Another baby in Heaven June 12, 2006

I just thought I would update everyone on the last couple of days. It has been so hard on us. Over the weekend everything was good no indications of trouble.

Monday morning, I was instant messaging with my friend, Tara, and talking about trying to call my OB to try and get in earlier than they had scheduled me. I needed to use the bathroom and my OB wasn't answering yet, so I got up and used the bathroom, I saw the tiniest bit of pink on the toilet paper. Most people would never have noticed it, but I am sure any of us who have lost a baby would see it as clearly as a neon sign. "DANGER"

I got back to the IM with Tara, and was terrified, I told her what happened and started crying immediately. I called my OBs office but they said to go to the ER. I called Charles and he headed home from work to take me to the ER. Then off we went.

9:30 am - At first in the ER, I was pretty upbeat. I hadn't had any more spotting and it was such a small amount and dh and I had bded the night before so I kind of thought I was over reacting. I had brought along my knitting and started knitting a hat, wondering if I would get it finished before going home. I finished that hat before even getting to see the doctor!

Finally they called me back there. I told them that I lost three babies in the last year and had seen a tiny amount of blood on the tp and just wanted reassurance.
She said "you have had three early miscarriages?"
I started to cry. I don't know why, I guess it is hard to really explain our year.
Charles said "No our first son was born alive in March and lived for 32 hours, our second son died in the womb at 13 weeks in August, our third baby was an early miscarriage in November."
She said, "you had a baby in March and you are already pregnant?"
I said, "March of '05" (though I didn't say that last year at this time I was also pregnant after having had Jordan in March)
She said, "Well, if this doesn't work out for you, I suggest you quit trying. I mean, How many babies have to die?"
I said, "What we are hoping for is a baby who lives." Then to change the subject before smacking her, I said, "Can we just do a blood draw right away and get the HCG results? I know what they should be, I know what would be good and what would be bad, and that realy should tell us everything we need to know. Also if we could please check my progesterone level. I haven't had that done, and I really wonder if that could be the problem"
She said, "We will have to ask the doctor, I am just a student. I will be right back."

I knew that meant I had some time to kill so I started working on knitting my second hat. She walked in once while I was knitting and I said that I was just doing that for stress relief. She said she crocheted for stress relief.

At least an hour later (and two hats) she came back and said that someone should be coming soon to draw some blood and that after that she would do a pelvic exam. We waited and waited about half an hour and finally they did the blood draw. The kid doing it looked about my son's age. He couldn't seem to get a vein. I said, "Have you done this before or am I your first?"
He said, "Oh I have done it before." But without any sort of laugh, maybe I was his first human? I asked him if he was also checking my progesterone level, he said, "No just hcg. It should take 45 minutes to get the results back."

Very soon after that the female student doctor came back and did the pelvic. She said that she prefered Charles to leave the room. Then during the exam she said everything looked really good. She said she could only see a scant amount of blood. She said that she understood my anxiety three losses but really thought that all was fine.

Then we waited for the results of the blood work, and waited and waited for hours. Then she came back in and said that they wanted to do an abdominal ultrasound. I asked what could be seen of a four week pregnancy on an abdominal ultrasound. She said she wasn't sure but wanted to be thorough. I asked her if she had considered a t/v ultrasound. She said that if the u/s tech wanted to do it t/v then they could make that judgement call.

I got into the wheel chair for the u/s and she told Charles to stay put or go to the waiting room. I said that I wanted him with me. She said it was against the rules for him to come and that there was no where for him to sit in there anyway. I said, he can stand I do not want to go through this alone. She said, he can wait in the hall.

We went to the u/s room and she left us. The tech walked out and I started to cry. "Please don't make me go through this alone. Please let my husband come in." She said it was against the rules, but if he was quiet and out of sight, then it was ok. But her boss would get angry with her if she found out.

This makes no sense to me. Hasn't our nation progressed beyond this? Isn't the childbirth and pregnancy process supposed to include both father and mother? Why were they trying so hard to keep us separated? He came in and held my hand. We are rebels what can I say?

She said that she hadn't received the results of the blood work yet. She did the u/s and was not able to find anything at all on the u/s. No signs of pregnancy. Then she went to her computer to check for my blood test result while I went to the bathroom she came back in and said that my HCG had dropped to a value of only 8. We were losing the baby. I began to sob and she hugged me. She begged me not to give up hope. She said she knew we had been through a lot, but that if we wanted a baby to hold on to hope. She said she wasn't supposed to tell me any of the test result information, but couldn't understand why the doctor or nurse hadn't told us hours ago.

We went back to our room, and waited for the doctor. She came in and I was pretty hysterical. I said I just wanted to go home. She said I couldn't leave because they didn't have the HCG count back. I said, I want to leave. (I knew she was lying but I have no idea why). She kept insisting that the HCG count was not back and that we had to stay there and wait for discharge paperwork. I was crying so hard I threw up and she said, "Try knitting instead of crying." I told her I didn't want to KNIT I wanted to GO HOME. She pulled Charles aside and whispered loudly enough for me to hear, "You need to watch her emotions, she seems a bit over the top."

When she left the room, I told Charles I just wanted to leave. Why do we have to wait, we know the results of the tests. Then a real doctor came in. He said, "The HCG results are back and the levels are dropping. The u/s showed no signs of pregnancy. You are losing the baby." then his phone rang and he said, "I will be right back." He never came back. We waited and waited for discharge info while listening to the nurses in the hall way talk about how they would spend their paychecks, we heard one say, "Is someone supposed to be discharging 16?' that was our room, finally Charles was ready to go AWOL, he picked up my things and said, "We are leaving."

We started walking out and the chatting nurses said, "You can't leave, we have to discharge you." He said, "We're discharged." And we walked out.

When we got home, I finally went to the bathroom again, and saw a little more blood. It was starting. I just sobbed and went to bed for a long nap. Charles crawled in next to me and held me in his arms. We both cried and went to sleep.

Another baby in Heaven June 12, 2006.