Now that we are where we are, I feel like I can go back and post some of the entries I typed up while we were in the wait-and-see period. Here's the first one (6 weeks along):
We had been here before. Almost a year ago. In the exam room, waiting for our first ultra sound. The stick I peed on said the IUI was successful. The bloodwork had said the IUI was successful. Our first successful fertility treatment in almost three years. We walked into that six-week ultrasound not knowing what to expect. What to see. What to feel. I laid there on the table with Zac sitting next to me, idling chit-chatting, waiting for the doctor.
A resident, whom we had never met, breezed in the room, cheery, smiling. She introduced herself as she pulled on a pair of gloves and told us excitedly, "We should be able to hear a heartbeat today!" Zac and I exchanged looks. We hadn't expected that. We hadn't known what to expect, honestly, but certainly not that. I had purposefully stayed away from reading pregnancy guides or researching things on the internet. I had let the first few weeks after the IUI to move along in a normal manner, not wanting to over-think the idea of being pregnant. I figured I would wait until the first ultrasound to get some sort of confirmation that I should perhaps learn a little more about being with child.
The doctor prepped the machine and started the exam. Within seconds her face fell. The smile vanished and was replaced by a look of concern and disappointment. Zac instinctively reached out for my hand, which made me catch my breath. We knew. Even though we had no idea what that first ultrasound was supposed to show, we knew she wasn't seeing it. The doctor moved the probe around some, trying different angles. She said nothing and after a moment gave us a resigned look of sadness. "There's no heartbeat," she said. "I am going to go get your doctor."
The resident and the medical assistant left the room. Zac and I didn't say anything at first. Finally I mumbled something about not realizing that we would have been able to hear a heartbeat at this appointment. Zac said that he, too, was surprised that we should have been able to hear that. "Well, I guess it didn't work," I said with a sigh. I didn't know how to feel. We had zero expectations walking through the door, we had our expectations raised by the announcement that should hear a heartbeat, and now in a manner of seconds they had come crashing down around us. It was the shortest, most devastating roller-coaster of emotions I have ever had.
There was a knock at the door and my doctor, the resident and the medical assistant returned to the room. He gave me a sad smile and patted my knee. He also examined me, to confirm what the resident had learned. "I'm sorry," he said, "but it looks like the pregnancy wasn't viable. You made it about five and a half weeks." "Ok," I said automatically, "So now what?" The doctor said we could discuss the next steps in his office. As they somberly excused themselves from the room so I could get dressed, I sat up and Zac stood next to me. We were silent for a moment. Finally I looked at him. "Are you okay" I asked him. For the first time I noticed the redness of his face, the welling in is eyes. "I'm fine," he answered. "What about you?" I paused, and the tears came and fell down my face as I smiled at him. "I'm about as fine as you are." He squeezed my hand. We would be fine, but for now we were sad. So very sad.
- - - - -
So we had been here before. The six week appointment. The appointment that we now knew held the potential of a heartbeat. I was anxious. Zac was anxious. We forced ourselves to talk about anything other than pregnancy as we sat in the waiting room for our appointment. Finally our name was called. Our medical assistant was excited for us, peppering me with questions. "How have you been feeling? Any morning sickness yet?" I gave her a half-hearted smile and short answers. "I feel almost normal and no, I haven't had any morning sickness." I must have made it clear that I wasn't interested in talking more about my condition because she replied with an surprised, "Oh," and left it as that the remainder of the walk to the exam room. Yes, I'm pregnant, I thought to myself, but I've been here before. It doesn't always work out.
Another resident we had never seen came in to the room. Same routine - introduction while putting on gloves and prepping the ultrasound machine. Medical assistant at the ready. Zac by my side.
I knew what I was seeing before anyone needed to explain it to me. A flickering. A rapid flickering on a tiny jelly bean in my abdomen. A heartbeat. I said nothing, but I knew that at least we had cleared one more hurdle. The resident smiled, "There's a heartbeat!" He turned on the audio and let us hear the pulsating heart of the embryo. He continued the exam, printing out photos and explaining some of the things we saw on the screen. Zac and I murmured appropriate, "Cool" or "Oh" as he explained what we were looking at, but our excitement was subdued, which I think confused the resident a bit.
My doctor joined the exam and happily confirmed that everything looked good. "So now what?" I asked. "So it looks like you're having a baby!" the resident proclaimed, trying to pry some positive energy out of Zac and me. "I'll be excited in nine months when we have a healthy, live birth," I told him wryly. My doctor shook his head and smiled. Knowing my personality from our history of treatments, and the miscarriage, he knew that I wasn't going to be jumping for joy at the pronouncement that I was pregnant. He knew I was cautious, maybe overly so, and at the very least pragmatic. The risk of spontaneous abortion continues through the first trimester. My age meant that we still needed to do genetic testing. There were possibilities that we still weren't going to have a baby. But my doctor smiled at me broadly and patted my knee. "I'm giving you medical permission to be cautiously optimistic." That did it. I had to smile and chuckle. "Alright," I told him, "since it's doctor's orders."
- - - -
So there we were, walking out of the hospital almost a year after the miscarriage, but this time with a printout of a picture of a tiny jelly bean. We had more hurdles to clear, but the first one was over. In two weeks we would have another one. The eight-week ultrasound. If everything looked good I "graduated" from the infertility clinic to the regular obstetrics clinic. Then there would be a ten-week ultrasound. And genetic testing. And then, based on those results, decisions. So many hurdles yet to clear. But, on doctor's orders, I was trying to be cautiously optimistic. After all, doctor's orders, right?
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