Miscarriage

I just had a bad feeling. Of course, I had a bad feeling about our flights to/from Ireland as well, so I'm not so big on trusting my intuition these days. But a bad feeling.

I step on the scale and am super excited to see that I have gained just 0.8lbs -- and over the holidays, too. Now they can't lecture me! I go pee in a cup and head to Exam Room 7. My BP is 134/82. I think it's high because I'm nervous but the nurse doesn't even comment. Today I'm seeing a new NP (new meaning I haven't met her), Amanda,  and she asks how I'm doing. I launch into a monologue about how I'm feeling anxious and what if, worst-case scenario, I die and the baby dies and Patrick grows up without a mother... Of course, in my head I have gone down to fifth-worst-case scenario. I am nothing if not thorough.

I win a prescription for Zoloft. A "baby" dose. I also get a lecture on how I need to exercise more. Sigh. It appears the lecture portion of the appointment is unavoidable.

Today's exam is the physical exam, but I got the lower half of it out of the way last time. So I just have to disrobe from the waist up. She checks out the boobs and is about to leave, actually, when she says, "Oh! The heartbeat!" Pulls out the doppler. Nothing. All over the belly. Nothing.

"It's harder to find if I haven't done the physical exam," she says, "because I don't know exactly where your uterus is."

"You can feel my uterus, if that'll help," I say.

After some more "hunting and pecking" we proceed to uterus feeling. ("Your cervix is WAY UP THERE, girl!") She determines it is midline. She gets the doppler back out. Nothing. "The doppler is picking up a heart rate in the 140s," she says, "but sometimes the blood flow in the mom is so loud that we can't hear it. All I can hear is your aorta."

Off to the ultrasound room we go. "I don't have a bad feeling about this," says Amanda. "I do," I say, after she walks out. I have to pee but I don't go.

When Dave, the ultrasound guy, starts looking around, I can tell there's no heartbeat. But he's looking on the right side of my stomach (npt the "midline"), so I can't be 100 percent exactly sure what he's looking at. There's a lot of stuff in there, after all. He keeps looking around. He measures the blob. I see him type "CRL ... 8w6d." It should be 14w1d. Finally he says, "I'm having trouble finding the heart tones. I'm just going to get another pair of eyes."

I know what that means. Another person I've never met comes in. Her name is Georgina. She takes one look at the screen and she knows. "Did you do a crown-rump length?" she asks.

"The first time was 9 weeks and the second time was 8w6d," says Dave.

Georgina tells me what I already know. She is kind about it. I am crying. She leaves, and Dave looks at my ovaries.

He says, "Was this planned or unplanned?" I tell him it was planned. Well," he says, "sometimes if it's unplanned this can be a blessing." Uh huh. He leads me back to an exam room. I have a different one this time. Amanda comes back and says, "I didn't expect this at all. Although I did think your uterus was a little bit small." She says all the right things. It's not my fault. It happens; in fact, it happens 25 percent of the time in the first trimester. She goes over my options. I have actually thought about these options before, because I am an obsessive worrier AND an obsessive googler. I opt to try to let nature take its course, at least for now.

"How long will it take?" I ask.

"Usually it can take up to a month after fetal demise," she says.

"But if the baby stopped growing at 9 weeks and I'm supposed to be 14 weeks and 1 day..."

"It will happen," she says. She tells me to come back next week. She says she thinks I should still get the prescription for Zoloft. She says she thinks I should skip the baby shower I'm supposed to attend tomorrow.

I leave.