lola_1: My Story (losses & accident ment)

Please forgive me. This is painfully long – 6 pages single-spaced, to be exact. Like many others have expressed, I feel that my journey was easy compared to many of yours. And I am humbled by your stories.

I wrote this story for me, because I very much needed to get it all out and give it some shape. I realize that I was incredibly blessed to have two children with relative ease when I was young. My journey to Rachel was complicated along the way by life and losses. This story is not just about my quest for a third child, but also a marriage and an accident that changed me in ways I’m still coming to understand.

Thank you all for your friendship, and for reading any portion of this short novel. A special thanks to Annie Jo, who has inspired us to do this, and who was there for me from the very beginning when I found INCIID immediately after my first loss.

Hugs,

Lola

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My Journal -- Monday, March 26, 2001: “It has been nearly three months since I lost my third child early in pregnancy, and I feel as though I’ve been living under a cloud ever since. It has been a kind of grief I never expected – shaking me to the core and making me question so many things about my life, my family and my career. Scott and I are trying to conceive again, and I’m feeling somewhat obsessed by it. I know that Scott thinks I am, though he’s been good natured about it. It has felt like being pregnant again is the only way to lift the cloud overhead. But it has not been easy so far, and I need to find a way to lift the cloud now. My hormones are still completely out of whack – making conceiving difficult, and I wonder too if it isn’t contributing to the moodiness and depression I’ve been experiencing. I’ve been to the doctors twice now to explore this further, but they keep telling me to relax and give it time. So that is what I’m doing, trying to pass the time, let my body regain its balance. On the other hand, I’m obsessively tracking temps and using the fertility monitor….”

Unfortunately, things would get worse – much worse – before they got better.

Scott and I were married on March 22, 1988. I was 23, and he was 31. After a year of marriage, I knew I was ready to start a family. He wasn’t so sure – he was a still finishing his PhD and trying also to work full-time as a college professor. I was just starting my career. But my passion for a baby grew, and he accepted and eventually really became excited about the prospect of starting a family.

My cycles had always been irregular – often many months long – and I had watched my aunt struggle with infertility, so I was concerned from the start. I never assumed that having a baby would be easy. The month we decided to start trying, I never ovulated and one month turned into four or five as I waited for my period to come, taking pregnancy tests every few days, hoping I was pregnant. Not a good start….

I went to the doctor, and she gave me Provera to bring on a new cycle and instructions for temping and charting. I started cross-stitching an enormous alphabet for my baby’s nursery and worked on it for several months. In September 1989, after just two long cycles of temping, we conceived Nora. She was born in May 1990, one day after her due date, after a flirt with pre-term labor and hospitalization at 7 months.

Two years later, in June 1992, our son Willy was born, without any difficulties conceiving. We were young and poor, but so happy with our young family. We knew that we could not afford – emotionally, physically, or financially – another child at that point. But neither of us felt we were done building our family. When anyone asked, we’d smile and say that we were just taking a break and were planning to have two more when Nora and Willy were 8 and 10. We weren’t 100% sure we’d actually do this, but we had not come to terms with being done, and the plan had some real appeal. And we wanted people to know that any additional child, whether conceived through design or by accident, was totally wanted and planned.

Scott and I were devoted parents to Nora and Willy, and we both continued to advance in our careers, taking on more and more responsibility. As Nora and Willy approached the magical ages of 8 and 10, I began to broach the baby subject with Scott. He was reluctant to give over our lives again to a baby. I knew too well how much work a baby was, and that pushing him to do something he wasn’t totally committed to would put a strain on our relationship. I desperately wanted a baby, and dreamt that he would come around and want one too. After a year of subtle hints and more direct discussions, it really seemed clear that another baby was not in the cards for us. He was 43, and it seemed unrealistic to be having a child in college just at the time he would be wanting to retire. I was deeply sad, but decided to move on. I gave away all the baby stuff, and tried to find a new direction, all the while still dreaming of another baby.

In the fall of 2000, Scott came to me out of the blue, and said, “Let’s do it.” I cried tears of joy, and it was only then that I truly let myself and him know just how much I wanted this baby. We started trying that very day. For the first time in my life, my cycles were relatively regular, but a bit long. We were able to conceive quickly and were stunned and excited in November to discover that I was pregnant with our third child. I was overwhelmed and excited, and spent endless hours reimagining our lives with this baby a part of it. On Christmas Eve, after having seen our little one’s heartbeat twice on ultrasounds and having made it through a stressful toxoplasmosis scare, we shared our news with the kids and my family. I will never forget the reaction of my then 10-year-old daughter to the news. If I could have any one moment in our lives captured on video, it was that moment. Her absolute joy melted my heart. Three days later, we told all our friends about the baby at a wedding, and I was on top of the world.

The next morning my husband left for a conference in New York City, and I went to the children’s museum with my sister and all our kids. She was pregnant with her second, due exactly two months before me. We were so excited to be pregnant together. But at the museum I discovered I was spotting, very slightly. I was scared, so took it easy for a couple days. I was too scared to go to the doctor alone. On the third day, I confessed to my husband and he took the next flight home. On the Friday night of New Year’s Weekend, we went to the hospital for an ultrasound and our worst fear played out…we had lost the pregnancy. I was told to call my doctor on Tuesday. So instead of entering the new year with joy and anticipation, I was going to carry my dead baby into the new year. I don’t know what it was about that that was so hard, but my husband wouldn’t accept that that was our only option. He called my ob at home on Saturday morning – the same guy who had told us to go ahead and tell the world one week earlier because the chance of a miscarriage at that point was less than 3%. He was incredibly sweet, and made arrangements to give me a D&C that very day. I was able to start the new year with a clean slate, albeit grieving and numb.

The miscarriage threw my hormones and body into a whirlwind. It was 8 weeks before I got my period again, and then I had several long, wacky cycles. While we were cleared to try again after one cycle, we had few real opportunities given the length and pattern of the cycles. I was grieving intensely, and fell into a depression. The opening passage above only hints at the despair I felt, made all the harder by watching my sister get closer and closer to her delivery. I secretly named my lost baby Caleb, a name I adored but knew my husband would never let me use.

In May, I was pretty sure that we had been successful. I felt pregnant, and a HPT at 12 days confirmed it. We were so excited! I waited a few days before getting a beta, and we were devastated when it cam back at only 6. It was a Friday, and I was told to come back on Monday for another.

I spent Friday and Saturday in a complete dysfunctional haze. After a long nap Saturday morning, I woke up and decided to get my act together and cook my family a big meal of comfort food, including fried sweet potatoes, a favorite of ours. I sent Scott to the store for a nice bottle of wine and a movie.

It’s not entirely clear to me what went wrong next, but the short version is that the oil I was heating for the sweet potatoes caught fire and blew flaming oil all over me and my kitchen. Thank God my clothes did not catch fire and I had the presence of mind to send my son out of the house to our safe meeting place. I was hurt, but somehow managed to grab the fire extinguisher and put out the fire in the kitchen. I called Willy back into the house and told him to find his dad. He ignored me and called 911. At 9, this sweet boy’s composure on the phone earned him a citation from the fire department and city council. I have not heard the tape, but the Fire Chief played it for my husband, and Willy did everything right. He calmly gave our address, requested the fire department and an ambulance, and began describing the nature of my injuries, relaying messages to me from the EMT.

I was taken by ambulance to the local hospital, and transferred by ambulance to the regional burn center, an hour away. The good news: the burns were estimated to be covering only 5% of my body. When I had been pregnant at Christmas, my family had given me an oversized, comfy wool sweater. It absorbed much of the hot oil and protected much of my body. I like to think that my lost baby shielded me from more serious harm that day. The bad news - my face, chest, hands and feet all had burns, and I was in incredible pain.

The possibility remained that I was pregnant. A beta in the trauma center came back below 5 and confirmed a chemical pregnancy. We were overwhelmed. Not sure whether to be relieved that my treatment would be unencumbered and a baby would not be exposed to the morphine already pumping through my veins, or sad at yet another loss.

I was in no danger, yet admitted to the hospital, where I remained for 5 days. The burns were mostly second degree, with third degree burns on my chest and one foot. My face was swollen and covered with first- and second-degree burns. They were unable to give me any sense of how bad the scarring would be. I was told that we may not really know for a year. I work in public relations and fundraising, and began to wonder whether I would be able to return to my work. I caught my husband crying when he thought I was sleeping. My parents were beside themselves, and I could tell my kids were scared. I refused all visitors except immediate family.

I returned home stunned, scared and in pain. Visiting nurses helped care for me for the next three weeks, and we learned just how many people care about me and my family. The outpouring of flowers, food, gifts, cards, and prayers was overwhelming. My INCIID friends sustained me and gave me hope. In hindsight, I can honestly say that much good came from this awful experience. Knowing you are part of a loving community, and having a wakeup call about priorities is incredibly powerful, and I am grateful to have had this opportunity to bring new meaning to my life.

The very night I came home from the hospital, my sister went into labor at 36 weeks. No one had the heart to tell me. They knew about the first loss, and now the most recent one. I was still bleeding. My poor parents were sick with worry about me and now my sweet sister and her little one, seemingly coming too early. Fortunately, the baby was fine – very small, but in perfect health. I was shaken by this early birth, and was in some ways grateful that this sweet little baby had spared me a month of sad anticipation. But I was blown away and sobbed for hours when I learned that my sister had named him Caleb, the name I had secretly given my little angel.

That was rock bottom. I was trying to come to terms with my burns and the possibility of life-long scaring, and I wasn’t pregnant. Again.

As soon as I was well enough to travel about a month after the accident, my husband took me away – albeit in a wheelchair - for a long weekend, so that I could have some time relaxing in the tropics, getting used to moving through the world with my changed face, without having to run into friends and neighbors and see their sad eyes. We talked about having a baby, and he understood that I desperately wanted to try again, that I couldn’t let the accident take that hope away too. We agreed to try again as soon as we got the doctor’s clearance. Neither my plastic surgeon nor my OB could tell me what effect a pregnancy might have on the healing of my burns, and gave me the go ahead to try once I was off all meds. I quit the painkillers that had been prescribed for me, and continued to eat wonderful, healthy food, trying to nourish my body back to health.

Having studied nearly a year’s worth of charts with my OB, it was clear that I was ovulating very late, and we suspected that this might be part of my problem. My OB gave me Clomid, and we proceeded to try. On Day 10 of this first cycle trying after my accident, my asthma flared up. We went ahead with the babymaking, even though the asthma wasn’t improving. The Clomid worked and I ovulated on day 16 (a huge improvement!) – which just happened to be the 4th of July. Three days after the big O, I fell down the stairs in the middle of the night and severely bruised (perhaps even suffered a hair-line fracture of) my pelvis. Every asthmatic cough sent me into excruciating pain. I refused all meds, again fearing for a potential baby. It also became clear that I had hyperstimmed on the Clomid. My doctors all came together and pulled me back out of work. I spent most of the two-week wait in bed. Talk about suspense!

An HPT at 9 dpo was positive. At 12dpo, my beta was 149. At 14dpo, my beta was 485. We were excited, but also scared. My health was very questionable, and now we had betas off the charts. We had gambled that I was strong enough to carry a baby, but what if it was 2? Thus began a weekly series of ultrasounds. There was just one, and it appeared to be very healthy. I grew stronger and stronger with each week, and the pregnancy evolved into a completely normal one.

My burn scars truly made a remarkable improvement throughout the pregnancy, and I’ve come to believe that the pregnancy actually helped me to heal. My body was in overdrive making a baby, and some of that energy spilled over into skin rejuvenation. What still astonishes me is that my face has made a complete recovery, against all predictions. People who saw what I looked like in the months following the accident are amazed - even shocked - to see me now. No trace of the burns. My chest has made a very decent improvement, and while I may still opt for plastic surgery there, I no longer view it as necessary. My left foot remains deeply scared, with that kind of ugly bumpy and raised scar of a serious burn. It doesn’t bother me at all. In fact, when I see it, I often am overcome with appreciation for how very lucky I was. That could have been my face. It nearly was. Thank God for small miracles.

At 39 weeks in my pregnancy, I was ready to roll. We had a tentative induction date set for the day before my due date. An exam three days before revealed that my cervix was still long and closed, and there was no sign of dilation. My doctor postponed the induction for 8 days, saying that the conditions weren’t right and it would likely fail if attempted at that point. He told me to come in the following week for a biophysical profile ultrasound and non-stress test. A screw-up in the front office had them accidentally schedule it for the next day. When I started to correct them, Scott kicked me and told me to just do it them. Again, some powerful force clearly intervened on my behalf.

I failed the biophysical profile. There was almost no amniotic fluid left, and the baby was not as responsive as they like to see. I was sent straight to labor and delivery for an induction.

My doctor was right – I wasn’t ripe and the induction took 3 days. Each night, they applied a cervical ripening agent, then we did pitocin all day, stopping to eat, shower, and start the whole thing again. The whole while I was on the monitor, and Rachel appeared to be stable. But I was in the high risk ward, and they had a one-on-one nurse assigned to me at all times. The atmosphere was calm, but it was also clear that they were ready to intervene at any moment. We celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary on day 2 in the hospital. On my third morning waking up in the hospital, still pregnant, my OB was on call and we had a heart-to-heart. He was going to break my water and give it one last shot. After three days, I was barely a cm dilated, but enough to possibly break my water. When he did, there was no gush. He looked worried. It confirmed that there was no fluid and increased the risks of laboring without a cushion. He thought there was a very high likelihood I would need a section. But miracle of miracles, my labor suddenly began and within 3 hours I was at 10 cm. Thank God again that it progressed so quickly, as we were having alarming decelerations, and they were beginning to prepare for an emergency c-section.

But Miss Rachel surprised us all again, and decided her time had come. She arrived on the first push at 2:05 p.m. on March 24, 2002. Smaller than predicted, but perfectly, wonderfully healthy. I still get weepy when I think of all the what-ifs. It is clear that my placenta had stopped working properly in that last month and that Rachel had stopped growing. She wasn’t in trouble yet, but very, very close. I am thankful for the many small accidents and incredibly good care that saw us through that last mine field.

Rachel has completed our family in all the ways I imagined these many years, and I am constantly surprised by the great joy and love she brings me. She is a delightful, inquisitive little soul. And I am deeply honored and grateful to have my kind friends on INCIID with which to share this magical journey.

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