The Wrong 1%

I've never really considered myself to be the "lucky" one when it came to slim odds...The one who wins to raffle drawing, the one who wins the lottery (well, at least a few dollars from it!), the one who wins the race. You get my point. 

On November 26th, I defied the odds and fell into the 1%. Unfortunately, this time it was 99% I wanted to be a part of.

Let me back up a few months and explain myself. My husband, Eric, and I always knew we wanted a family sooner rather than later. As everyone tells you, there is no "right time" for this to happen, although there are some times that may be better than others. I am a full time working woman and am also enrolled in a program to get my Masters in Occupational Therapy. This program is certainly no joke! It is 10-12 credits a semester and eats up basically every free minute that I have outside of work. 

So you must be thinking, "well, now certainly doesn't sound like a good time to start a family. You're too busy!" Exactly, thats what we were kind of thinking too.....UNTIL we did some calculations in our head regarding timing, finances, and some other odds and ends and decided that NOW would be a perfectly fine time. The plan was to get pregnant in the Fall of 2012, so that we would deliver in July 2013. That would leave me with exactly 3 months off school and work before starting my 6 months of clinical fieldwork for my grad school program. 

If you don't really know me, the one thing you should know about me is that I am a PLANNER! I plan anything and everything down to the minute. If there is no plan in place, I go nuts!

Fast forward to October 24th, 2012. It was about a day before my period should have arrived, so I figured "what the heck, I'll take a HPT (home pregnancy test)." Obviously the planner in me had purchased a box of HPTs last week. 

What is that I see? 2 lines?! No, I don't really believe this. We had only been trying for a month, we can't possibly be that lucky!

Wow! And so I was pregnant.... 3 HPTs and 1 panel of blood work later, it was official, I WAS PREGNANT! Morning sickness (well, all day sickness) arrived quickly, along with a handful of other symptoms. Overall though, I felt pretty good. Eric and I asked each other daily "Is there really a baby in there?" We talked to Deuce (our cat) about the baby and he said he was very excited to be a big brother. We kept this news quiet (other than to some immediate family members), as we knew anything could happen during the first trimester.

On Friday November 9th (about 6w2d) I woke up and immediately said to Eric "I don't feel pregnant anymore. I feel like I am completely back to my old self." (On a side note- I am VERY, VERY in tune with my body- almost to a fault! I noticed every little change). After numerous conversations with my TB (the bump.com) friends and a call into my doctor's office, I was told there is nothing to worry about and these "lack of symptoms" were probably just my body adjusting to the hormones. I wasn't really buying all of that advice, but what could I really do since my first u/s (ultrasound) wasn't scheduled until November 26th??

November 26th (just about the 9 week mark of my pregnancy) rolled around and Eric and I headed to the OBGYN office. I wasn't excited, only nervous. All my other TB friends seemed so excited for their 1st u/s appointments, but something inside me just wasn't. In hindsight, my lack of excitement came from my intuition.

Dr. D greeted us at the appointment, asked a few questions, and got set for the (internal) u/s. The look on Dr. D's face confirmed our biggest fear and my intuition. The baby's heartbeat could not be found and it appeared that growth stopped around 6 weeks. Dr. D was extremely compassionate and reassuring that nothing that I did caused this. We were left with 3 options:
1) Wait for my body to naturally miscarry (since I had no previous spotting or cramping)
2) Be given a medication to induce my body to start miscarrying on its own
3) Schedule a D&E (sometimes called D&C) procedure (here is a link to what that is http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancycomplications/dandc.html )

We chose option 3. We felt that options 1 and 2 left us in the "unknown." We didn't want to sit around and wait for things to start happening. On November 28th I headed into Lankenau Hospital for the procedure, which was physically quick and painless. I was sent home that afternoon, surrounded by Eric, my mom and my brother and ate cookie dough and sushi as a way to cope since these were both things that I could not enjoy during pregnancy!

Statistically, 1 in 4 pregnancies will end in loss. It is something that is rarely talked about and certainly something I didn't think was going to happen to me. But it did.

So why is this post called "The wrong 1%"?

The type of miscarriage I had is called a Missed Miscarriage (mm/c). A mm/c occurs when the fetus has died, but your body has not tried to have it exit the body. As a result, the placenta still continues to release hormones, so the woman may continue to experience signs of pregnancy. It is unknown why this occurs. Signs of this are a loss of pregnancy symptoms and the absence of a fetal heartbeat on an ultrasound. 

Approximately 1% of pregnancies result in a Missed Miscarriage. I was the 1%.