3 years

Wow I can't believe it's been 3 years since I held Hailey in my arms and said good bye. I look back to 3 years ago and am amazed at how far I've come. I never thought I'd be were I am now but so happy I am.
It was a busy weekend but she most definitely was not forgotten. On Thursday Lauren and I went to the florist and ordered our flowers. They were closed on Sunday and Saturday was too busy for us so I asked to pick them up the next day. I ordered what I've ordered for the past 3 years, something bright with pink and preferably with 3 pink roses. I picked up the flowers Friday and was not disappointed. Lauren's loved smelling them while they sit at the centre of our kitchen table.
Saturday I worked until 1 while Dan stayed home with Lauren. We were going to a birthday party in the afternoon so I was really hoping she would be asleep when I got home but nope, Dan says she refused to sleep for him (I think he's really just a softy and doesn't want to have her upset at all). She thankfully slept for 30 minutes on the drive to the party.
This party was a really important one for me. This party proves to me just how far I've come and I never thought I'd be at this point so soon. Saturday, the day before Hailey's 3rd birthday I went to a birthday party for a little girl who's going to turn 3 tomorrow. It was bittersweet being at a 3rd birthday party and seeing what we should've been experiencing but I'm past the point of acceptance. We weren't meant to have birthday parties for Hailey. We celebrate her birthday but in a way that's different from most families.
Sunday morning we had our normal pancake breakfast and decided to go swimming. We had a great time at the pool and hope to make this part of our Sunday routine. Afterwards Dan wanted us to head into the Apple store because he was told his replacement laptop was ready to be picked up. It's a long story but in the end Apple has dropped the ball numerous times and our 2 hour car ride was a complete waste of time because the computer they told him over the phone had arrived really hadn't and they wouldn't give us one from their inventory. That was a very frustrating part of our day because we really did squeeze it in. Dan's been without his computer for over 3 weeks and the only reason I said we could go was because I know how much it sucks for him not having one and he'd have to wait another week to pick it up.
We left the store a little after 2 pm and I was starting to get nervous time wise. I had my staff party last night and was supposed to pick up my friends at 4:30 plus we NEEDED to stop off at the cemetery. On the way home we stopped at Safeway and picked up cupcakes from the bakery. I was really disappointed because I had in my mind that I wanted pink frosting like we'd done in the past. Unfortunately because we didn't have the time I was forced to get lemon cupcakes with yellow frosting. We stopped off at the floral department and let Lauren pick the flowers. I had to smile when our rainbow baby picked the brightest rainbow bouquet. She did a loop first and looked at all the bouquets before deciding on a very colourful assortment. I wish I'd taken a picture but it had blue, red, purple, pink, yellow and orange flowers. A perfect choice. We stopped at the cemetery on the way home and had a lovely moment there. We took the flowers and cupcakes with us, Lauren sang happy birthday then ate our cupcakes. I'm so glad we've decided to involve Lauren and our future child (whenever that happens) in celebrating Hailey's birthday. I feel like it'll help them understand and truly know that they have a sister.
We made it home around 4 so I had a quick shower and was off to pick up my friends. I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that our company was recently bought by another company. They decided to have a "closing ceremonies" dinner. The night was good and I was even given a little reminder of Hailey. I've talked before about those unexpected moments that catch you off guard. When suddenly you're overtaken with grief and it can be from something so small. I'll never forget one of those moments happened because the song from the olympics came on the radio at work. At the time it brought back memories of how hopeful I was being pregnant while the Olympics were here. I'd planned on telling her all about how she'd been to events and places because she was in my tummy. Of course they played the song last night and it was bittersweet. At first it made me want to cry because that song is such a hard one to hear for those reasons but then it made me smile. How perfect for a song that reminds me of Hailey to be played on her 3rd birthday. I felt like part of her was there with me.

I still have moments, while I was writing that last sentence I got a little teary. She'll always be with me and never forgotten but I'm at the point where it's ok if I don't think of her every day. It's hard though because I still really struggled with publicly acknowledging yesterday. I didn't want to post anything on facebook and wasn't planning on but the day before I was overcome with guilt that by not publicly acknowledging her birthday I was making her less important then Lauren. I decided to simply post "3 years xo" and next year I will not. I'm ready to do this on our own, have it really be a private day in our family. Dan's mum sent us a sweet e-mail yesterday morning:
Hi Ange and Dan,
I am driving to Murwillumbah tomorrow and will be thinking of you and Hailey. As I pass Mount Warning I will send love to Hailey.
Love you both

(Mount Warning is where we spread Hailey's ashes in Australia and were unable to hike in February due to a bad storm causing massive damage to the trail.)

Love you Hailey, now and forever xoxo

4/5 weeks

I've decided that I want and need to do these weekly updates. If this pregnancy doesn't work out then we'll go to the recurrent pregnancy loss clinic and I want to be armed with as much information as possible, also it's been driving me crazy trying to compare pregnancies and symptoms because I didn't write as much as I wish I did. So because I don't know my due date the earliest I may be is 5 weeks and the latest would be 4 weeks. So this post is my 4/5 week update.

How far along? 4/5 weeks
Baby's size?Poppyseed/Appleseed
Total weight gain:Starting pregnancy weight: 148.6lbs (yup, never did lose the 10lbs from the last pregnancy!)
Bellybutton:In
Stretchmarks:I never got rid of the stretch marks from Hailey and Lauren
Maternity Clothes:Nope
Gender:Don't think we'll find out
Movement:None
Sleep:My sleeping's been ok. Lauren's pretty consistent lately at sleeping through the night. Now I wake up at least once sometimes twice a night to pee and do find I have a little harder time getting back to sleep.
Symptoms:Occasional nausea, cramping, peeing more often weird dreams and extreme tiredness. The nausea tends to come and go throughout the day. It's worse in the morning after I drink or eat and as well at night a few hours after I eat dinner. Have not thrown up yet, just this yucky feeling that sometimes sits in my throat.
Food Aversions:None
Food Cravings:None
Best Moments this week: Seeing the positive pregnancy test
What I miss:Nothing, so thankful to be pregnant again
What I am looking forward to:Doctors appointment in a few weeks.

As the last says I finally made a doctors appointment. I'm skipping going to see my family doctor and going straight to the maternity clinic. This is the same clinic my doctor and I had talked about me going to next time as they have an ultrasound machine. The appointment will happen sometime between between 6/7weeks and 2 days. Hopefully they'll be able to see something on the ultrasound but I know that I'll be sent for a dating one since we have no clue how far along I am. This will become more important when the time comes for an echo (if we get that far) and induction if I go overdue.

I'm not feeling too confident about this pregnancy. I've decided to take the negative approach and assume it won't work out but we all know that if this pregnancy gets farther I will naturally start to get attached and hopeful. I just can't see how my body would be ready to sustain a pregnancy 9-16 days after passing retained tissue but you never know, if it wasn't ready then would the egg implant?  I've got 2 months to worry and wonder so at this point I'm trying not to think about it and relax. This of course is hard to do when you get random bouts of cramping and nausea. It's like a constant reminder that I'm pregnant and the cramps always worry me that something's wrong but deep down I know they're common in pregnancy and I had them with Hailey and Lauren. I can't believe I'm going to say this but I really really REALLY hope I start throwing up soon! Both my sucessful pregnancies have involved morning sickness so I take that as a good sign. I know you can have no morning sickness and still have a healthy baby as well as have morning sickness with a missed miscarriage but I guess it's just a luck thing. In the past morning sickness with vomiting as signified a  healthy (sort of) pregnancy so I'm hoping and praying to see a lot of the toilet soon. I try to keep in the back of my mind that at least if this pregnancy doesn't work out we can move forward and maybe get some answers or help with the clinic.

After getting the faint positive lines on the cheap internet tests which I bought when I was ttc before the miscarriage I decided I needed to see the words so went and bought two clearblue tests that have the conception range. On Tuesday the results were 1-2 weeks which means 3-4. I tested again today and I'm happy to say the results were 2-3. That means at this point my hcg is rising. I know that doesn't mean much but it does give me a little comfort to know we're at least heading in the right direction.
Coming up on Hailey's birthday this weekend but that will be it's own post coming soon.

Here we go again

I know I know...... I said I wouldn't test until this coming weekend but these on and off cramps have been driving me nuts plus I came to the realization that if I miscarry even if it is an early miscarriage (chemical pregnancy) I'd want to know so we don't wait to go to the recurrent miscarriage clinic. I remember wondering if I was pregnant that time I was 4 days late and although I'm 90% sure I was there's still that 10% I'm not sure about and I'll never know for sure or know if the doctors will count that miscarriage. It's a faint positive so I'm going to test tomorrow with first morning urine but I'm pretty sure I'm pregnant.

As for due date? No idea, late december early Jan is my guess. I'm not even sure when I ovulated so I'm either 17 or 11 dpo. Going to look up doctors office phone number tomorrow at work and then I'll call and make an appointment. I'm expecting to be seen sometime after 2 weeks so I'll at least be around 6 weeks pregnant then I'm pretty sure they'll have to schedule a dating ultrasound.

Not getting my hopes up. The test this morning surprised me a little and I do not plan on telling anyone other then my husband for a while, at least until the dating ultrasound and hopefully see a heartbeat. Then we may tell the immediate family (grandparents) but friends and work, not until I hear a heartbeat after 12 weeks. So this is definitely a secret.

It's really nice that we're lucky enough to get pregnant so quickly I'm very thankful for that. I just hope that this will be our last pregnancy. Thoughts and prayers are more then welcome!

Tested again this morning and got a faint positive. For some reason my first morning urines have never been as strong as afternoon with all my pregnancies. Fingers crossed things progress well.

late or early? Retained tissue results

I thought that my period was supposed to arrive friday because that's what my chart appeared to show. I've been feeling nauseous again when eating so I decided to test on Thursday afternoon at what would've been 13 dpo. Test was negative. I took my temp Friday morning and it was still high so I knew I'd likely not get my period but put on a pad anyway since I started getting cramps on and off Thursday night. It's now Sunday but I've yet to test again.

I got excited when I saw 3 consecutive days above 97 degrees as it then showed I'd ovulated. On day 4 it dropped to 96.7 and the day after to 96.5. Day 6 it was 96.8 so I decided to take a break for a few days. On day 9 I went back to temping and it was up at 97.4 and has stayed above 97.3 ever since. This weekend I was playing with the chart and it seems to show that it really depends on what my temps were for those 2 days that I missed. Well really day 8 seems to be the deciding temp because it doesn't matter what I put in for day 7 if I leave day 8 out it changes my ovulation by a week but if I put day 8 above 97.0 it puts it back to my original ovulation day.

Basically I'm either 16 or 10 dpo. My luteal phase has always been 14 days so since my period has yet to appear I'm just assuming I ovulated at the later date and should get it sometime this week. I have no idea if there's even a possibility I could be pregnant if I ovulated later because I stopped keeping track of when we had sex once I saw I'd ovulated. We do have a chance if I ovulated at the earlier date so there's a chance (although small) that I may be pregnant.

I only have 2 tests left and I don't want to waste them so I think I'll save them until next weekend or maybe even later. I'm finding the waiting easier this time and feel like I'm less stressed then if I knew I was pregnant. I'm also starting to feel slightly worried if I am pregnant though. Will my body have had time to recover from the retained tissue?  If I ovulated at the earlier date (which is possible because my HCG was 0 for a while before I passed the tissue) it only would've been 8 days after I passed the tissue. I'm starting to feel like maybe we were a little reckless to leave it up to fate this month but in the end what's done is done and I wont get my hopes up that I am pregnant and if I am that it'll have good results. I'll try to update next weekend with either a pregnancy test or what day of my new cycle I'm in. Going to continue to temp because I feel like my period is coming (cramping) and want to be prepared for the day it arrives which the drop in temp should tell me to wear a pad.

I forgot a few weeks ago to talk about the results of the tissue sample. I was really disappointed when my doctor told me that it only confirmed that yes the tissue sample was placental. Apparently that's the only test they do on tissue that isn't fetal. Honestly if that's the only testing they were going to do then it seems like a huge waste of money because of course it was placental. I guess all it really does is confirm that yes I did have retained tissue. We now know 100% that we'll never know the cause of the miscarriage or the gender of the baby. I'd come to except that before I passed the tissue so I'm ok with it. I'm going to trust my instincts (they were right about the tissue even though doctors kept telling me it wasn't possible due to lack of HCG) that the baby was a boy. Cause? Well that I don't want to trust my instincts because right from the beginning when I heard there was no longer a heartbeat I had a feeling it was somehow heart related......

Oh that last sentence reminded me we saw a paediatrician again about Lauren. A few weeks ago we ended up at the hospital on my doctors advice to have Lauren looked over by a paediatrician. She'd had a bad cold/fever since just before we'd left Australia (3 weeks) which had started to get better then suddenly got worse with a cough, severe lethergy (she slept 90% of the day) and refusing to eat or drink. They were concerned a bacteria had taken over while her immune system was fighting off the virus. After a bunch of tests they decided that it was a virus not bacteria that took advantage and she was fighting 2 different virus' at once. She did start to get better a few days later and back to her normal self after 2 weeks. We had a follow up appointment with the paediatrician last week and I can't tell you how happy it made me feel to have him do another thorough look over and tell me that Lauren is 100% healthy. It always sits in the back of my mind that maybe they've missed something and she's not as healthy as we think or she appears. We've had issues since February with bladder infections, or really Lauren saying it hurts when she pees on and off with signs of a bladder infection in her urine yet no bacterial growth on the culture. This last time there was growth so the paediatrician says we're going to treat it as though this is her first infection as it's the first confirmed one but also keeping an eye on it. If she continues to get them we may do more testing.
Well this post is a little all over the place!

ttc again

While technically we aren't trying to conceive at the moment we also aren't preventing a pregnancy. I finally stopped spotting on the 7th. I started temping on the 1st and it looks like I might've ovulated on the 5th. We did have sex on the 3rd so there's a chance I could be pregnant but I'm not very hopeful, especially since I don't know for sure if I did or not. I have been feeling a little nauseous the past few days but that could just be my hormones sorting themselves out.

Whatever happens this cycle I'm just glad that it looks like the miscarriage has officially ended.

It's coming up to 3 years at the end of the month since we lost Hailey. I was looking at pictures of her last night and realized that a few of the pictures have a bit of resemblance to Lauren. I remember I was disappointed with Lauren was born because she didn't look a thing like Hailey but now looking back at Hailey I do see the resemblance. We haven't really made any plans for the 28th. I'm going to a farewell dinner for the company I work for but we will definitely do something and be having pink cupcakes at some point during the day.

Lauren woke up from her nap so I'm going to end this now :)

Miscarriage over?

Well it's looking like the miscarriage may finally be coming to an end. I'm having very slight spotting that hopefully will stop in the next day or 2. I'm keeping my appointment with my doctor on Tuesday anyway.

I'm really hating my body at the moment. I know with 100% certainty that there is absolutely no way I could be pregnant. I can't recall a time in the past few weeks where we've had unprotected sex not to mention a week ago my HCG was done at the hospital with results showing 0. Yet the past few days I've been having really strong pregnancy symptoms. My face is terrible with acne, I'm hungry all the time and yet when I eat I feel nauseous. WTH, could my body please sort itself out cause this is starting to get old!! I took a pregnancy test today just in case but like I already knew it was clearly negative. 

As for ttc our plan was to wait until my first cycle to start trying again but I'm now back to feeling like I can't waste this month. I'm finally feeling confident that there's no longer anything leftover and now starting last night we're no longer using protection. I keep having thoughts about how we weren't going to try the month we got pregnant with Lauren but in the end we decided to because I couldn't stop thinking about what if Oct. 2010 was our month to have a healthy baby and it was. We aren't actively trying though, just not preventing. There's no way to actively try when you have no idea when you'll ovulate, well I guess you could just have sex every second day but we aren't going to do that. I am temping but that's not going to help us TTC this cycle it'll just let me know when I ovulate so I know roughly how long to wait for my period to arrive then my plan is to also temp last month to make sure I'm still ovulating on day 14 like I have in the past.

Short post tonight, gotta get Lauren off to bed. Oh she can also sing the first part of twinkle twinkle little star...... she's growing so quickly and I love her SO much!