Happy.

I have been thinking lately. Scary, I know. And one thing that I have noticed is I am very happy and very content. Don't take this post the wrong way I so very much so would like to have another baby. Cole and I both would love to add another child to our family, but at the same time I think it's good to realize that we are still happy.

I think so often these days it's easy to get caught up in the whirl wind of "things" making you happy. If I have another baby then I'll be happy. If I lose 20lbs then I'll be happy. If I get that promotion then I'll be happy. If I get X then that equals happy. Nothing can make you happy if you are not already content. When I think of the happiness we will feel when we finally get to bring a new baby into this family it fills me with so much hope and happiness. I could almost cry at the thought of what that will feel like. It makes me that happy to think about. Yet at the same time I am enjoying my time and my life as it is in this moment. This has really been shown to me a few different times over the past few weeks and I am very grateful for these moments. I need these moments. I need to write about them so if we have another loss I can go back and read this and be reminded that things are good. A few of my older positive posts really helped me through my most recent loss.

This morning Eislynn didn't get up until almost 8 (amazing). She came in to our room and got into bed with Cole and I. We all cuddled as a family and I was wondrously overjoyed and happy. Eislynn asked if we could get up and have breakfast and I told her I needed one more minute to lay there and be happy with my lovely little family. It didn't feel as though something, someone was missing. We were just happy.

I am so grateful that I have a been able to have a decent handle on my emotions and feelings about my losses. This doesn't mean I haven't had some very low lows. I most certainly have. Dark moments, feelings of inadequacy, hate for people that have kids and don't appreciate it, and a few good meltdowns in between.

Something that I know so many women struggle with is seeing babies that were born around the time their's would have been. This is a very legitimate feeling, very real , very raw. One that I would have expected myself to have. However, somehow this feeling has escaped me. A friend came over with her baby that was due the same week in April that I was. He is perfect and tiny and a little miracle. I was surprised that I didn't feel sorrow when I held him. In fact, and again don't get me wrong,  I was sort of glad that I got to hand him back! Knowing my daughter would brush her own teeth and use the potty and go to sleep through the night, while they were going home to a much different situation! Of course when my time comes I will be thankful for those sleepless nights, those horrific blowouts, cranky baby, teething, all the bad that comes with the good. I had to ponder this feeling. Why was I totally unscathed by this? Why doesn't this pull at my heart like I know it does to so many others? I couldn't really come up with an answer other than I just KNOW I will have another baby someday and when that day comes I will be overcome with joy. I will elate in what God has given me. Until then I am very grateful that I have been able to live in the here and now and appreciate what He has already given. Right now I have an amazingly wonderful smart hilarious little daughter, a wonderful husband, great family and friends, comfortable house, and so many other countless blessings. Right now I am thankful and I am happy.

What I am trying to get at is there is nothing that will make you happy unless you are happy with yourself.

I feel like no one can be as happy as a child though! Such unflinching faith, love and joy.

Grown up.

Eislynn is very into talking about what she will do when she is bigger. But as she says "not super super big, just regular big" Right now she is a "tiny big" She is always asking Cole and I what we will be someday when we are grown up too. The other week she was asking Cole if he wanted to be a fire fighter when he grows up. I said well daddy is grown up and he's an engineer. This sort of annoyed her and she said "NOOO you have to do something that you want to do. Maybe like a fire fighter or a bus driver"

Today she asked me what I want to be when I grow up. Again I said I am grown up and I would like to be a mommy. She said "Well that's just regular maybe you want to be ummm like a cowboy? Do you have a rope and a hat? We should get you one so maybe you can be a cowboy" In that moment I couldn't have been happier to be a regular mom :)


Edit 6/3/2012

Today Eislynn would like to be a doctor. Mostly because that's what Daisy is on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse today. Anyways, she told me she wants to be a doctor when she grows up and would like me to be her first patient! Pretty sure she has already helped me heal and grow.

Words

Something I have learned through this whole thing is that words hurt. I have become much more aware of what I say and how I say it.

I do not see a pregnant lady and want to cry or hate her out of jealousy. I do not see a newborn baby and cringe with the sadness of what I do not have. Friday was a really hard day for me. That night we went to the park and there was a lady there with a little baby boy. I said to Cole "aww, I want one" but not necessarily out of sadness or longing anymore that any other women who has "baby fever" and wants a baby. Even on that hardest day seeing a newborn didn't send me into a downward spiral of emotions. No, the thing that gets me is words.

For instance, last week at tumbling class all the moms were talking about babies as they always do because of the 5 of us 3 are pregnant! The non-pregnant lady was saying how she was on bed rest for 6 months with her youngest daughter "it was just the worst thing ever, I would never want to do it again" REALLY? Was it really the worst thing ever? You have one gorgeous little girl there and she looks as healthy as the next kid even though you had to go through some tough times to get her. For me summer time is "the worst" time to be in the rpl club because every pregnant lady is talking about how awful it is to be pregnant. Like every last one of them. "it's just the worst to be so pregnant in the summer" Is it? Is that the worst thing you can think of? For real? THE worst?

Now I am most certainly not saying MY situation is the worst. Not at all. Much like the other peoples situation it just quite frankly sucks. It's no fun, it sucks, no fair, crappy, awful, but not the WORST. I am still sane though. I know these people are not trying to be literal. As a woman who has been pregnant in the summer I will totally admit there was one day I even cried it was so hot! I will never forget it! It was 102 plus ridiculous humidity. My hormones and the heat got the best of me and I cried! So yes, it's no fun and I get that. However, I actually think the summer is a good time to be pregnant but that's a totally different discussion and topic.

Anyways, the point I am getting at is I would now never ask a couple who has been married for a while "When are you guys finally going to have kids?" because that "light-hearted" comment might stab them like a knife. That is a question I have heard people say 100 times and it never struck me as an awful thing to ask someone until this all happened to me. I have been pretty open about my struggles but I know alot of people on the babycenter board have said that they don't even tell their close family. One common theme with RPL is that you are very alone in it even though it is not uncommon. Words hurt. I don't want people to dance around me with their words. I don't want people to feel like they can't talk about their lives, their problems, their issues. Because everyone has their own experiences and everyone has their level of pain in their lives. For that lady who was on bed rest that probably was the worst thing she has had to endure and that is too bad I can't imagine having to do that especially since she had older kids to worry about as well. It's just that saying something was the worst thing ever when your end result was a human life is rather insensitive.

I am reading a book called "Coming to Term" by Jon Cohen. Pretty much every lady on the rpl board suggests reading it so I finally bought it. It was only 3.99 on Amazon. In it he talks about how that is the first lesson he learned about rpl is that your good news is not necessarily someone elses and words can hurt. He and his wife had one very easy successful pregnancy. He boasted at work "I just have to look at her and she's pregnant" he recalls how a women left the room after he said that but he didn't think anything of it. Later after he and his wife struggled to have a 2nd child he found out that woman was having fertility problems and his words hurt her even though he was not trying to nor thinking he was hurting anyone.

dammit, damn it

However you spell it, dammit anyways.

Well that was short lived. Met with a new RE on Tuesday. Felt pretty hopeful we really liked him. Definitely liked him more than our current one. Before I left his office he had a nurse do a hcg blood draw on me. She said she would call if there were any concerns otherwise they would see me next Tuesday for an US. Well...at 4:30 yesterday I missed a call from them. I immediately sort of panicked because they were closed but called back at 4:35 and they were still there. She told me my hcg had dropped to 74. It should be closer to 1000 or at a minimum of 300 and def not drop. It had been 164 last week. So that means I will lose this pregnancy too. So maybe I'll get em next time? Lucky number 7? Right?

I got off the phone with the lady and felt like someone had punched me. I didn't know what to do. Eislynn was playing in the bath tub happy as can be but my head was spinning. I knew this was a very real possibility but really can't a girl catch a break around here? I have been doing everything and then some to keep this pregnancy so I just felt hopeless to hear nothing is working! We will have to wait now until December to try again because I most certainly want to be able to go home from my brothers wedding!! So i don't want to be due March-Julyish for traveling purposes. Oh well. I plan to get a personal trainer again and maybe get the rest of this weight off I guess. We will see what the next month or so brings me. I hope my body lets this pregnancy go and I don't have to have surgery. Ugh. Seriously. I realize some people may think that being less than 6 weeks pregnant wouldn't be that devastating to lose. They are wrong. You are in love and full of hopes and dreams from the moment you see that double line on a pregnancy test. It doesn't matter if it's the 4th time you have been pregnant in a year or not. That hope is still there and then crushed. I could already imagine what Eislynn would be like as a big sister at almost 3 1/2. Already picturing what it would be like to hold both my babies and revel in the miracle of life. No matter how many you lose you always have hope that the next one will be the one. A person's a person no matter how small....yep we aren't watching Horton Hears a Who this week :)

This song came to mind immediately.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMRXXBGotnw

the beginning

For most women the first few weeks of pregnancy is a fun blissful time. They get to think of how they will tell their family. Will they come up with something cute and clever? Wait for the right moment? I know this because even after 2 miscarriages I still had hopes of doing this. I had it all planned out. Then came my 3rd miscarriage.

This time around I have already told a handful of people because I am hoping the extra prayers will help us out. They might. For me the first week of pregnancy will include 22 needles. 22 in one week. I will have 7 shots of lovenox, 2 betas drawn, 1 two hour IV of intralipids, 12 needles at acupuncture. My arm is pretty gross looking already! Yesterdays intralipid appointment was kind of brutal on my arm. They couldn't get the IV to drip quite right and did alot of pushing and maneuvering. If this pregnancy works out I am definitely not going to give the credit to the intralipids however at this point I will try just about anything. So here I am in my tiny little cubby at the hospital. For some reason there is no cell reception or internet access in this little hole of a room.

 When I was younger I never imagined that this is what it would be like to have a baby. Yet I know I do have it easier than some people. The clinic I go to is usually pretty empty but this week they are "in cycle" meaning they are doing alot of IVF this week. So there were alot of couples there when I was there. It was kind of sad. If you go to the OB or any other doctor you don't know why everyone is in the waiting room or what they were being told in that finance room off to the right. At the fertility clinic we are all there for the same reason. We all want desperately to bring a new life into this world and we haven't been able to do that on our own.

Round 6..here we go.

I feel like I have learned a new language. One no one wants to speak. No one wants to know and understand but sadly many people do. It's the language on message boards for women with RPL (repeat pregnancy loss). When I first thought about writing this post I realized a lot of people wouldn't even understand what I was talking about. There is so much lingo, abbreviations, medical terms that it's just ridiculous. I used to have to pause and think about what the ladies on these boards were talking about and now I type the same things without even thinking about it! I will try not to use those abbreviations at least because seriously it's confusing :)

First off I got a positive pregnancy test today. This is the start of my 6th pregnancy. Six, seriously, I am 26 years old and this is the 6th time I have been pregnant. What a lot of people don't realize is that means I have had to have all the pregnancy hormones that go along with each of those pregnancies plus a ridiculous amount of pain both physically and emotionally. I guess what I am trying to say is never say to a women suffering from RPL "Well at least you know you can get pregnant". That is a pet peeve of many rplers and they won't feel very comforted. Trust me.

I have so much hope for this pregnancy. So much is different. Timing for one. I think the timing of this pregnancy will prove to be much better than the others. I am going to acupuncture twice weekly. I am taking baby asprin and I finally got prescribed the steroid I had been hoping to get. Most of all I am so much more positive feeling this time. Of course I want to be guarded. The last couple pregnancies I tried to be reserved with my emotions. I didn't really "Think" I would have a baby. I thought I would have another loss..and I did. This time I am putting my faith in a lot of hope and prayer. Good thoughts from friends, good vibes, prayers, whatever it takes. Plus, I have an extra angel on my side this time.

This baby will be my rainbow baby much like Eislynn was my first rainbow baby after our first loss.

Rainbow baby (as explained by a member of babycenter.com)
"Rainbow Babies" are the understanding that the beauty of a rainbow does not negate the ravages of the storm. When a rainbow appears, it does not mean that the storm never happened or that the family is not still dealing with its aftermath. What it means is that something beautiful and full of light has appeared in the midst of the darkness and the clouds. Storm clouds may still loom over but the rainbow provides a counterbalance of color, energy, and much needed hope.

silly

Ok last post was a bit depressing so I need to say a few silly things about my little lady.

The other day we were at the Rock Bottom Brewery with her grandma Rita Ann and great aunt Mariann. E was saying "Woo Hoo, woo hoo" she then said "You know why I am saying woo hoo? It's because my lemonade is so good, woo hoo woo hoo"

Today she and I went to Menards. When I would ask her to do something she would say "Whatever" I realized it wasn't to be snotty though. So I said to her "Eislynn, do you realize that it's not nice to say "whatever" like that and it's kind of rude to say that to people?" She said "Oh, I thought it was nice to say" (innocent look on her face) Me: "no, it's rude to say that to people when they ask you to do something" Her: "Oh, ok mommy I sorry" Later in the day I was shampooing the carpet in the living room and asked her to stay out for a few minutes. She said "Yeah, whatever"..thought about it for a second and said "Oh yeah that's rude to say whatever I sorry mommy I sorry, that's rude to say whatever I won't say it to you anymore"

The other day in Colorado she was SO excited because we told her her godmother was coming to Mariann's house. She was just giddy! Any noise she heard she would run to the door and scream  "My godmother is here my godmother is here" She couldn't wait to see if she had wings and ask her if she could do any magic. Finally her godmother arrived! She absolutely FLEW to the door. She jumped off a bench and just ran screaming "MY GODMOTHER IS HERE MY GODMOTHER IS HERE" She stopped when she saw Laura and said "Hi" The rest of the weekend she was quite happy to be around her godmother haha. It was fun.