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This morning, as I was walking Lilia to school, we were almost hit by a man driving a van. I was crossing our street, and was about halfway across it, when a man started to turn left into us. He had used no turn signal. And he was looking backwards out his window to say hello to a man he saw on the sidewalk, instead of at the four-year old girl and her mom he was about to hit. He was moving slowly– in fact, he was making such a slow turn, I thought he was aware that we were there and that he would be stopping before hitting us. As it became evident that he was clueless, I yelled, “WHAT THE HELL?” and he stopped. He apologized “I was saying hi to my friend” (his friend, who I believe is a crossing guard for the Catholic school, because he was no longer on duty, and he was wearing a florescent safety vest). Ironic, huh? He stopped 2 inches from hitting my left side. Lilia was holding my right hand and a few steps closer to the curb.

After dropping her off at school, I had my miscarriage follow-up appointment. It was alright. I have a bit of a cold, PMS (yes, after bleeding for weeks, I get to bleed some more soon– yay womanhood!), and was shook-up from this morning’s near miss, so I wasn’t emotionally as strong as I would have liked to have been. I had a little check-up– everything seems alright– and found out that I have some fun scars from Lilia’s birth– another Yay– so if I have another, I would have to worry about ripping open. Well, I guess the nice way to say that would be “tearing”. Add that to my list of reasons not to have another. I was waiting to check-out and pay my co-pay when a woman with a newborn came up. I made a little small talk about the itty bitty baby, and then the receptionist must have had a case of foot-in-mouth disease… she says to me… “Time to have another, huh?”

I am still feeling pretty crappy. I wake up throughout the night with cramps and heavy bleeding– it’s not excessive (I was told to call if you bleed through one or two pads in an hour– which only happened to me on Thursday, and it was over in an hour). It didn’t interfere with our weekend plans (went to Berks, took the Bunny Train, had an Easter Egg hunt and went to the Art Museum), but it is tiring me out. And it seems like it’s dragging on and on.

Today is the day we were supposed to have our first midwife appointment. I had picked a new place over my last place– I had some warm fuzzy memories of the last place, but honestly, that was delusional. Since I was re-reading my journal from my first m/c and being pregnant with Lilia, I really see that I did not want to use that place again. We were going to go to a place I had heard of before, but because I didn’t drive at the time, wouldn’t have been able to get to. It’s a free-standing birth center, down the street from a hospital. I had some reservations, because I don’t think they would have been able to handle Lilia’s birth (they don’t use forceps/vacuum), but I was going to trust that that wouldn’t happen again.

Before you could make an initial appointment, you had to attend a group orientation meeting. Thursday nights– when Joe had class. But I happened to call during his spring break, and was able to get in there right away. I was supposed to be about 6 weeks along, and I thought, this is sort of jinxing it, isn’t it? The room was filled with couples expecting their first, and moms expecting their second or third– the dads were home with the kids. I actually wondered how many of the pregnant women in the room would remain pregnant. And there was one couple there who weren’t pregnant yet. The woman laughed about it and said they were planning ahead. The man said, “we’ve been married for almost 7 years, and nothing has worked yet”. Oof, I really felt for them– to be in that room full of pregnant women for orientation.

After orientation, I called to make my first appointment, and was a little nervous when they said they don’t schedule the first appointment until around 10 weeks. With my pregnancy with Lilia, I had an ultrasound at 7 or 8 weeks, just to make me feel better after our missed miscarriage. I appreciated that. But I thought I’d be sort of zen about this– just wait and see and assume nothing was wrong. I guess I’m glad my body decided to show me something was wrong before I had an appointment. Even though I won’t be using the free-standing birth center to birth in, I am glad that I switched to the practice. They haven’t even seen me for an appointment, and they have had me on their call list– I was called immediately, and scheduled for an ultrasound immediately when I called at the first sign of trouble. A midwife called me twice since to see how I am doing. My last practice never called me back when I had a problem, so this is a much better experience. When the m/c is finally done, I will have my first appointment with them in two weeks.

I was just going about life, sort-of, the past week. I had two job interviews, went toad rescuing, took Lil to school Mon & Tuesday. I didn’t do my library volunteering or go to my sewing make-up class. And yesterday, I was also planning to go to Berks (1.5-2 hour drive) to see my mom’s cousin and her family.

I had been spotting off and on since the weekend. But since the miscarriage I had in 2005 never started, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Back then, I went to work most of that time (except for the first few days, when I was paralyzed with grief at home) and I even traveled overnight to wedding before I had a D&E. It was at least 2 weeks, maybe three, and I only had a tiny bit of spotting one day. Because I was spotting so much this time, I figured I would m/c naturally. And I guess because nothing had grown past 5 weeks 2 days, I was expecting it to not be too bad. In 2005, I told my chiropractor about the pregnancy and then the miscarriage, and she said, “oh it was probably a chemical pregnancy”– I still don’t really understand what that is… It sounds like a way to make you feel like you weren’t really pregnant– just that a test told you that you were? Because I didn’t actually go through the m/c and had the surgery, it made me wonder if the surgery was necessary, since I wasn’t really *that* pregnant.

Well, I now know that even if the pregnancy stops growing at 5 weeks 2 days, your body was really pregnant, and really needs to do some work to miscarry.

Back to yesterday. Lilia and I got ready to go to Berks– I wanted to leave by 10, but she took a bath, and putzed around, so we were just about to go right before 10:30. We were brushing our teeth, and all of a sudden I felt like I wet myself. It was the beginning of a gushing that lasted about an hour. I had mild cramps– which I’ve been having since last weekend– and I had already taken ibuprofen that morning, so it wasn’t too painful. But can you imagine if I was on the Schuylkill Expressway when it happened? Thank goodness we were running a little late.

I canceled the visit, and laid around, while poor Lilia entertained herself inside watching PBS Kids on the most beautiful day of spring so far. After an hour, it was not as bad. I made lunch, and continued lounging around. Joe was at work, and he had his first physical therapy appointment yesterday. He also has his class on Thursday nights, and he can’t miss that (college-level class). Around 3, I thought I didn’t feel so bad, and that we shouldn’t miss Lilia’s evening music class. I showered and we headed out to class, which I’m glad we didn’t miss. Then we got some dinner and picked up Joe from his class. I was feeling okay– he got a call that the toads were running again (uh, hopping?), and I told him to go help out. I thought the worst was over.

Lil and I went to bed, and I woke up in the middle of the night with horrible cramps. Horrible. Worse than any period I can remember. Maybe a bit like labor, but honestly, after being 11 days past the due date, being in labor was a relief, so this was emotionally worse. Joe got up and fetched my ibuprofen, and eventually, I think an hour or more later, I fell back asleep. This morning, I was still pretty crampy. Right now, I feel alright. I really want to get Lilia to a playground, but I don’t really feel up to going out– it is another beautiful day, and she is watching PBS Kids (just put it on half an hour ago– she was drawing and playing with her Playmobil collection before lunch).
Last night, she was running in circles at music class. Maybe Joe can take her out when he gets home. Too bad we don’t have a yard.
Tomorrow, we are going to see my grandmother and my relatives for Easter, and then we have tickets to take Lilia on the Easter Bunny Train. I think I should be able to go. I hope so.

I don’t know how much longer this will be. Would like to put this part behind me right now.

It’s still hard to believe that just last Thursday, I was still counting down the days till we had our first appointment, at which I hoped we’d hear a heartbeat and then be able to make an announcement to our families. Sigh. I said before, I’m not looking for sympathy. It’s just the last time, I felt really alone, and so now I feel the need to share. Maybe someone will google and my story will come up and it helps them. I hope so.

Alright, Saturday morning, and I’m still okay. Of course, I’ve cried a little, but nothing like when I felt paralyzed for three days after finding out about our first miscarriage in 2005.

I talked to the midwife about one thing that bothers me… if it stopped growing before 6 weeks, why in the world would I have serious symptoms past what was supposed to be the 8 week point? It makes me feel like it’s in my head– but I’m not normally a nauseous person (unless I have a migraine) so I don’t know how or why my head would try to trick me into thinking I was nauseous for a week. She explained (although I will confess I don’t know if I understand) that in the beginning, hormones are driven by your ovaries. And then at some point, the placenta takes over, so if the placenta isn’t growing, then the symptoms disappear. Which is what happened when I woke up Thursday morning… I just didn’t feel nauseous at all, after over a week of it. And after I spotted Thursday night, I realized my breasts were not as sore– and they had been on Wednesday. Weird how quickly that changed.

I’m still annoyed with my body. I haven’t spotted again, so who knows how long I’ll have to wait for this miscarriage to happen and be over with it. Am I supposed to sit around waiting for it to happen? I have two job interviews next week and I’m planning to visit Reading. The full moon is March 30– Tuesday. Maybe that will kick-start my body.

I still feel like I don’t want to try again. I don’t know though. We’re getting old and the chances of trouble are higher. I feel like we were so lucky with Lilia. I still need to find a job. Our house is so small. Of course, I could be pregnant and all those things would be true, but we’d just work through that, just like we worked through all the worries we had when I was pregnant with Lilia. I was hoping to have a baby before she turned 5, but the chances of that happening at this point are almost zero. Our basement is filled with boxes of clothes and baby things that I’ve been saving, just in case. I guess I’ll keep saving it.

Well, it’s happened again. I was supposed to be 8 and a half weeks pregnant, but I went to the local hospital today to have an ultrasound, and received confirmation of what I was pretty sure of…there was just a sac that stopped growing over 3 weeks ago. Of course, I had the pleasure of suffering nausea and other pregnancy symptoms all that time– the symptoms stopped yesterday morning, which was my first clue. Second clue– spotting last night.

I hate having to wait for it to actually happen. Two factors, one minor, one major, are making me handle this much better than our first miscarriage. The minor factor is the fact that I already know how common miscarriage is and how many people have been through it. The major factor is five letters long… starts with an L and ends with an A:

We hadn’t told a soul about the pregnancy– because with our first, we blabbed about it and felt like that’s why we had the miscarriage. When I was pregnant with Lilia, we waited till we had “proof of life” (more than once), and didn’t announce till near the end of the first trimester. I am not a private person– I can post about the miscarriage on my blog. We just didn’t want to jinx it. Now there is nothing to jinx.

I was feeling nostalgic recently, and started entering some of my entries from my other online journal into this journal. Those entries can be found here. Coincidentally, they include entries about my previous miscarriage.

As for how I’m feeling about trying this again. Eh. Maybe after it’s over, I’ll have a different opinion, but right now I’m thinking that Three is a Magic Number. Please click that and watch it– I tried to embed it, but it didn’t show up.

A man and a woman had a little baby
Yeah they did
And there were three in the family
And that’s a magic number