My 14-Week Miscarriage Journey (Part 2)
My journey was so long that in order to get the details that I feel are necessary to help others I'm having to break it into several posts. The last 3+ months of my life have been some of the longest days. But I feel compelled to share my story, not because it's special, but because I'm hopeful that it can help even just one other person going through something similar.
WARNING: These posts are not for the faint of heart. There are some very graphic and to be honest intimate details that I will be sharing. To some, it might be "too much information", but this is my story and I want to share it all.
The Monday (May 25th) following my ultrasound, that indicated the sac had passed, I went on a long walk around 11:30 with a friend. After the walk I experienced some minor cramping, but once again nothing crazy. It was about 3:00 when Zach got home from work that something changed. Honestly, TMI, but I felt like all of a sudden I was about to be sick (diarrhea) -- I mean I was having these intense pains which I thought was maybe my stomach not agreeing with lunch (side note-- not sure if you've ever read anything about birth but a lot of women experience "poop pains" which are actually contractions leading up to their water breaking). Suddenly I then felt like I was about to pee my pants (all the weird feelings let me tell ya), so I rushed to the bathroom and to my surprise it was the exact opposite of what I thought... it was this intense rush of fluid and blood clots. AND A LOT OF IT. All I could think was wow that was crazy... but then not even 10 minutes later another round of intense "poop pains" and more fluid/clots came rushing out. And can I just say (because I want this to be the most authentic version of my experience) that feeling the things you feel coming out is not fun.. it's the most bizarre feeling. After those two rounds of intense pain and lots of large clots/blood coming out I didn't have much of anything the following week. So when Thursday rolled around I was very optimistic for my HCG levels to be down.
Thursday, May 28th: I went in for more bloodwork and got my results the next day (May 29th). I had dropped again significantly but not enough, I dropped from 20,327 to 4,807. I was happy and yet discouraged. But this week I remember feeling more optimistic, more hopeful that God's plan for us and me was to grow and walk with Him more (and it absolutely did!).
Friday, June 5th: I got my bloodwork results back from the 4th, I dropped from 4,807 to 1559. My doctor was still encouraged by my dropping numbers, although they were slow so we decided to recheck in 1-2 weeks (my choice). So I decided to skip the next week due to more random, but very light, bleeding that I had experienced over the last week.
Friday, June 19th: My levels from the last two weeks had dropped HUGE in my opinion! They went from 1559 to 82!!! I was so encouraged and even my doctor felt like the next week would be THE week I would be negative! It was at this point that my body was clearly trying to reset itself. I was having symptoms of ovulation (i.e.-- cervical mucus and BBT changes) so I asked my dr. if it was possible to ovulate/have a period while still "pregnant". Oddly enough she said that some people once their HCG dips below a certain level can in fact ovulate/have periods. So freaking weird.
Friday, June 26th: I went back again just after 1 week because I felt really good about my numbers. Unfortunately, I had only dropped from 82 to 59. This sent me back into utter discouragement. I asked her why it was taking so long and she simply said everyone's bodies are different. Which I know that, but it wasn't what I wanted to hear... I asked if there was anything that we could be doing to speed it up, and of course she said no. But I couldn't take that for an answer -- it had been over a month and I was ready to be done (insert God laughing at me trying to mess with his timing). So this was when I started googling for any other advice on the matter. Honestly, there was not much out there. I found a few articles that said to try various things to "induce labor" since ultimately that's what the goal was to get the tissue out. So embarrassingly enough, I tried most of them. I tried to take an absurd amount of Vitamin C, I tried to take evening primrose oil, I tried to eat spicy foods, and yes Zach and I even tried being frisky (note we were unable to be fully intimate until the beginning of July since I hadn't stopped bleeding from the medication -- risk of infection). NOTHING WORKED. I felt like I had a small placebo effect from the Vitamin C buuuuut y'all it just clearly wasn't time for us to done.
Continued in next post...
