Updated our story

Here's what I added:

SUMMARY OF THE BEGINNING OF LIFE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THIS BLOG UNTIL THE END OF FEB 2012

We got our first BFP on April 7 and it was a surprise. We were preventing with condoms but not hormonal birth control. The baby was a result of one single night of no protection. Yes, ladies, it can happen. I miscarried a few weeks later before hitting 8 weeks gestation. I struggled for a long time with it. My cycle was very irregular and went from a 28 day cycle before I got pregnant to a random all over the place cycle after. My first cycle lasted 107 days, the next one 76 days and the third 42 days. Those three cycles combined were about 8 months. On my fourth cycle, about 40 days in, I got my second BFP.

I'm currently writing this at almost 10 weeks along with this baby. We have heard the heart beat on our home doppler and seen it on an ultrasound. I'm very worried that I'll miscarry again but I'm trying to stay positive for stress' sake. I keep telling myself, we're past the point we miscarried last time and we've seen/heard the heartbeat and our chance of miscarriage are less than 5% right now. All the stories we read on BBC and faces of loss are women who's experienced it coming together to grieve together and that's why there seems to be more losses on sites like those.

Book

This is a book I just got in the mail today. I ordered it christmas day. I'm excited to read it. We're "trying again" and one of the reviewers said that the book didn't make her feel dumb for mourning "just a miscarriage".

I'm hoping the pregnancy part will apply to me sooner rather than later. We're approaching the time where I've only got a few cycles to be pregnant before the date I miscarried last year.

Really sad

I'm feeling really sad right now. It's probably my own fault for looking at baby things and baby blogs all evening but I haven't felt this down about my miscarriage in a long time. I went through Christmas with barely a thought to it and now I'm sitting here in tears.

:'(

I'm also starting to doubt that I actually saw EWCM since my temp hasn't jumped or anything.

Prenatal Vitamins

It's not supposed to be this way :( I started my prenatals when I got preg in March and the bottle is almost empty and I'm still not pregnant, nor do I have a baby...

*Sad face*

Still hopeful for this month, but I don't know if my cycle is gonna be normal. AF at her 28 days (which she hasn't been lately) would be due around Jan 7th, so I'll probably test around then. I didn't find out until 5 weeks last time so I can't remember what I felt like at 4 weeks... If I were to wait and make it to 5 weeks, I'd probably know...

I just keep dreaming, every time I dream, about pregnancy or babies. Some people might call that a sign. But for me it's just like, "Don't get your hopes up. AF could show up in 50 days still since she's so irregular."

It's been exactly 8 months since my miscarriage.

Due date

Two days from now (Dec 9) marks the due date for me and a friend from BBC who both miscarried.

It's not fair when I see new pregnancy announcements and think that I should be announcing the birth of my baby. There's 32 weeks of my life since the miscarriage that I will never get back. I will never get to meet this baby and I will never get to hold him/her.

There's babies everywhere and I just want one of my own so badly.

AF is still being a bitch and not showing her ugly face on her old schedule.

I didn't think it'd be this hard to get pregnant in 8 months but apparently when your period only comes every few months, it's almost impossible.

I've got no desire to have sex, therefore there is no way that I could be getting pregnant. I'm not a man, I can't go every other day for the rest of my life just hoping to catch the egg on the once in a blue moon time that I ovulate.

It's time to break out the birth control or clomid, either way I NEED my cycle back the way it was so I can track properly.

Changes

I think before my miscarriage and my pregnancy, I was looking forward to being pregnant almost more than having a baby.

Things changed with the miscarriage. I think atm, I do still WANT to be pregnant but I know that every day of my pregnancy I will be hoping and praying that everything goes alright.

I don't think that I will ever be able to relax again. When I'm pregnant, I won't relax and when I have a baby I know I'll be terrified of SIDS too.

I can't imagine my next pregnancy ending in miscarriage but I couldn't imagine that with my last one either... :( I'm getting better at picturing myself with a baby now but I don't know what I will do if I lose my next one (whenever we get pregnant again).

Losing a battle

I feel like my miscarriage made me lose out on the last 8 months of what my life could have been. I still feel like I'm fighting a losing battle and losing month after month of my life. It's really upsetting to think that if I were still pregnant I would have a baby in a month and a week.

I want to move on from this. I want AF to show regularly so I can feel like for once in the last 8 months, I'm winning a battle.

I know when I get pregnant again I will feel cheated. It will almost 100% be in 2012 or later and it's just not fair. I've lived through knowing I was pregnant and going through the next 8 months of my life. I will have to re-live an entire pregnancy. Why don't I get rewarded for it? Why is there no baby for me? Why do I have to do a do-over?

P.S. AF is so unregular. Light pink tinge Thursday night. A bit on the TP Fri morning and almost nothing throughout yesterday and a bit on the TP this morning. I would think that if my body is going to regulate itself without medical help that it would start with a regular AF (my last one in Aug was normalish for me).

IB or AF?

If IB happens a few days after ovulation (and therefore BD) it would be pretty good timing now if this pinkish tinge is IB. I haven't noticed any EWCM lately so I really think this is AF. I can still keep my fingers crossed though.

Cycle one after MC was 107 days counting from the day my MC was confirmed (April 28).
Cycle two so far is 76 days. I'm hoping this is IB but AF would be okay too.

Cycle 2...

Technically we're on cycle #2 of TTC, yet we've been TTC since my M/C which was almost 5.5 months ago. This is getting stupid. I'm hoping that this is the cycle that either gets us pregnant again or this is the cycle that starts me back on a normal 29 day cycle.

Apparently, with my temperature changes, my app thinks that I was fertile recently, but we'll see what happens there. That would mean that I'm in the TWW and should be expecting AF, or a BFP within a week.

Baby fever

Our best couple friends just had a baby. She was pregnant with me before I miscarried. I've got total baby fever and I'm so jealous it hurts.

Three months ago...

... I wouldn't have been okay with AF showing up after my miscarriage. However, I was totally ready for her now.

I'm thankful that my cramps aren't as bad as the ones three months ago. That would be mentally painful.

Anniversaries and milestones

For some reason, the last two anniversaries that fell in my house have also been connected with milestones in my past pregnancy. My parents' anniversary, May 25, was the day after I was going to hear our baby's heartbeat for the first time. Our anniversary, July 3, was around the time that we would get our first ultrasound.

I would have been 19 weeks right now. I'm so depressed.

AF is a no show

This is getting irritating. I'm going to go the Dr. and find out when AF still hasn't shown since my miscarriage... ugh

Go read this pronto!

Alex over at First Time Twins posted about miscarriages and Planned Parenthood on Thursday and I thought it was a great post. It's not something that I EVER would have though to write about. Here is the link to the post.

Cycle driving me nuts!

My cycle is driving me crazy...

If this potential AF doesn't continue, this will be the third time...

My Struggles #2

Remember my friend that was having the baby shower in Portland. My second struggle revolved around her and her baby. We were 30 weeks apart. Her baby was born 2 weeks ago and it was a struggle for me.

It wasn't so hard being excited for them when they were in the hospital and having the baby. I enjoyed hearing about their experience and dreaming about my own.

When they finally were able to bring him home, it was just too real for me. The first video that was posted of him that popped up in my facebook newsfeed just made me break down. It was terrible.

It still makes me sad to see pictures but since then, I've blocked her from my newsfeed so pictures and videos don't sneak up on me. I still check them out, but only when I'm ready for them.

My Struggles #1

Shortly after my miscarriage, a couple at my parents' church lost their baby. Their baby was lost due to long cord syndrome and was fine and healthy until the end of the pregnancy when he dropped. The cord wrapped around his neck and the poor little baby was strangled.

The struggle that I had with this is the fact that I had to suffer in silence. I knew this couple and the church. My own parents seemed like they were tired of hearing me talk about the miscarriage (which I didn't talk much at all and talked even less after this experience). The church rearranged their mother's day service to honour this couple and their lost baby.

The only thing that made their baby different from ours is time. The 30+ more weeks that their baby had that our baby never had the chance to have is the only reason the people knew and the only reason that people mourn their loss and don't mourn ours.

I've gotten lots of posts from people on babycenter.com when I posted a post about this. I even got a post from someone who had gone through a stillborn and a miscarriage and posted that they both hurt and they both felt different but it also wasn't fair that people don't mourn miscarriages the same way.

If it wasn't for babycenter.com I don't know how I would have survived.

New friend

Through babycenter.com I met a new friend. She lives far far away but we've connected.

It all started with a message I sent her about her ultrasound picture. It was a really early one... must have been 6 weeks maybe. At that time I was still pregnant and dreaming about my first ultrasound. She was there for me when I was complaining about finding out I wouldn't get a first ultrasound until 18 weeks. She was there for me when I went to the ER and when I thought I was miscarrying. She was there for me when I found out I was and even gave me her email to use if babycenter was too hard to be on.

We were preggo buddies and then I miscarried. Just under 2 weeks after my miscarriage was confirmed, she miscarried as well. It was so devastating for us both. I'm glad though, if I had to lose this baby, that I had her to lean on and I'm glad I could be there for her.

As of now, my gmail tells me we've sent almost 70 emails back and forth since April 28.

Here's to many many more emails!

I never knew how badly I wanted it...

The reason I'm so obsessed with baby things is because I was recently pregnant.

Our story:

I had wanted a baby since I was a teenager. I had dreams about having the next immaculate conception. Lol. When I met my husband, I imagined having babies with him and could totally see it. I wanted a baby right away but I knew that we wouldn't have time alone for a long time if we had a baby too soon.

Fast forward 8 months after the wedding. We are planning a visit to Portland for a friend's baby shower and I'm calculating when I should be expecting my period. I calculate the same weekend.

Fast forward about a week, 5 days before we leave-ish. I recalculate and realize that I was off by a week and I'm actually a few days late. We talked about it and agreed that I would test before we left.

Nothing happened and I tested the day before we left and got a positive test. I was shocked and started crying. Over the course of the day I get used to it. The next morning I tested again and got another positive. It was easier to handle and I told my first person that morning. I was so excited to be pregnant. I was 5 weeks pregnant when I found out.

I got it verified by a blood test the following Wednesday and we told my parents, his parents and our grandparents.

I was excited to be pregnant but also feeling like my body was being taken over. I felt weird. Morning sickness... kinda kicked in around 7 weeks. I had a bit of spotting one weekend and told the doctor. The day after the appointment I started spotting again.

By Easter Sunday, I was laying around cramping. Easter Monday it was worse and we went to the ER. I had an exam and they did blood work. They couldn't tell me anything yet except that my HCG was low. The doctor told me it was still within normal but I doubted that. I had it confirmed later that my levels were around what you expect for 4 weeks and I was almost 8 weeks.

My schedule after the ER visit looked like this:
Tues: missed work
Wed: blood work, went in for a meeting and left. It was too hard to handle.
Thurs: missed work, confirmed miscarriage
Fri: missed work
Mon-Wed: missed work again

I just couldn't handle being at work around the few people who knew. I spent a lot of time surfing babycenter.com on their miscarriage support forums. I also watched a ton of Desperate Housewives. I needed all the time to focus on other things. At work there was always too much to think.

So there's my story. Along with this miscarriage, we realized how much we want a baby now.