Remembering Erin

Today is a day to remember our Erin.

She is with us every day and today we get to light a candle that will send our love up to her and all her friends in heaven.

I am at a particularly difficult patch of this pregnancy and think of her remarkably often. This was the precarious time in my last pregnancy that we were between our last successful visit with a heartbeat and our next crushing blow with no heartbeat. I am over 13 weeks now and Erin died at 14w1d. I think a hundred times each day about this fact. At our dr. visit last week, the baby was measuring 13w1d...which is a week ahead of my date. That would mean that the baby is perhaps measuring 14w right now. My nerves are frayed when I think about this. I just pray...'not again, not again, not again.'

Today I saw Super OB and she did a doppler. I was greeted with my own heartbeat and unrelated whooshing for about a minute. She continued mashing away in different locations on my abdomen. Finally, when I had likely turned the fourth shade of purple, she caught it and told me to breathe. I heard it too and I did breathe. That was hard but ultimately a sweet relief.

So, today we have a heartbeat for this baby and she can celebrate her sister, Erin right along with us tonight.

Hanging on...hanging in.

Still here.

Unfortunately, I am sick right now and that just sucks but it will pass. Until then, I lay low and the Bug gets to watch WAY too much Dora, Diego and Sprout programming.

A little catch up...
We went on vacation last week but wound up cutting it short b/c the Bug got sick. We had a blast until we left though. I must say...if you live within 5 hours of a Great Wolf Lodge and you and/or your little one(s) are water fans at all...Do yourselves a favor and head over for a night or two. They have a great set-up and it is kinda Disney-ish on a much smaller scale. It's a great place for families!!!

I have been feeling very nauseated still but have had days where I have felt much less so than before. So, naturally, I suspect that this pregnancy has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Having a missed miscarriage has made this pregnancy more torture than anything else. Everyday I just assume the baby is dead. I thought I would be less like this but I was wrong. I keep looking for blood when I wipe but the lack of blood does nothing to allay my fears.

My next OB appointment is on Thursday afternoon and I am not looking forward to it. I haven't decided what I want to do. I will have the option of having a doppler or ultrasound. I doubt we will hear anything on the doppler since I will be a little over 10 weeks but I know it's possible. I just can't bear to hear nothing when she tries with that and still there is the possibility of everything being too early to detect yet. But another damn ultrasound just makes me panic, too. Maybe I will ask for an ultrasound and close my eyes so I can't see her expression. That will only delay the inevitable but in any case, it may be more bearable. Who the fuck knows?! Who even cares?! No matter what...it's out of my hands entirely.

We are still at such a precarious time in this pregnancy that a loss is a very realistic outcome. I have hopes that we will still have a baby after this next doctor visit but I am very disconnected from the actual reality of that. We shall see and I will just buckle up and ride it out until then. After all, if we do get so lucky as to get past this appointment with the pregnancy intact, I will have another 4 weeks of this ahead. Of course, at that point, I will be able to go in for weekly dopplers to calm some of this insanity.

I guess, I just get to wait and see.

Lotto winner?!

I've played the lottery for a while now.

So, the good news...I won the lottery. It's six figures. The not-so-good news...I don't get the money immediately. In fact, I may not get the money at all. The worse news...in order to possibly get the money, I need to pay the taxes up front. I will find out after all the taxes have been paid if I actually get the payout.

What would you do? Sing from the hilltops that you won the lotto? Decide to not take your chances and just hang back without paying the taxes? Pay the taxes and hope? Pay the taxes and sing from the hilltops even knowing that it may not go your way?

I am hanging in there. And paying the taxes. With absolutely no promises or guarantees that I will collect the cash in the end. I'm a realist so what kind of sense does this make?!



This is the closest I can come to explaining what it's like to be pregnant after our late loss. Loads of people would be happy to win the lottery. But when the lottery you have won is played by a different set of rules, the stakes change and it just doesn't feel quite the same as it does for other people. Now, don't misunderstand...I signed on for this. And I harbor no ill will against the people who win the lottery that doesn't operate by these same rules. I just feel like it helps me to define why I am not happy about this. It feels like it is a "delayed potential happiness" and it won't ever be real until we have a baby. And while nothing is guaranteed right now...I feel like shit and am exhausted beyond belief. That's the paying taxes portion of my analogy.

I could cruise through 15 weeks again and find out...no baby for you! I could find out in 3 days...no baby for you! I could make it to 28 weeks and find out...no baby for you. These things do happen and I am (un)lucky enough to know that now. I hope to make it far beyond that and get the prize at the end but I am here and this is my story for now.

TheOtherJustRelax is what prompted me to write this post. Murgdan is normally the one putting together flawless analogies with startling frequency and her post hit me in the face and brought me to an analogy of my own. I am right in the middle of that place where people would blow the "just relax" smoke up my ass if given even a split second. Still, I can't dislike them. They just don't know any better and they are lucky that they don't. I hope they don't ever have to live in this world and be told to "just relax and enjoy it." Because, I can assure you...we are not relaxing and we are not enjoing the pregnancy. We will enjoy the baby when and if we get there. Until then, I just hope to keep this news to ourselves and lock the rest of the world out. I'm simply not interested in the 'kind words of congratulations or advice.' We're just not there yet.

Traveling incognito

So, I want to come clean. I have another blog that I started not too long ago but I needed to kick this one off because I needed a more anonymous place to speak freely. The other blog is a great outlet but then I got a positive pee stick. The other one no longer does the trick. I can't blog about it over there and I have a need to get a lot off my chest about it.

I struggled for about a week and then decided to start a Blogger blog. Don't you know...I'm much happier with the Blogger layout as it is much easier to follow my blog list. I can see when blogs that I enjoy are updated. Wordpress doesn't have that convenient feature. I may ultimately copy over all my wordpress blogs and invite my readers/friends over here. But not until this pregnancy results in a baby rather than a messy series of hospital/doctor visits and blood draws.

So, let me just throw out some of what I am feeling lately. It's a mixed bag of emotions.

Ambivalence...again. I thought I was ambivalent about trying again after our loss with Erin. That's what we named the little girl we lost. Erin Greer. I was so grey during my last ovulation that I was at a loss for what exactly we should do. It's clear we went ahead and tried since we're pregnant today. I have felt this since we got the positive pee stick nearly 2 weeks ago.

Fear...how soon until this one goes to crap?I am checking the toilet paper like some nut-job with a wiping fetish. Strangely enough, I didn't miscarry with Erin. So the toilet paper exercise is just generalized fear. I am also TERRIFIED of the initial OB visit. We get an ultrasound after a grueling hour-long interview and wait to see the doctor. And I just can't imagine what that time will be like. Sitting in the office just waiting and wondering if there will be a heartbeat. It's going to flat-out suck monster balls! And even if we do see a heartbeat, the fear won't end there...since we couldn't find Erin's heartbeat after several confirmations that she was there and healthy. Who the hell goes 15 weeks and finds out their baby is dead?! Me.

Hopeful...what are the chances that I will have another late loss? Really, they aren't that common. I was lucky enough to receive all the testing I would have gotten if I were a recurrent pregnancy loss patient. My doctor is sensitive to loss and I have no warning signs or issues that would have made a late loss even remotely likely. After all the testing is said and done, we still don't have a reason for why she died. Maybe in 9 months, we will have a brother for Bug. In the same vein, hope seems poisonous right now so I leave it behind as quickly as I find it.

Happy...in the briefest of moments before I realize that we are in limbo. And will be until April 19, 2010 should this last that long. That is the due date. I haven't even thought much about it. it's just an arbitrary date in the all-to-distant future. It means nothing until we reach it successfully with a new baby. Until then, it's just 4 days after tax day. It's next Spring. It's after Bug turns 3.

Strong...I have weathered a rough storm of pregnancy once. I have weathered a fairly easy pregnancy once. I will make it through whatever comes our way. And I am not harboring the anxiety I did when I was pregnant with Erin. I can handle two children. I will be a good mother to both, if we are so lucky as to have another. I wasn't so sure when I was pregnant with Erin. But I am sure now.

Certainty...I will say that if we make it that far...I am having a boy. I already know this based on my nausea. My pregnancy with Bug was relatively easy until about 6 weeks and then got better around 10 weeks. With Erin, I was ill from 4 weeks until I delivered her at 15 weeks 3 days. I didn't even get lucky enough to lose the nausea when I lost her heartbeat.

Don't get me wrong...we were so blessed in our loss. We could have gotten to meet her and love her but we didn't. Bug could have gotten to meet her and love her but he didn't. It is much easier to take that way. I wouldn't have been so resilient had we known her, touched her, hugged her, kissed her before we lost her. We were the lucky ones. We have an angel in heaven who chose to teach us a lesson the hard way. It takes a lot of love to teach hard lessons...ask any mother. Our angel, Erin, must love our family a lot to have chosen us and to have been the bearer of such hardship.

Above all else, I feel grateful. Grateful that we have been able to get pregnant again with relative ease. Grateful that I gained so many valuable lessons through the loss of our daughter. Grateful that I have a loving, amazing husband and the most delightful, spirited son I could have ever wished for. Grateful to have an angel who watches over us and keeps us buoyant with peace in any outcome. Grateful to have friends and family that support us and helped us through our rough time. Grateful that I have my peaceful perspective of our journey and not one of bitterness or confusion. I am confortable with the belief that everything happens for a reason. I don't need to know why or what the end purpose is now. I take comfort in knowing that, one day, it will all be much clearer to me.