Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy

I am humming along at 16 weeks, but I've had my share of ups and downs over the past 10 weeks. When you experience infertility, all you can think about is "if I could only get pregnant, if I could only conceive..." and it never really goes beyond that point of the Getting of the pregnancy. Once I Get it, the goal is met, right? I have learned however, and this should come as no surprise for me, that complications, hills and valleys, come at you from all angles after a precious few weeks of just enjoying the miracle that I am pregnant.

At about 8 weeks pregnant, I went out to dinner with our neighbors on a Friday night and came home with a big clot of blood in my underwear. It's cliched but I can only describe what felt like ice in my veins as I sat on the toilet and felt another clot slide out of me. My run as a parent was coming to an end and I was back where I started. I wept, I fell into Justin, I sat in a tight ball on the couch and ached with the pain of it.

The next day, I called the OB/Gyn on call in my practice and told her what had happened. She said unless I was bleeding heavily and cramping, wait for Monday and call the office to come in. I was not bleeding heavily and cramping. In fact the blood had changed color from normal period red, to dark, end-of-period, brown. Whatever was going to happen had either happened or was in the process of happening and a trip to an ER in Atlanta on a Saturday morning was not going to change that other than making me more miserable in a waiting room full of miserable people. I chose to stay home and waded through a truly awful weekend of disappointment, guilt, and icy veins.

On Monday, the office scheduled me for an ultrasound the following day. I am an expert by now at waiting, as everyone who reads this blog knows. I have lists of projects, books, friends. events, to occupy me in any sort of wait, especially the drawn-out, ambiguous wait that entailed getting B the G. But this wait, this stupid 24 hour wait until my appointment was by far the worst wait I've ever known. I dreaded going to the bathroom the whole weekend so I wouldn't have to see the blood on the toilet paper. In the process of avoiding that dread, I consciously or subconsciously constipated myself (is that even proper grammar? Can one constipate oneself?) so I wouldn't have to push. Bear with me here (no pun intended), I know I'm getting graphic, but I was entering the depths of despair and even if the pregnancy was over, I did not want to see the physical evidence of it gush out of me into the toilet. It would have been the end of me.

Then, sometime Monday late afternoon, I had a little breakthrough. After one of these ridiculous bathroom breaks where I try to pee, but not push (try it - impossible) I lay down in my bed and felt the sadness of it lift off of me. Not that I was happy or suddenly not depressed, I just felt comfortable. At peace with what had happened and was happening to me whatever the result. It was a huge relief, not a religious event, but just sort of an agreeement with my body and my Self to let go of this pain. I felt almost forced into the peace and it was a welcome push. I knew I would be sad but that that I would be able to handle it is the only way that I can describe it.

That is not to say I wasn't still filled with anxiety the next day as I waited in the lab for the ultrasound. But I was prepping myself while I was waiting there for the news and the follow-up care and giving myself the Mickey the Manager talk from Rocky which I never could have done over the weekend. Eye of the tiger, you can do it Rock, sort of stuff. Keep yourself going.

I had such a great ultrasound technician I'll call Cindy. I laid the events of my whole reproductive life at her feet in the five minutes before I got on the table, starting with my infertility, adoptions plans, pregnancy and bleed. The words came out of me like a rocket and she handled it like a pro and I KNOW she must have seen how my mind was racing to keep control. To keep talking so I wouldn't have to think. Eye of the tiger, Rock.

She keeps the screen carefully turned away from me and starts probing around in my uterus with the magic dildo wand of sound. She is quiet and intense and I can feel my heart pound through my back onto the table below me as I wait with one arm over my face, hiding my eyes. "I know you're dying over there," she says. "I just want to make absolutely sure before I give you the news." My heart sinks with this, but again, I feel prepped and guarded and ready, like I can handle a million blows to the head, if I can just get off this table and on with my life.

And she turns the screen toward me and points to a tiny, tiny, pulsing point of green inside a small, green comma and says "That is the heartbeat. It looks nice and strong."

I break. I feel that thing inside me that was holding me together just break apart and I can't breathe, I cant speak. I extend my hand that came from the arm over my eyes and just grab Cindy's hand and squeeze it. It's all I can do. She is crying, I am crying. I had already said good-bye to that heartbeat and there it was pounding away and making me feel like a fool for not trusting it. A happy, silly, fool.

Implantation bleeding? Something to do with my quirky uterus? I don't know why, only that it happens to many women and it took my bleeding/spotting about two and a half weeks to stop. But there's B the G up there at 15 weeks, hanging on for dear life, while she admires her pretty toes. Just like her mother.