In this season of Thanksgiving, I felt it was finally time to share the story of my greatest blessing this year. I have thought long and hard about whether or not I should share this story with the masses, but for some reason, fairly early on in my pregnancy, I felt strongly it needed to be shared. This is a very tender and personal story and I hope you as the reader will treat it as such and that perhaps it is just what one of you may need to hear. This is a story of miracles and a story of God’s awareness of each of us. It’s a story of the power He and His Son have to heal and make right the things that seem to go wrong in this journey we call mortality in ways we can't explain. It is proof that God still talks to men and women today and that He is in the smallest of details and loves us more than we can imagine. It’s a story of hope – and we could all use a bit more of that in our lives.
When we finally made it to florida we got an added blessing of seeing the shuttle take off.
Truly AMAZING!!!!
As we slogged through hours and
hours and miles and miles of training, the time to conceive my November baby
approached. I did the math. A February conception would mean I'd be 10 weeks
pregnant for the marathon. I was OK with that. I wasn't afraid to be running a
marathon pregnant. I certainly wouldn't be the first to ever do it.
Getting pregnant has never been an
issue for me. It took as I expected, the projected due date - Thanksgiving Day
2011. I soldiered on with my training. The nausea and mood swings were actually
better on training days. My faithful friends stuck with me.
I didn't even bother to make a
doctor's appointment until the week of the marathon. I've learned there's
little they do for you that early on anyway. I also didn't want him to tell me
to stop running. We were past that point now. I was doing the marathon no
matter what.
It should be known that I adore my
OB/GYN. He is not everyone’s cup of tea, but he's exactly what I need. Never
too fussy or over protective, very matter of fact with a dry sense of humor, he
acts like NOTHING is a big deal. So cool and calm that I have stated to Greg on
more then one occasion, "If Dr. M ever gets nervous, then I'm going to be
really nervous!" The doctor you want when everything hits the fan, so to
speak. Exactly what hormone raging women need.
In my appointment he was his chatty
self as he examined my uterus and performed the lovely pap smear. Towards the
end he whipped out the Doppler to let me hear the rapid whoosh whoosh of the
life growing within. He couldn't find it. Unalarmed, he got the ultrasound
machine. The minute the baby popped into view I knew.
I knew there would be no
Thanksgiving baby that year.
**************************************
I was schooled in the college of
Veterinary Technology at Brigham Young University. That training found me in
numerous situations which could have been unsettling for someone as naive as I
- at least in the world's eyes when it comes to sex and reproduction. One
learns pretty quickly the fragility of the creation process when knee high in
manure with your arm up a cow feeling through her rectum for her uterus or when
holding a 25+ pound AV (artificial vagina) 6 inches from a 1000 pound stallion
called Diablo to make sure his genes are passed onto 100's of offspring. My
innocence flew out a barn door very fast, but flying back in came a deep
respect and wonder that life even exists at all. So much can go wrong. So much
has to happen "just so.” Life is a miracle, a true miracle.
With this healthy understanding of
the life cycle I took the loss surprisingly well. I chalked it up to odds and
ran the marathon 3 days later.
Our original plan had been to go to
Nashville, have me run the marathon and then continue onto Florida for a family
vacation. With the uncertain timing of miscarriage we postponed Florida for 2
weeks and retuned home to see what my body would do. Nothing. Nothing happened
and so I scheduled a D&C a few days before our new departure date.
The last time I'd undergone anesthesia
I was 16 and had 4 wisdom teeth pulled. I was a bit nervous. I remember looking
at the clock as I entered the surgery room - 7:05am. The next thing I remember
is waking up in a different room and looking at the clock to see it read a
little after 7:30am. I was out the door by 8am and home before Ellie even got
on the bus. I'd recommend it to anyone.
I kept the miscarriage on the down low.
My running friends were about the only ones who knew. I was still
too fragile from the previous spring to tell many others. I knew reactions
would be less than I hoped so if I didn’t say anything I would have no
expectations. Until you've had a miscarriage you don't understand what it's
like. There is a great sense of loss. Feelings of inadequacy creep in and
questions of why always cross your mind. Overall I took it pretty
well. I had one hard day and then I picked myself up and moved on.
We would try again in a few months.
As months distanced me from my
miscarriage and we approached the next November the voice of the previous year
echoed in my mind. But I didn’t want an
August baby!!! My two previous births
had produced winter baby boys and I loved it.
I found myself negotiating again.
It wasn’t quite the negotiations of
before, I did pray and felt that a January 2013 baby would be great. It would also give me another 6 months to
regroup and get my head and body where I wanted them to be. As before, conceiving was not a problem and I
was set with a new due date of sometime in January 2013. Perfect!!
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