AnnieJo: My turn! My Story: Lydia Rose, 2-11-02 (loss ment.)DH and I met through a singles ad in 1991, his first attempt to run an ad and my first time to answer one. The ad hooked me for two reasons. He didn't give a physical description of either himself or his dream date, and the last three words of the ad were "Laughter beats looks." Turns out that neither of us were all that bad-looking... we laughed a lot together over the next two years, and married in 1993. We discussed children early on in the relationship (we both wanted two!) but waited on TTC till we had the house and both had the master's degrees and good jobs. Almost seven years it took us to manage all that, taking me to age 32. At first it did seem that our plans were somehow charmed. I got pg in England on the trip we took in celebration of DH's graduation in May of 2000. But then I started spotting at 11 weeks, and discovered via ultrasound that I'd been carrying an empty sac. Complete and utter shock, the world turned upside down! After a D&C, I feverishly threw myself into eating healthy and getting in shape, disregarded doctor's orders to wait three cycles, and got pg again on the second cycle... only to miscarry again at 6 weeks, this time without surgery. I'm quite sure it had nothing to do with not waiting, but at the time it produced a fair amount of "what-if" guilt. Nobody in my family had ever lost a pregnancy, so I found it very hard to believe that it had happened twice in a row to me. And how do you grieve for lost babies when you never even saw a heartbeat? As a librarian, I often cope with challenges by information-gathering, a step that sent me to the web and into the arms of INCIID. What a lifeline in a dreadful year. We seemed to be encountering loss in our lives at three month intervals: first the two pregnancies, then our beloved house-rabbit Christofur, then my grandfather from a catastrophic stroke. On the TTC front, I switched OB's and had a series of tests, revealing slightly low thyroid and borderline positive anticardiolipin antibodies. Armed with Synthroid and baby aspirin, we waited 3 cycles and started down the TTC path again, this time with INCIID friends on the BBT and TAL boards to hold my hands. Five cycles after that, Baby "Smudge" was conceived. The pregnancy was pretty much uneventful, except for extended queasiness (20 weeks) and then an unexpected flip from vertex to breech position after 37 weeks. Despite two version attempts, Smudge wouldn't budge, so one C-section later, Lydia Rose came into the world on February 11, 2002, exactly one year to the day from the due date of the first pregnancy. The memorial rosebushes that we planted for the lost pregnancies were blooming when we held Lydia's dedication ceremony in June. She lights up our lives, in many, many ways. While I know that it's not fruitful to compare pain, I find myself in the company of many who have endured an awful lot more than I. I'm grateful for the chance to hang out with such courageous and wonderful women! Peace, |