Saturday, 05/14/11

WARNING: This post is not solely about my weight loss and health journey. This post contains personal information about a personal experience that has affected my journey. There may be information in this post that would be consider "TMI" but it has helped me to heal and move forward with my journey to better health. If you choose to continue to read this post, I would prefer not to hear anything but support (which is what I would prefer all the time). Thank you! (P.S. I'm not looking for sympathy in sharing this experience.) The posts about this experience start on 05/14/11 and end on 06/06/11.

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This post is being written on the date labeled but won't appear in published posts until a later date for reasons to be understood after reading. Also, this post has lot of personal information so you may not wish to read it.

Current weight: 193.0 today.

I haven't been actively tracking my weight, and I haven't taken measurements since 04/17/11 but am back to actively tracking. I also haven't been exercising or trying to lose any further weight. Honestly, I've been doing good to eat several meals a day versus not eating at all.

So you're probably asking yourself what happened to make all this change for me. Well, on the 17th of April I got a BFP (big fat positive) on a home pregnancy test. So I stopped "dieting", measuring and actively weighing. I've still been weighing, but haven't been "obsessed by the scale". I've kept an eye on it, but that's all. I was doing good to eat much since I had some food aversions. I would be fine, but then the sight or smell of a food would just make it unable for me to eat it. I also didn't have an appetite at all. I wasn't hungry at all, and it's hard to force yourself to eat when you're not hungry in the slightest. So I tried to make healthy choices, but honestly when it came down to it, if it got food in my belly, I ate it. Definitely not a lot of the best choices being made during this time.

Exercise was stopped. I have had a miscarriage in the past, and was paranoid and didn't want to do ANYTHING that might attribute to a possible miscarriage. So I didn't exercise at all despite having just gotten some new exercise dvds in the mail that I really wanted to try out.

I happened to find out that I was pregnant on the very same day that I was informed that there might be some possible drama with my daughter and that was stressful. AND on top of that, on that very same evening as both of those things, my daughter happened to say that she didn't want us to have any more children beyond her and my son. That our family was perfect the way that it was. Talk about being stressed out. I didn't even tell my husband for almost a week because I didn't want him to know I was pregnant in case I had a miscarriage again. I didn't want to break his heart if it went south. I was planning to shoulder the burden (if it came to that) all by myself to save him from hurting. I had all of these things stressing me out and I caved in and told him almost a week after I found out.

So this brings me now to the present. I put off going to the doctor after finding out I was pregnant because I didn't want to go through the crap that I went through during the first trimester for my last two pregnancies (my son, and the miscarriage I had before him at around 10 weeks). There was a lot of stress and drama with those two pregnancies. The miscarriage pregnancy, I went in around 8 weeks and they did a basic checkup. To confirm dates they did an ultrasound within the next week. As far as I knew, everything was fine. We saw the heartbeat too. I started to spot (only two small spots of bright red blood) and called the doctor. I just knew. I was able to get my sister to come and watch my nephew (whom I was watching for my sister-in-law, and my daughter was at school) and off I went to the doctor to have an ultrasound. There was no longer a heartbeat. Talk about heartbreaking. I had options since it was a "missed" miscarraige. Wait for my body to realize it no longer carried a viable pregnancy and wait for it to expell the "products of conception" (they told me I could safely wait up to four weeks before my body might realize it needed to expell everything). I could have a D&C, or I could get some medication that they would put on my cervix to dilate it and cause my body to abort everything, followed by a dose of medication 12 hours later to tell my body to close back up. I chose the medication. I felt that it was the quickest and best option for me at the time. So I left the doctor's with a presciption and was told to call once I found a pharmacy that could fill it. I think I was able to go back the next day and have the medication placed so my body could expell everything. I then had to go back two weeks later to have my HCG hormone level tested to make sure it was back to normal and then I had to go back again in two more weeks to have some other medication prescribed so that my body would resume normal monthly cycles since it hadn't already done so on it's own. Talk about a long drawn out miscarriage. It broke my heart every time I had to keep going back to that OB's office and see all the happy chipper pregnant ladies. I found out after all of this that my first ultrasound had shown a heartbeat (as I saw), but it was "weak". A weak heartbeat is almost always an early signed of a failed pregnancy. I was livid that they didn't say anything. I would have rather have prepared for the worst and gotten the best, instead of having been relieved to see a heartbeat only to miscarry. Typically your rate of miscarriage drops down to very miniscule percentage after seeing/hearing a heartbeat.

The pregnancy that resulted in my son was a horrible and very stressful first trimester. I was paranoid about a miscarriage since my last pregnancy resulted in one. I went in to the OB's (same one I used for the pregnancy that ended in miscarriage) and they drew blood to test my HCG levels and progesterone levels. I went back a few days later to have the HCG level tested again to make sure it was still going up. Progesterone was "normal". My HCG levels were going up, so they did an ultrasound to just check things out. At this point I was thought to be about 6 weeks and they wanted to see if they could find a heartbeat. Instead I left there with a referral to the local hospital to have a high level ultrasound the following Monday (I believe it was Friday that I was in the OB's office) to rule out a suspected ectopic pregnancy. So not only wasn't there any confirmation of a healthy pregnancy, now there's a chance that the pregnancy might have to be aborted due to it being ectopic. That weekend was horrrible, only to be made worse by my sister having found out that she was (suprisingly) pregnant and she was nothing but bubbly about it (and yes, she knew what was going on with my pregnancy, but since her pregnancy was so unexpected it's believed that she was in her own little bubble while I was praying that I even had a viable pregnancy. I'll admit that I personally wanted to strangle her during this time). So I had the high level ultrasound at the hospital and had to wait until the next day to get the results through my OB. There was no sign of a heartbeat on the ultrasound at the hospital. I went to the OB's the next morning and got complained about to the doctor by the intake nurse because I was pissy with her when she took my weight and blood pressure. She was asking me how excited I was to be pregnant. I just wanted to smack the crap out of her because, as I told her, I was there to learn if my pregnancy was even viable or not. Don't they make notations in the chart or something? I finally get with the OB and come to find out, it's not ectopic, it was just a "shadow" the OB's ultrasound tech saw. I'm measuring about almost 6 weeks at this point. I'm scheduled to come back in two weeks to check for a heartbeat. At around 8 weeks, we have a nice strong heartbeat verified via ultrasound. I don't breathe the first sigh of relief until I make it past 10 weeks pregnant. I really don't relax until I'm almost 4 months pregnant and I can feel my baby moving around daily. Thankfully I have my wonderful son from this stressful pregnancy.

So this again brings me back to current. I got a postive pregnancy test on the 17th of April. I had no intentions of going to the doctor until a point where I could find out definitely if I had a viable pregnancy or not. I eventually scheduled an appointment for the 13th of May. I should be about 9-1/2 weeks along. I started spotting on the morning of the 13th. Nothing major, but as I tell the intake nurse, that was my only sign of a missed miscarriage with my second pregnancy. There was LOTS of back and forth, but they sent me in to the ultrasound tech. I didn't have to be told anything, I could see for myself. I have experienced another "missed" miscarriage. In my uterus I have an empty embryonic sac - no baby. Nothing. The tech's not allowed to say anything, and I didn't have to ask. I then go back to the intake nurse, which sends me to have my blood pressure checked and then I'm sent off to wait for my OB to be available. BTW, I switched OB's at around 6 months pregnant with my son, and the one I had at the end was wonderful. This is the OB I'm seeing on this day. I wait in the lobby (where they filter people between labs and seeing the doctor) and try not to think. I go to the OB's office and he talks to me and tries to say that there's a chance for hope. I ask him straightforward questions about the few things I have questions about. He follows this talk with a quick check of my cervix, which is closed. Good for a "hope" of a viable pregnancy, bad for a chance at a natural miscarriage. We follow this with a quick chat again and I have blood drawn to check the HCG level to see if meshes with the ultrasound. It won't. I would have to be only 3-4 weeks along at max for the ultrasound to show what it did and that's not possible since I tested positive just shy of 4 weeks ago. I go back on the 20th to have a follow-up ultrasound and then to have a D&C if my body hasn't taken care of things. My poor husband was told via text message while I was waiting to see the OB. I couldn't bring myself to have to tell him in person again. I leave and get to my car and cry. I am heartbroken that I have been unfortunate enough to now have had two miscarriages that would have been very much wanted pregnancies, and to make matters worse, missed miscarriages both times. I let myself cry and then compose myself. I start to drive home and breakdown again. I try to compose myself so that my husband won't worry about me when I get home. He's there watching our son. He's supposed to go in to work once I get home. I get home and despite trying to tell him that I'm okay, I start crying, which is rare. He hugs me and I ask him if I can lay down. He says he'll call work and I go upstairs to take a nap. I need to start this day over fresh. He comes up to check on me once and then I nap for a while. I get up in time to go pick up my daughter from school. My husband's doing okay. He did say he hung up on his coworker because they tried giving him a hard time about not coming in to work. He didn't get a chance to tell them why, he just hung up. He thinks they were probably just giving him a hard time, but he didn't want to deal with it. This tells me that this has upset him too. I apologize for not asking him how he was earlier. He says he's okay, but sad. Me too. I pick up my daughter from school and then we go to a movie. We went to see Rio. We all enjoyed it including our 20 month old son. We followed this with my daughter's belated birthday dinner at her favorite restaurant, Friendly's (her birthday was the weekend prior). We had planned all of this the night before, but it was a definite needed pick-me-up after the news of the morning.

So here I am, back to trying to be commited to getting in better health again. I'm going to start eating better, drinking more water and also exercising again. Now that I am not worried about miscarrying, exercise is a definite must.