Infertility: One Woman’s Journey Through Recurrent Miscarriage

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of getting married, becoming a mother and being the perfect little June Cleaver to my future Ward.  Never in any of my daydreams or fantasies did I envision a 13 month journey through infertility, recurrent miscarriage and medical testing that no woman should ever be subjected to.

It all started in September of 2006.  My husband of 4 years and I decided that we had the house, the two dogs and that the next logical step was a baby.  Less than two months later, I found out I was pregnant.  Just like that.  For some it’s not that easy, for us, it was.  We were scared, shocked and completely flabbergasted.

I called the doctor and we went to our first appointment together excited to begin our journey as parents.  Sitting in the waiting room looking at the children’s table, we giggled like teenagers.  Once inside, the doctor asked me to strip and lie down on the table with those awful stirrups.  As I leaned back, she took the infamous wand out and searched for the heartbeat.  And searched.  There was a visible sac but not a noticeable heartbeat.

She shrugged it off saying that it could still be early since I was measuring 5 weeks but sent me to another office that had more advanced ultrasound machines – to be safe.

So hearts in hands, off we went.  Again I stripped.  Again I laid down feet in stirrups.  And again that wand was inserted to search for this elusive heartbeat.  Again it eluded us.  The technician was very sweet and thought she saw a faint flutter.  She assured us everything was going to be okay in a week when we were asked to come back.

The slowest week of my life went by.  When it was time to go back, my husband couldn’t get off work to come with me, so my mother came along.  And yet again with the stripping and the stirrups.  Another technician came in and behold – the heartbeat.  We were elated but the technician gave a look of concern and said she wanted to talk with my doctor before we left.

She exited the room leaving my mother and me there having silent nervous breakdowns, each of us trying to hide the panic to be strong for the other.

The 5 minutes she was gone felt like years.  When she returned she simply looked at each of us and said, “Your doctor said you can leave.”  That was it.  She left the room answering not one of our 20,000 questions since she was technically not supposed to.

I called my doctor and she congratulated me on a great heart rate of 125 BPM (beats per minute).  Immediately, I calmed, as did my mother.

It was early December, almost Christmas and I was nearly 7 weeks pregnant, due July 22^nd.  So we went to Babies R Us and daydreamed of little girl dresses and mini-man clothes for whichever I would have the following summer.

Daydreaming was the best part.  It prevented me from over-analyzing the concern in the technician’s eyes, the nagging question of why she needed to speak with the doctor before we left.

A few weeks later, the day before Christmas Eve, I was driving down a busy street in the cold, misty rain not far from my house.  I was stopped behind a car making a left when I noticed an SUV in my rear view mirror speeding toward me.  I braced for impact and when it hit, I heard the crash before I realized what happened.  When I saw her airbags had gone off and the car that was in front of me out in the intersection, I started to shake and cry.  I touched my belly as if to make sure all was right inside.

A young man  from the car in front of me got out and asked if I was okay, I said, “Yes, I think so.”

He then ran to his damaged car.  I called my husband who panicked immediately.  The ambulance and police showed up first and checked to make sure I was okay.  They marveled at how my Nissan Pathfinder was hardly touched while the other car was totaled, this in an effort to help me get my mind off of how alone I felt at that moment. When my husband showed up 10 minutes later, I was relieved.  I wanted to go home.

But both my husband and the EMT worker thought it would be better for me to go to the ER, get an ultrasound and make sure that the life inside was okay.

So I did.

We didn’t wait long before we were called into the office where the machine was.  The doctor put the gel on my stomach and there my baby was.  It looked like a baby.  We marveled at how it had doubled, tripled in size.  We laughed and giggled in our innocence.

I looked at Andrew and told him to go ahead and get the car stuff worked out.  We needed a renter for Christmas Eve.  We needed to get my mechanic to pick up our truck.  So he left.  At my urging.  We thought for sure, he’d be back in 30 minutes and I’d be able to get checked out with a clean bill of health.

The ER doctor excused himself, asked me to get dressed and wait outside.  I did.

And I waited.  And as I waited, I grew nervous.

When another doctor asked me to follow her down the hall to a more advanced ultrasound machine, I became unbearably upset. Again, the gel on my stomach.  Again the marvel until I tilted my head and noticed no blinking light.  Not a flutter.  Nothing.

When I asked why I couldn’t see the heartbeat the doctor coldly replied, “Fetal demise.  Your baby died.”

The rest of that day is a blur.  There were tears.  Phone calls.  Shaking.  Lots of shaking.  My doctor couldn’t do anything till after Christmas.  Poor timing is what she called it.  I often wonder if there ever was good timing to have a miscarriage.

Christmas was depressing.  Full of fear, sadness and the feeling that somehow my world had been a sham up until then.

After Christmas, I went in to see my doctor and it was confirmed.  My baby died a week prior to the accident.  A D&C was scheduled for the next morning.  I hung the phone up and felt like a failure.  My body failed to do the very thing it was made for.

I became depressed.  Then determined.  So the next year was spent finding a new doctor and harassing him into letting me see a Reproductive Endocrinologist. While obstetricians deliver your baby, they do not help you get pregnant.  An RE does.  And although many were telling me that I was jumping the gun, I knew inside of me that I needed to see an RE.  When I had a second miscarriage a year to the day after my first, my new doctor finally agreed that something might be wrong.

At my first meeting with the RE, I went through my story; he reviewed my files and stuck to the script. “Miscarriage is unfortunate and you’ve been unlucky.  We don’t normally see women till they’ve had 3 miscarriages” blah blah blah.  When he saw my eyes fill with tears, he agreed to take me on as a client and ordered a slew of tests on myself and my husband.

17 vials of blood later and it turned out I had a genetic blood clotting disorder called MTHFR, an acronym for a really long word.  Basically, those who carry the MTHFR gene are unable to metabolize folic acid.  This inability leads to a thickening of the blood and can cause heart attacks, strokes and recurrent miscarriage.

A week after that test result, I found out I was pregnant.  Terrified, I was prescribed a prescription of folic acid that I was told would help counter the MTHFR.

My little boy was born 3 weeks early on October 7^th, 2008.  And from the very moment I looked at him, I felt overwhelmed.  By love, by wonder, by the notion that I was his protector and guide.  I spent many hours in the hospital thanking the Lord for giving me this gift and questioning if he was really mine.

Over the past few years, I’ve lost some of my innocence and naiveté.  The wide eyed wonder of youth has been replaced by strength and knowledge.  And while my journey to become his mother was bumpy and filled with sharp turns and wrong directions, I’m eternally grateful for the entire ride.  I wouldn’t be the grown up I am without the experience I’ve had.  And I wouldn’t change it.  Not even to regain my innocence.

Tags: infertility, miscarriage

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 26th, 2009 at 12:04 am and is filed under Health & Wellness, Motherhood, Pregnancy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.