Back to baby: the beginning and the broken heart

I guess the baby journey we've taken has been a pretty traditional one. As high-school sweethearts, we knew we wanted to pursue college educations, and we hoped our relationship would survive the adventure. Fortunately, it made it through the ups and downs, and we decided we wanted to both be graduated before getting married. However, Jon waited to even propose until he'd graduated and established a job and started building a home; this made me a little nervous, being left behind for a fifth and final year of school while Jon had my heart, and I had no ring in return. Yet, when he had his ducks in a row (I should have known his senses of logic and responsibility, two of the attributes for which I admire him, would dictate his decision in timing), he flew back to Kansas from Texas and gave me a wonderful surprise proposal. We then waited out the next nine months in separate states planning the wedding, which we had no more than one week after I graduated. The next day, we were driving to Houston to start the biggest chapter of our lives.


Jon and I knew before we married that we shared a mutual goal of raising a family ... some day. I was surprised how easily that desire went on the back burner when we became man and wife. We really felt a contentment with living our lives as a couple, along with our pets, and working at our jobs and continuing to make our home more comfortable and reflective of ourselves. We took time to simply enjoy each other. Although we'd been together for several years, we'd never lived together, and we needed to figure out this new dynamic; it was actually a very pleasant adjustment. So, we took our time doing the just-us thing, until a few years later, we decided we'd like more of us -- in the form of a mini us. It took a while to come to this conclusion, but when we did, we got pretty excited about the prospect, and we formulated a plan. Of course, in life, so little goes according to plan.


In preparation for adding to our family, my doc suggested I get vaccinated for chicken pox, which I'd never had, get my DTAP and get updated on my MMR. All of these, if contracted during pregnancy, can spell disaster for the baby. Then, after a few weeks, we could think about starting up the baby train. Well, long story short, I got vaccine-strain chicken pox and measles from the shots, rendering me miserable for a couple of weeks and preventing us from trying to go forward with having a kiddo for a while until everything was out of my system. Then, a few months later, as we thought about babyland again, I started getting unsettling episodes, which spawned months of testing that further delayed our plight for parenthood. Anyway, it turned out to be a type of dysautonomia, an autonomic-nervous-system disorder most likely caused by the viruses from the shots basically attacking my nervous system. Because this disorder can last from five years to decades, we had to do some thinking about how this might affect having a future family. My first cardiac electrophysiogist was not keen on me ever becoming pregnant. He kept declaring doom and gloom about how horrible it would be for me, but I did not feel at peace about this, so I got another such specialist. This current doctor, along with a neurologist, cleared me for pregnancy with some realistic caution and monitoring but a much better overall attitude.


Shortly thereafter, Jon and I, located through our Texas fishing licenses of all things, were asked to participate in the Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment. Since my journalistic side makes me a sucker for research, I talked Jon into joining the study in the hopes we could contribute to both science and future couples' journeys to having children. Also, having a personally available nurse visit regularly, along with the helpful technology of a monitor and testing paid for by the study, I figured it might help make up some of the time we'd lost due to our unforseen circumstances (it's amazing how quickly one can go from being ok with the idea of having children to a sudden urgency). Anyway, to explain, the L.I.F.E. study is run by scientists at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development at the National Institutes of Health, two research sites and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the Web site, the purpose is "to determine how the environment may affect human reproduction and development. The environment includes people's everyday behaviors. A longitudinal investigation is a research study in which data are collected from the same participants over a period of time. The LIFE Study will collect information from couples while attempting to become pregnant and from women during their pregnancies. The LIFE study will study whether environmental factors affect the length of time it takes couples to conceive and pregnant women's ability to carry a pregnancy to term." Here's another blurb from a cooperating scientific site: "The Longitudinal Investigation of Fertility and the Environment (LIFE) Study (http://www.lifestudy.us/ ) is designed to examine the relation between ubiquitous environmental chemicals, lifestyle, and human fecundity and fertility. The primary exposures of interest include persistent chemicals (e.g., PCBs, PBDEs and PFOS) and lifestyle factors (e.g., stress, cigarette smoking, caffeine, and alcohol usage). The LIFE Study will follow 800 couples in two states as they try to become pregnant for up to 12 at-risk menstrual cycles. Women who conceive will be followed through delivery. Primary outcome measures include fecundability, pregnancy loss, infertility, and infant gestation and birth size." So there ya go. Feel free to visit the site if you're still curious.


Anyway, immediacy of the dream was not to be. Once going off the chemical warfare, I thought I'd be pregnant quickly, like it seemed to go for the vast majority of members of both our immediate and extended families who got pregnant without any real purposeful efforts (besides the obvious, of course). By the way, if you're not into female terms, beware, and proceed with caution. So, it took months before I got a period again, and then, thanks to the monitor, I found out that in the months following this revisitation, I still wasn't ovulating, which is a little on the unusual side. So, after seeing a reproductive endocrinologist at the advising of my OBGYN, turns out my prolactin was too high, most likely due to my body's sensitivity to stress from work and health challenges. Now I know why God made the trying process so fun ... it makes up for other frustrations!


At any rate, over the Christmas holidays, with family back in Kansas and away from daily stresses, I finally threw an egg (my first in several years thanks to the pill). Here are a few pics of me back in Kansas late December of 2007 before I knew any results.


My college buddies Jen and Lori at our annual girl-time breakfast in Lawrence:




My mom, Jon, me, my younger brother Zach's long-time girlfriend Ashley, our family dog Nestle (who has lived with me and Jon since shortly after our marriage) as Santa Dog and Zach at mom's house:




Jon, me and my mom not long before Jon and Nes and I headed back to Houston:

Not long after Jon's 27th birthday (which was Jan. 6), I took an early test and discovered I was pregnant. I think I tested around sunrise on a weekend morning before Jon got up for the day. I wanted to surprise him. By the way, if you've done the math for my current due date, you'll have to keep reading for explanation.

Here's the positive test, which is sitting on top of a box of Gain in our laundry room. I needed a discrete place, after all:

And here is the sunrise, which was lovely, through the trees behind our backyard:

So then I had to come up with a way to tell him. Since it was only days after his birthday, I tied a ribbon around my tummy and got dressed in many layers of clothing. I told him I had another present for him, but he had to reveal it. Then I did a strip-tease-style unwrapping (oh come, we're adults here ... you know what happened to actually get pregnant in the first place, right?), and at the end, the ribbon was revealed, and he guessed his "gift." He was happy! We went out that evening and bought some pregnancy books and journals and started plotting how to tell our parents.

Then I didn't feel so well. I started having cramps, my skin went crazy and I had a little spotting. So, five days or so after my initial test, I took another test. I made Jon look at it: still positivo.

I figured I'd better take a picture of body progress. So here I am at about 34 days pregnant:


The cramping got worse, and I had a little more spotting, but we went to meet Jon's parents at Lake Amistad near the Texas-Mexico border as planned that weekend. We were excited to be around family for our big announcement -- something we'd normally never get to experience. We'd both taken time off work both before and after the weekend so we could have a decent amount of time to relax on this little getaway.



That weekend I woke up bleeding heavily with horrendous cramping. I slipped off to the bathroom and took another test. It was negative. I had miscarried. I crawled back into bed and silently bawled until Jon woke up, found out what happened and did his best to comfort me. He explained the situation to his parents at breakfast, because I couldn't hide my devastation. Looking back, it happened in the least cruel way possible. It happened when I was surrounded by people who love me and who understood; Jon's parents lost a baby quite a ways into a pregnancy, which I can only imagine would be that much worse. I was with people who could both comfort and distract me, so I wasn't sitting at home isolating myself in some depression. I even managed to get my mind in a different place a few times, which was necessary. Of course, I did have the Wal-Mart incident, in which I sort of broke down in the sanitary aisle picking out "the saddest tampons I've ever had to buy" (turns out after a MC, one is probably not supposed to use tampons, but I was not thinking medically at that point). Thank God my mother-in-law was there to hold me together. It was also very good for Jon to be able to get out and fish with his dad, which is a solace for him, I think. It really helped lift his spirits somewhat. Fortunately, we did salvage some positive memories from the trip. In fact, here's a pic of Louis, my father-in-law, with a fish he caught:







Continuing, I had time off work to have a few days to start the physical and emotional recovery processes. According to my doctor, whom I saw shortly after, it was also early enough so that it was a complete miscarriage, in which my body took care of cleaning itself out entirely -- which was a terrible and painful process, but at least I didn't have to have further medical intervention. Although it's a common tragedy, a miscarriage feels like a personal assault that brings a sense of loss and confusion that breeds future fear. Although through Jon's support and others' prayers I managed to cope well, it took a long time before I didn't cry every day in the privacy of my commute to work. Even now I know it's something I won't get over. The pain has subsided, but every time someone asks whether this current one is my first pregnancy (to which I answer yes in general to avoid awkwardness) or when I think about how old that baby would have been now, or what have you, there's a sadness that touches me. So I continue to find ways, though it's less necessary now, to purge when I need to, because I won't unhealthily hold in emotions, especially when I have this pregnancy and this current baby to be strong and healthy for, right? And I know, as my friend Kerry explained, that when I hold this baby I am now pregnant with in my arms, I will not be able to imagine my life without it, despite the circumstances that allowed it to be here. So, normally I rarely share my poetry in a public setting, because it's just for me, but here are a couple of things I wrote; you who know me know writing is a huge outlet for me.



Here is the first:

Little one

You never became

But you will always be

-- just not outside

of me.



This is the other:

Before you

I never knew

this brand of fear --

the kind that takes away the air

like a vacuum.

And I found out

about doubt

that cuts like the raw, uneven edge

of broken metal.

These I gained

when I lost you.



So why am I sharing the story of the lost little one, along with the pictures and the poetry? Why call attention to something that is hurtful or private or unsuccessful? I guess I feel like it's important in my own world and in my own ability to move on. I feel like in reality this lost little one was our first baby, and because it is just as much a child to God as the one I carry now or any born, so it is to me, and therefore, it deserves no less acknowledgement. I don't want to forget about it, but I don't know how to pay tribute to that which ultimately broke and changed a part of my heart, either. So I'll just put the truth and what comes with it out there, and I hope that's honorable enough.