this natural miscarriage. Maybe I should just go and get the D&C and get it over and done with. Over. Finished. So we can start trying again. I so want to be pregnant again.



It's funny but I feel somehow different today. I physically feel "normal". Not pregnant. Those little cramps I've had ever day of this pregnancy seem to have gone. When we made love this morning I just felt normal, not at all tender like I have been lately.



Emotionally I am quite the opposite however.



I am just now doing a google search on "induce miscarriage" and suggesting to M via email perhaps we should tell people about our loss so we don't get his brother's pregnancy rammed down our throats for the next however many months.

I need to stop obsessing... Still 9W6D

I think I need to obsessing about whether every twinge I feel is a cramp and whether at any moment I have started bleeding. I'm pretty sure that when the real cramping or the real bleeding begins I will know about it, without needing to give it a second thought.

I wonder if in a way I am psychologically stopping the miscarriage from happening yet. Because it is taking a very long time... Not that I am not ready to let go of the pregnancy. I have long accepted that it is over. But maybe my fear of the miscarriage itself is preventing it from finally happening.

Well, one thing's for sure, my body knows how to hold onto a pregnancy. I'll give it that much. Just hopefully next time it'll be a viable pregnancy that it's holding on to.

More false hope??? 9W6D

I was woken by Iz at 2:30am last night, with a low (diabetic). Stopping by the toilet on the way back to bed I noticed my slippery translucent cervical mucous (CM) had a definite red tinge. Is this the beginning? I went back to bed and my heart was pounding. I couldn't get back to sleep for ages. I had been waiting for so long to see blood but now that I had (or thought I had) I was scared.

I expected I would wake up a few hours later to full red blood and intensifying cramping.
But nothing.
It is 8:30am and I am at work now.
It's almost like I imagined that red tinge.

Again I ask, when will this ever end????

Last night I told M I don't think this miscarriage is ever going to happen. And we talked about how we were worried it would happen while we were at Noosa for his conference next week.

Ramblings 9W5D

Sitting at my desk at work this afternoon having trawled through all 11 pages of Google search results for "waiting to miscarry" I was struck by what an awful and bizarre situation this is. I am sitting around, going about my daily life waiting to start pouring blood or have massive painful cramps. This is indeed a bizarre time.

If I forget about it, will it all just go away?

The new moon comes on September 11. That is absolutely the longest I will wait. If you believe the moon affects female fertility, the new moon is traditionally the time of bleeding.

Yesterday I started this blog about my "waiting to miscarry" experience. It's basically my diary entries published on the net. After I did the first post of the day it all begin I lost a bit of momentum because it seems like there are heaps of infertility blogs out there. But I didn't find one that detailed the day-to-day insanity that is waiting to miscarry, so I thought I'd put this out there for anyone else who is unfortunate enough to find themselves in the same situation. Today when I did my Google search on "waiting to miscarry" I saw my blog was the third link in the results! Feeling encouraged.

Still no sign of any spotting/bleeding. Just continuing abundance of that clear slippery pregnancy mucous. I am having the perfect pregnancy....oh, except I have no baby.

Come on already.......9W4D

I think I will be in shock and disbelief when the miscarriage does finally start.

I have spent so much time looking for the bleeding and waiting for the cramping but never actually having any of either yet, that it is hard to believe it will ever actually happen.

Of course, I do not want to wait forever. I have read on one website of a woman who waited until she was 18W to finally miscarry her blighted ovum (BO) naturally. I would not want to wait that long. I read that most BO's miscarry in the first trimester. So I will wait until I am 12 weeks (that's only 2 and a bit weeks away) and I will go back to the OB to see what's going on. See if he can do another scan. Maybe ask for more HCG tests to see if I'm at least getting closer.

If only it would end.........

False hope.... 9W1D

Last night and this morning I have twice seen the very slightest traces of blood in my cervical mucous. Also on Thursday at the ultrasound he could see what looked like bleeding near the gestational sack. I am hoping that the miscarriage is imminent but I am also scared of what I will have to go through.



I expect it will be painful and I will lose a lot of blood. But I am scared of losing too much blood. That is my biggest fear. Hemorrhaging to death. I have started taking iron tablets and liquid chlorophyll to build my blood supply/iron reserves.



I do feel kind of tender and pre-menstrual at the moment. Just waiting for it to start. My stomach has been really on edge lately and today I just feel so exhausted, though that could be because I've also been fighting off tonsillitis this past week.

It's over. Kind of. 9W

Had our follow up OB appointment yesterday. Again the bad news was confirmed. No fetal pole was seen. It's not a viable pregnancy. I was upset but no more so than I previously had been. I had taken the previous appointment as evidence that we had lost our baby, so I did most of my grieving last week. I cannot believe it was only a week or so ago. It seems like a hell of a lot longer than that ago that I was happily (obliviously) pregnant.

The OB gave us 2 options-
wait to miscarry naturally OR
D&C

I chose to wait because I want to avoid surgery where possible. But I am still terrified of miscarrying naturally. The miscarriage consumes me. I think about it constantly. Every second of the day my attention is focused on my uterus. Monitoring for the slightest cramping or the sensation of blood trickling.

Not looking encouraging.... 8W

Rang Obstetrician (OB) for the results of my HCG blood tests today. That was quite agonising. The results were not good, as to be expected.
Tues 9857
Thu 11200

So they are still rising but nowhere near doubling.
No good.

I didn't think I'd be strong enough to ring for the results. I thought I'd have to get M to do it. But I managed. And I didn't even cry. I think I did my initial grieving and acceptance that we'd lost our baby on Tuesday after the scan. Of course it will take a while to fully adjust to the loss of our pregnancy - all the ramifications of that.

I have not cried today, even after hearing the bad news. I did not cry yesterday until we went to bed at night. It is always hardest at night when the day is done.

The beginning... 7W5D

Morning thoughts:

Yesterday we had some really great news and we also had some really sad news.

First of all, the really great news is that M got a long hoped for promotion at work. This is a wonderful achievement and I'm sure he'll make every success of it.

As for the sad news, I don't really know where to begin. Yesterday afternoon we had our first obstetrician's appointment. We were thrilled at the prospect of getting to see our baby for the first time and see its heart beating.

When we were doing the ultrasound though, it became apparent that there was something wrong. The obstetrician said he couldn't really see anything on the abdominal ultrasound, so he did a vaginal one (very unpleasant), which would supposedly be much clearer. So he did that but he still could not detect the fetal pole or heart beat.

At this point I was rather upset. This was not at all what we were expecting. It was very far from our happy moment of seeing our baby for the first time. I am not a trained ultrasound technician but the two ultrasound printouts he made looked for all the world like a gestational sack with nothing in it. The sack appeared to be growing fine, measuring 6W6D as we'd expect, but it looks like the baby didn't grow.

The doctor was trying to be upbeat and saying maybe it's just too small, but I don't feel hopeful at all. When we got out into the reception area, waiting to pay, I started to cry. To add insult to injury the consultation set us back $192.

As we walked out M an d I didn't really say much about it, but we decided to go to a park nearby and talk. Before we got in the truck M said "No matter what happens, we'll be OK" and that's the best thing that he could have said because it's true. This is sad and awful but at the end of the day we will get through it, we will be OK.

So our little baby, that we were so excited about having conceived, is not to be. It was given to us so easily (first month off the pill) and taken away just as quickly. 7 weeks is early to lose a pregnancy, I know. It's not like we had a full term baby that was born still. That would be so much harder to cope with. But it still hurts. We were pregnant, we were excited about having this baby, and now we are no longer having this baby. Our dreams for this baby have been taken from us. I still feel hope for the future though, and am positive that we will done day soon get our baby.

I always felt extremely grateful and lucky that we fell pregnant so soon after I stopped taking the pill. That we didn't have to go through months of hope and despair in trying to conceive (TTC). But now it looks like we are back to square one with that, but it's much worse because I have not actually expelled (for want of a better word) the baby yet.

So now we are in a kind of limbo time of waiting to miscarry. I am scared of what the future holds in that regard. I would like to miscarry naturally. But only because I am terrified of having a D&C under general anaesthetic. I have never had a GA before.

M said that he would still like to think I'm pregnant but I am a lot more pessimistic than that. I just want it to be over if it's over. To have the miscarriage and get on with things.

It's ironic that I have had no bleeding at all. No signs of miscarriage and my breasts continue to be sore as in pregnancy. That part is cruel. If there is no baby, why can't my body work it out? It's not a nice feeling at all.

At the park afterwards I kept telling M "I'm sorry". Not that I blame myself, it's not anyone's fault, just another example of random acts of nature. Just that I'm so sorry that his first experience of pregnancy has to be like this. He told me last night that he thinks this will bring us closer together. I had been thinking the same thing. We have turned to each other in our grief, which is a good thing. So now we will know loss, but we will face it together and we will get through it.

A woman with a pram just walked past (I am sitting at a little table on the front deck of our house, overlooking the street). It is a little painful but I don't feel too jealous because you never know what someone else has gone through to get their child. Loss is more common than you'd realise.

I did a bit of reading on the Forums about other pregnancy losses and it was encouraging to see people's signatures with details of a pregnancy they are currently carrying after posting about a miscarriage in the not too distant past. I think that will be us soon.

I have cried a few times today. Once in the night and a lot yesterday afternoon/night. But I didn't cry as much writing this as I thought I would have. I only cried when I wrote about having the ultrasound. I am looking to the future, hoping we make it through the next few weeks/months intact and then looking forward to TTC again.

I just wish it hadn't happened but I am powerless to change it.


6PM thoughts:

I haven't been too bad today, all things considered. This morning I was quite teary. Then when I took Izzy out to lunch I was on the verge of tears quite a few times but managed not to cry. Then this afternoon I have not been teary at all. Sad at times, but not teary. I think that one day there will be a day when I do not cry at all over this. I am sure we will be pregnant again soon, so I am just looking to the future. It is a strange time now. Waiting/hoping to miscarry. That's not something I ever imagined I'd be doing.