Change of Plans.

I’m a planner; it’s what I do for a living. I plan everything. When I was a kid my dad would tell me I couldn’t have a sleepover I had been planning, and I told him I had been planning it for months, he never believed me, but I had been. As a teen my sophomore year high school English teacher had us write down our 1 year, 5 year, and 10 year goals. When we graduated he gave them to us. Years later I found it while cleaning and noticed that almost everything on it I had accomplished except for some of the 10 year goals, but it had not been 10 years yet. As an adult I told my boyfriend that I needed to start having kids by 27 so I needed to be married by 25. Both of those things happened. I tell you these things not so you will think I’m a bit of a crazy control freak, but so that you will understand where I’m coming from when I tell you that all my plans fell apart. The first time that happened I had had a picture perfect 9 months of pregnancy and I was in labor. I was in labor for 24 hours. That’s when my midwife said it’s time for a C-section. My brain exploded, my perfect plan for a natural birth was blown out of the water by her words and I went numb. I remember them prepping me for surgery, and I remember my tears of anger, frustration, and exhaustion, but mostly I remember how mad I was when my plans did not pan out. I had never planned on the contingency for this very important event. Usually I’m a plan for the worst, hope for the best type of meeting manager. But this was supposed to be my most important plan, and I failed to plan for the worst, and although the outcome was good and I delivered a perfectly healthy baby girl the feelings of that change of plans has plagued me for three and a half years.

Until now, when I laugh at the naive person I was then, who should have been nothing but overjoyed for the amazing new life I had brought into the world.

I failed to learn from my mistakes, I started to plan my next pregnancy. Go off birth control in May, start trying in September, Get pregnant quickly, and I did. In November I took two tests and both were positive. We were overjoyed. And then in early December I started spotting, not a lot, and not red, but enough that I called the midwife to ask about it. They said not to worry, that I should come in just in case and do some blood work and an ultrasound, so I did. I went for the ultrasound and because it was so early they saw the gestational sac but not the baby yet. They ordered blood work and found that both my beta levels and progesterone were low. 48 hours later we did the blood work again (if you don’t know about beta level testing then you should know that the recommended rise in 48 hours should be double)  mine wasn’t. Not a good sign. I went on progesterone supplements because there was no change to that in the 48 hours either. The following week I did the blood work again, progesterone was now up and looking great, but once again the beta level was not rising sufficiently and I prepared for the worst. 2 days later I had another ultrasound and we saw a fetal pole and a heartbeat! I was so excited. The heart rate was a bit low and the baby looked small but everything else looked good. My betas had also risen well and my progesterone was still up. A week later on the day before Christmas eve I had another ultrasound. While Christmas music was playing softly in the room we saw a baby that had grown as expected over the past week and a perfect heartbeat. It was the greatest Christmas present I could have received. The holidays went as planned and New Year’s came and went and on January 4^th my first day back to work after the holidays I went to the bathroom and found red blood when I wiped. My heart sank, I immediately called my midwife who said I could come for an ultrasound that afternoon. I worked for a few hours while I waited, trying to keep my mind off of it. When I arrived the waiting room was full of pregnant women. I looked down as much as I could and texted three of my best friends and asked them to tell me jokes and keep me entertained while I waited. Finally I was called back, by this time the ultrasound tech and I had been through a lot together, she had the screen pulled towards her and was quite for a while, and then she said “I’m so, so, sorry” I immediately started to cry. She showed me the screen and there was no longer a heartbeat, and the fetal pole that had been easy to recognize was now a little blurry. The dating told us my baby probably died the day after my last ultrasound which would have been Christmas Eve. I cried some more and she left me to go find the midwife. I got dressed. The midwife came in; she hugged me, and explained the next steps. I wiped my tears, left, and called my husband, then my mother, and then I went home and got in bed and cried. That was all I had the energy for. It was my worst day.