My name is Jessica and I am 29 years old - I will be 30 on October
21. This is the story of my second miscarriage in my own words. You can read about my first miscarriage here.
At the end of November, 2009 I traveled several hours away to a wedding. The whole way there I was crampy and uncomfortable. I assumed it was just my period getting ready to start - I was bloated, really tired and just generally blah.
Fast forward a few days to the Monday after the wedding and I was cramping so much I could barely sit down. Once I was sitting I felt better, but the actual act of sitting down was painful and uncomfortable. I had to babysit for a 3-year-old that day and more than once I had to tell him that I just wasn't up to playing whatever it was he wanted to play. Moving was really starting to get difficult. Again, I just chalked it up to bad cramps and hoped that once my period started things would ease up in the pain department.
Monday night I woke up around 2 or 3 am because I had to pee. On my way back to bed, I made it to the kitchen before I started to feel dizzy, light headed and the tunnel vision started. I knew what that meant and immediately sat on the floor, put my head between my knees and called for my mom and dad to help. My mom got me an ice pack to put on the back of my neck and after a few minutes of sitting there I started to feel better. My dad helped me to the dining room so I could sit for a while.
While I was sitting at the table talking to my mom about nearly fainting, I noticed that my cramps were back. They hadn't felt so bad after I had been laying down or when I woke up. We talked a while longer and decided that in my sleep induced haze I must have been feeling my cramps and either been overwhelmed or confused by them and it probably sent me into a panic attack of sorts. I eventually went back to sleep, but on the couch in case it happened again.
By Tuesday night, I was still having pretty bad cramping and it had moved around into my back. I was convinced that maybe it wasn't just period coming cramps, but maybe I also had a UTI. Wednesday morning I called the doctor and was able to get in that evening. I convinced my then boyfriend, now husband, to go along with me - mostly because I hate driving the 25+ minutes to the doctor's office alone.
Of course one of the first questions they always ask is "Is there any possibility you're pregnant?" I told them that my period had been due the day before, so I was only a day late but I supposed it was possible. While they were running whatever in office test they run for a UTI they also ran a pregnancy test.
While I was waiting in the office for the doctor, I heard the nurse say "I don't think that's going to change any." I thought she was talking about the UTI test and just assumed it was positive. The doctor walked in and said "Well, you don't have a UTI," and I just gave him a strange look. The nurse had gone to get my boyfriend and he walked in to the doctor telling me I had a parasite and it would take about 9 months to get rid of it. He was joking - of course, but serious that it would take about 9 months for me to get rid of my ailments. I was pregnant...again. I asked him about all the cramping I'd been having and he said it sounded normal and that it may get worse as things went on from all the stretching and growing my body would have to do to accommodate a baby.
The first thing I did when I got to the car was call my mom. She was excited and told my dad right away too. Since I was spending the night at my boyfriends house that night, we told his parents too. This time around we decided we would only tell our parents right away.
Fast forward to Friday night/Saturday morning. I was back at my house and had been sleeping on the couch since the near fainting episode earlier in the week. Once again I woke up to pee in the middle of the night and once again I started getting the tunnel vision and dizziness. My mom sat up with me, talking for a few hours. We talked about how this pregnancy felt very different from the last. At one point, I asked her "What if it's twins?" and a while later "What if it's in my tube?" She thought twins might be exciting and pretty much dismissed the idea that the pregnancy may be in my tube. She was right, I thought. Why would I even think it may be a possibility? I went back to sleep on the couch when I felt better.
I woke up again to go to the bathroom around 6am. The cramps were really getting bad and instead of a heating pad helping, an ice pack helped relieve the pain a bit. I laid on the couch with an ice pack for a while and then just decided it must be time to be up for the day. When I went to sit up before getting off the couch, I got dizzy and tunnel vision again. This time I was scared. I thought it must be my blood sugar or blood pressure. One must be really low or something - something I know can happen during pregnancy. I ate some Conchas - a sweet Mexican bread - and one of those mini orange things and drank some pop. Anything we could think of to get my blood sugar - we were convinced it was my blood sugar - back up.
Every time I tried to stand up I couldn't. The feeling of fainting was getting stronger and stronger. Eventually I told my mom that I thought I needed to go to the hospital. She called the hospital to see if they thought I should be seen and then we decided to call 911 for an ambulance.
By the time it arrived, I was very scared. It felt like I was going through a mix of low blood sugar and a bad panic attack. I was as much scared for my baby as I was for myself. My parents called my boyfriend to tell him that I was going to the hospital and once I was loaded into the ambulance they left to pick him up and head to the hospital to meet me.
This was the most uncomfortable ride I had ever experienced. They had problems starting an IV in the ambulance and it felt like they may as well have been driving down a dirt road to get to the hospital. I felt every.single.bump and it hurt like heck.
Once at the hospital they started with the usual tests - blood work, ultrasound and they had to insert a catheter in order to get a urine sample and also for the ultrasound. They would need to fill my bladder for me since they had just drained it for the urine sample. While the ultrasound tech was filling my bladder with whatever it is they use, I started feeling a lot of pain up under my right ribs. I was almost in tears and asked her to stop. She also took ultrasound pictures of where I told her I was having a lot of pain when she was filling my bladder.
An hour or so later the doctor walked in and told me they had figured out what was wrong. They had found two heartbeats in my right tube - the pregnancy was ectopic - the pregnancy was twins - and I was bleeding internally. I would need surgery right away and they had already called in the on call OB and a surgical team.
I didn't know what to think. Another pregnancy was going to be lost. I was pregnant with twins. I felt so sad - anger wasn't yet setting in. I was sad that once again I wasn't going to "be a mom" and my boyfriend wasn't going to "be a dad again."
Once the OB got there, things moved fairly quickly. As I laid in the hallway before going into the OR, everyone was giving me hugs and telling me they loved me. Everyone was crying. Somehow, I just laid there, hugging everyone and assuring them I would be ok. I don't know how I knew and I don't know why, but I had an overwhelming calm and I just KNEW I would be ok. And I was.
The surgery went as smoothly as it could have, but by the time they got in there my right tube had ruptured. There was no saving it - according to what others have told me the doctor said, my tube was completely shredded. I had also lost 4+ units of blood internally. I say 4+ because the doctor told my parents that he suctioned 4 units out of my abdomen but had to leave some and it would be reabsorbed by my body. So 4 units came out and some still stayed. That's a lot of blood. I could have died. When I felt better, I did some Googling and I think I remember reading that the human body usually has around 6 units of blood flowing through it at any given time. Of course that's just an estimate.
I got to go home the next day. I ended up having to take iron pills for about a month to help my body as it rebuilt its blood supply. It took about a month to be able to do anything productive for more than 10 or 15 minutes.
This miscarriage was so much harder than the first for so many reasons. It was twins. There were two. Instead of one loss, there were two. I had physical healing to do - incisions that needed to heal. I now have scars to remind me of the babies I lost. It's oddly comforting to have those scars. I have nothing from the first baby I lost.
I was angry with those who had told me I was young and could try again. I did try again. I failed again.I hate the term "miscarriage." It's not like I CHOSE for my babies to get stuck in my tube. I know now that it wasn't my fault but at the time I felt like my body had failed.
It took a long time for me to even be able to think about newborns and babies in general. Once is a fluke. Twice is bad luck. Third time's a charm?...Not really. I have a Part 3...
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