Do you believe in Rainbows after the storm?

After we lost Jay, life was kind of a haze for a while.  I was angry, shocked, in disbelief, in denial, hurt, sad.  You name it and I had those feelings in the first few months that followed.

It took me 10 months to get pregnant with my daughter and 7 months to get pregnant with Jay.  A few months after losing Jay and having multiply tests run on me to see if something was wrong with me, my doctor asked about birth control.  I really hadn’t thought about it, much less anything else.  My husband and I talked and decided since it took a while to get pregnant with Michaela and Jay, we would just stay off birth control and give it time.

I never expected to become pregnant a little over 3 short months after I lost Jay.  I was still in the process of grieving and now would be expecting again.

I was a few days late and took a pregnancy test because we were having my daughters 3rd birthday that weekend.  In case I had a few drinks, I just wanted to make sure it was okay.  

I took a pregnancy test on a Friday morning, right before work.  To my unexpected surprise, it was positive.  I walked in to the bedroom and told Jeremy, then started crying.  He asked if I was excited or if that was a good thing.  I said, “I don’t know, I’m scared!”

It was hard to get through work that day.  I couldn’t stop worrying if something would go wrong.

I called my doctor as soon as I got home and she told me to contact her office to make an appointment.  (My OBGYN is absolutely fantastic, if I haven’t already said that in other posts!)  She said she would call the office staff and tell them to schedule me at 6 weeks to confirm and the appointment would be with her.  Usually your first visit is with the Nurse practitioner.  

All of my family would be in town the weekend I found out.  It was hard to keep a secret, but the only two people I told was my sister and best friend.  I didn’t want anyone to know, because I was so scared of what might happen.

Right before my first appointment I started spotting, it was very little.  I immediately started thinking it was a miscarriage.  

When I went in for the first appointment, my doctor did a sonogram.  The babies heartbeat was strong and I cried at the sound of it.  She said everything looked great and to call her anytime I needed anything.  She referred me to a Maternal  Fetal medicine doctor as well.

I saw the Maternal Fetal Medicine doctor at 9 weeks.  She also did a sonogram and said everything looked great.  When I left that appointment, I called and told my family that I was pregnant.  They were all surprised, excited, and very supportive.

Throughout the whole pregnancy I went to the doctor every 2 weeks.  I scheduled my appointments with my OBGYN and Maternal fetal medicine doctor, so that no more than 2 weeks would go by without a visit.  I received a sonogram at every single visit.  The sonograms were reassuring, but the reassurance only lasted for the day.

I bought a fetal doppler to use at home.  I didn’t pick up much in the first few months.  It was hard to tell if I was finding the right sounds.  I told my OBGYN that I had one and she told me to bring it to my next appointment and she’d show me how to use it and what all of the sounds were.   Around 18 weeks I was able to find the heartbeat almost every single time.  I used the doppler at least once a day, sometimes more than once a day.

As the pregnancy started progressing, my anxiety got worse.  

I couldn’t help but think that something was wrong and this pregnancy would end the same as the last.  It did not matter how many times my appointments reassured me, how many times people said it would be okay, or how many times I heard the heart beat.  None of this helped my anxiety at all.

Because of my age and previous loss, I had the blood test done to check for problems and find out the gender.  

I got a sealed envelope and took it to the store.  I asked the baker to make a cake with blue or pink icing on the inside, depending on what the paper said inside the envelope.

We had a gender reveal party and also celebrated my birthday at the same time.  When it was time to cut in the cake, I became so eager.  I had felt the whole time that it was a girl.  My husband and I cut in to the cake together and saw blue icing.  I was thrilled, but then immediately starting crying because I couldn’t help but think that I would lose this baby like I did Jay.  

This was a time when I was supposed to be happy and excited that I was having a boy, but the loss of Jay stole all of that from me.  Once you’ve had a loss, nothing in life is the same.  Your perspective changes, or at least mine did, because I now knew that loss was “normal” no matter what trimester you are in.

This pregnancy was great physically.  I had no problems or complications.  Every single appointment went well.  All of my blood-work came back great.  None of this every eased my anxiety, because all of my appointments with Jay were fine and my blood work was always great.  

This pregnancy had me in an emotioanl wreck.  I was worried EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.  I couldn’t get my mind off of something going wrong.  

How do you find reassurance, when you never knew why you lost a child?

Around 19 weeks, as I got closer to when I lost Jay at 24 weeks, I was having lots of trouble emotionally.  I called my doctor one weekend and she met me at her office to do a sonogram.  Everything looked great and she tried to ease my worry.  It helped, but only in the moment.

As each week passed, I could feel more and more tension building.  You would think as I got past the 24 week mark, when I lost Jay, that I would be fine.  This was not the case.  Since joining the loss community, I learned that loss can happen at anytime.

When we started talking about a name, we knew we still wanted a J name.  We went through many names and had trouble coming up with one.  We both kept going back to Joshua.  It’s such a strong, biblical name.  The only problem was that we needed to talk to my husband’s aunt and uncle about this.  Joshua was their son who died in a car accident in his early 20’s.  We wanted to honor him by naming our son Joshua.  They were thrilled and loved the idea.  Joshua would become our rainbow baby.