I'm going to be a mom

I suppose before I jump straight into my journey with Eliza, I should start at the beginning of my adventure with fertility, conception, and loss.

I guess I will start in June of 2009. A co-worker of mine told me she thought I was pregnant. I remember thinking, well that is just strange, I haven't missed a period. Heck, my period wasn't due for a couple more days. However, that day came...and went. "Hmm..." I thought"...could I actually be pregnant?" There was no way she was right. How could she have known something like that.

So I went to the store and stood in front of the pregnancy tests. My options were between a digital test and a traditional test. The digital test and the traditional test work the same way. I urinate on it, and it tells me whether or not I'm pregnant. That was easy to enough to understand. So my decision wouldn't be based on how to take the test, but how the test gave the results. The digital test displays the words "pregnant" or "not pregnant". Easy enough. I figured those words would be hard to refute or debunk, compared to a possibility of an extra pink line. What if the line wasn't dark enough? What if I was pregnant but read it wrong. So I went with the digital. It would be impossible to mistake the words "pregnant" or "not pregnant".

Now it was time to take it. It wasn't hard to urinate on it, because I was so damn nervous. I set it down, and watched as a little hour glass blinked over and over again. It was the longest 2 minutes of my life. Then BOOM!! My world suddenly changed. I kept looking for the word "not" in front of pregnant...but it wasn't there. "Wow" I thought, "I'm going to be a mom....me...a mom".

The next day I called an OB/GYN. They informed me that I was 4 weeks, and that they usually do not do ultrasounds until 8 weeks. I suddenly got bummed. I wanted to see this little being growing inside of me now! I wanted to know it was okay! I wanted to see it move...little did I know, at 4 weeks, it looks NOTHING like a little person...or at 6 or even 7 weeks. Regardless, I was ready to see it and make this all the more real

A couple days after setting my appointment, I started experiencing some bleeding. It brought me to tears the first time I used the restroom and noticed the old blood on the toilet paper. It was so vibrant on the white tissue. I called my mom, who is an RN. She explained that it was normal to have some spotting in the first trimester. Upon doing research, I assumed it was implantation bleeding. This was very common to notice after the first missed period. It was brown blood, which I had, and was from the baby implanting into the uterus. This had to be it.

However, over the course of the next several days, it didn't stop. Rather, it got heavier and heavier. It stayed brown, so when letting the OB/GYN office know, they didn't seem bothered. It was "old blood" they called it. If the professionals weren't bothers, I guessed I shouldn't be either.

It wasn't until I was 7 weeks that I began to get worried. I woke up early that morning and went to the restroom. When I wiped, it wasn't the usual blood I got used to seeing. It was much heavier. I called my mom. I know she sensed the fear in my voice. Her response was "lay down, elevate your legs, drink lots of water, and call the doctor right away". Well, that didn't sound good coming from a health professional. "Call the doctor right away" resonated inside my ears. So I did what I was told: I laid down, elevated my legs on some of the useless decorative pillows on my bed, and called my doctor.

It worried me more that they wanted me to come in right away. I called Austin to tell him what was going on. He wanted to leave work so bad to be by my side, but he was still in his probationary period. He had just started work a couple weeks prior and couldn't leave without being fired. So he called his mom to come with me.

She walked back there, and little did I know, this was not the type of ultrasound they show on t.v. Nooo, not at all. This was a tad more... invasive. So, for the first time in my life, I had to get naked in front of my boyfriend's mom, so they could do an ultrasound.  Wow, this was awkward.

She held my hand as they began trying to find the baby. After a few seconds, the tech didn't say anything. She just kept measuring the baby over and over again. I didn't know much of what I was looking at. It just looked like shades of gray and black. However, the doctor came in shortly after and looked at the same thing we were looking at. Then she released the blow. "The baby is only measuring four weeks". It was what they considered a missed miscarriage. I had lost the baby at 4 weeks, but my body was having a hard time passing the baby. And while my body was having a hard time with passing the baby, I was having a hard time processing the information I had just heard. I guess it was simple to say, I was in denial.

She explained she could do a D&C or I could take a medication that would help with the process. I didn't want to do either. "What if she is wrong?" I kept thinking. If I let her do these procedures, I was sure to lose this baby. So we decided to do a less invasive measure. I decided I would go home. If I hadn't lost the baby in a week, they would do another ultrasound. It was worth a shot, to me.

However, it didn't take long before I realized the professionals were right. I was losing this baby. It was about 4 hours later and the brown blood was no longer brown and no longer considered old. It was very much red and very much new.

Later that I night, I went to my parent's house. I crawled in the bed with my mom, and let her hold me like a baby, while I certainly cried like one. I remember thinking, I don't want to go back home. I just want to stay here, in my mom's arms, until this pain goes away. I wanted her to keep holding me, like a child, and make all the bad things disappear like she did when I was a kid. It wasn't fair. I wouldn't get that chance with this baby. On July 5th, I lost the first and only thing I had ever loved instantly.