Trials Only Make Us Stronger

For those of you who didn't know, I was pregnant and recently experienced a miscarriage in late February. I went in for my 12 week appointment. The doctor told me, "This is going to be the most fun and quick appointment of your whole pregnancy!" Little did I know, how wrong he was. As he set the doppler on my stomach he commented on how strong and loud my placenta was, he said that was a really good sign. The first time I heard a heartbeat, my heart dropped but then he told me that it was my heartbeat, not the baby's'. After a few minutes of searching for our baby's heartbeat, he told me that sometimes the baby is just in the back and it is hard to hear. He said, "I am going to send you over to the ultrasound tech just to make you feel more at ease, but I feel that everything is okay and the placenta is really strong, so that is a good sign. No worries". So Justin and I head over to the Ultrasound tech laughing and joking with not much to worry about, right? So I laid on the table, the lady got all of our information and put the wond on my belly. All I saw was a big empty space. Justin asked the lady, "Is that dark spot her overy?" I could tell something was wrong with how she told him, "um, lets focus on this right now." My heart dropped. Where was my baby? She started measuring everything...She said, "well your uterus and placenta are measuring 12 weeks but as you can see, the baby isn't viable. You should see a big body, head and heart beat, but you can't." I immediately started crying. "This can't be happening." I looked over at Justin and then back up at the screen. She said that the baby was about 8 week size and that is probably when it passed away. She gave Justin and I a second and then walked us over to meet with the doctor in his office. The whole way there and sitting in his office, I saw pregnant women all around me and hear women talking about their pregnancies and about their birth, ect. I just wanted to get out, go home and cry. It was surreal. It felt like I was having an out of body experience just going over and over through my head...." I am still having morning sickness, having mood swings, getting heart burn, and starting to show. This was our baby..." The doctor sat us down and spoke with us basically trying to make us feel better, and to tell us our options. Because I was almost out of my first trimester, he felt like a D& C would be best ( surgery to get the baby out), but the cost is more than a regular delivery and it was pretty invasive, the other two choices were to take some medication to start contractions to get the baby out, so you can control it a bit more and the third option was to just let it come naturally but the bad thing with that is it could take weeks and my baby had already been gone for a month now. I could not stand the thought of my deceased baby staying in me any longer than it had been. I wanted it out, so we decided on the medication. So, I went home, went straight to my bed, and cried. Justin tried to comfort me but I was too gone. After a few minutes Justin had to go to class, so I headed over to my sister's house to confide in her. After a while in confiding in her and talking with my mom on the phone, I went home because I was exhausted. I cried and cried, till I fell asleep. Justin had to work after school, so he came home before work and gave me a blessing. It is such a blessing to have the priesthood in our home, where I can ask my husband for a blessing at any moment. I could tell it was hard for Justin to get all the words out, he started to get emotional but he stayed strong and gave me the blessing I needed to hear. After comforting me for a while, he had to leave for work. This was Justin's busiest week, so he felt really bad that he was at school and work most of the day. The next day, we had to give the doctor our decision so I called him up and we set an appointment for the next day to get started. Tuesday I stayed home to cry, sleep, ect. I needed time to just cry. Wednesday morning, Justin and I headed to the doctor's office. As I was sitting there, I kept avoiding pictures of babies on the wall, pregnant ladies walking around me and the puppy eyes I was getting from the nurses. The first step to this was the doctor was going to put a stick of seaweed in my cervix to take the liquid out of my cervix which would cause the seaweed to swell and help me start to dilate. As he put it in, I was having doubts if I could do this. I feel like I have a pretty high pain tolerance, but this was no fun. Justin wanted to watch, which made me feel more comforted that he knew what was going on and I felt "protected". When the doctor was done, he explained to us that we will come back in 24 hours and get it taken out, then he will give us the medication to start the contractions. He told us that if I started bleeding I could take it out and put it in a baggy. (to make sure it isn't stuck up in my uterus if they couldn't find it). When I went home from the appointment, I felt uncomfortable, but it was nothing I hadn't felt before. Throughout the day I could feel my cervix getting bigger but it wasn't a big deal. At about 6 pm Justin got home from school and my pains started turning into contractions and I was getting them about every two minutes. When I have periods, I get horribly bad cramps so I am used to pain, (I am allergic to most main meds, so I cant take anything) and I just breathed through them and it was fine. Before we went to bed I mentioned to Justin, "I have a bad feeling I am not going to get much sleep tonight." Throughout the night I was getting contractions and just breathed through them. The doctor gave us some pain meds that I would probably be able to take, but I wasn't going to take those unless I was dying..I didn't want to take the chance. Justin would wake up about every hour, and of course, I was up breathing through the pain. At about 4 am, I couldn't take the pain anymore. By this time the contractions lasted about 30 seconds and there were only about 5 seconds in between them. I thought my pelvis and uterus was going to explode. Justin woke up probably because of my moaning and whimpering and tried massaging my back to make me feel better but it wasn't helping. I told Justin I felt like I was going to actually die. I asked Justin to give me another Blessing, in which he did. A couple contractions later, I felt something so I had Justin check to see if I was bleeding and I was. Two more contractions later, my water broke. I was in shock. I didn't even know that you had a 'water' this early, nor that it broke when you had a miscarriage this far along. Although in shock, It felt better as if the water braking had let some pressure go. Justin walked me to the the tub. (It's going to start getting gruisome, so if you get grossed out easy, don't read the next few paragraphs.) I knelt in the tub and Justin took the seaweed stick and gause out and placed them in a baggy. Blood and clots started to pour out of me. I was in the bath for about three hours. in that time Justin stayed by my side while I threw up twice and about passed out a couple times fed me cheese, and water and put washcloths on my face. I tried taking the pain meds the doctor gave us but I kept throwing it up, so finally at about 7 am, I was able to keep it down. When I felt a little better, I got out of the pure blood red water, Justin washed me off, put my clothes on and set me in bed. I just laid there, praying and hoping that the medicine would work and that I wouldn't have an allergic reaction to the pain meds. Prayers work, let me tell you! I have not taken any medication in about 7 years. I started getting reactions in high school so the just told me to stop taking them because it could kill me. So I did. As the pain subsided, I fell asleep and amazing Justin went to the doctors office to give him the baggy of 'goods' and to get pain medication, medication to help me not throw the pain meds up and the meds to help me start to contract to get the baby out. A couple hours later, Justin woke me up to give me some more pain meds and at this time he was going to give me the meds that would start my contractions so I went to the bathroom real quick. Just then, the baby and placenta came out. Justin told me not to look and he made sure that everything was there and that it was what it was supposed to be. It was. We did what we were supposed to do with it. I felt relieved because it was out of me, but I felt sad because It was my baby. I carried that for three months, grew attached to it, and planned its future. But it was no more. I wasn't pregnant. My whole life I wanted to be a mother and I felt that it had just been taken away from me. It is actually a blessing how everything happened. I didnt have to take the medication, which would have caused a lot more hard contractions, I did it naturally and non invasive, Justin was there and able to take care of it and be there with me (he was suppose to leave an hour later for school) and it is a blessing how quickly it happened. Usually, when you do it naturally it takes a long time, but it just took a few agonizing hours of pain and then it was out. Justin laid me in bed, took care of me and made sure my sister was here when he couldn't be. The pain meds made me really tired so I slept a lot but in all it was so much better than what it cold have been.

About a week later, I can finally see more possitive than negaitive in this whole 'situation'. At first I felt like I wouldn't be able to go through this, but with the Lord and my amazing husband by my side my heart is healing quite well. This expeircne could have been so much worse and I pray to Heavenly Father that it wasn't. I feel like we will see our baby again and we will have the oportunity to raise him or her and to get to see his personality. Justin and I have grown closer than ever through this experience and I thank Heavenly Father for such an amazing husband that can take care of me, comfort, bless me and support me as much as he does. I can't imagine going through this with anyone else. Time will heal our pain, but I know it will all be okay. Every step of the way he was there for me and never for one second left my side. Christ knows exactly what I went through, experienced that himself and I trust him with our baby.

Thank you for your thoughts, prayers, flowers and letters!

Love, The Wilhites