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.
Friday, April 26, 2013
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
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.
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.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
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!
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!
Saturday, April 13, 2013
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 :)
Thursday, April 4, 2013
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!
Sunday, March 31, 2013
And it continues
The bleeding didn't stop after Tuesday. I went to work Wednesday and half way through my shift at 9am I noticed that I was getting tightness that comes and goes. I wasn't in pain but I could definitely feel my uterus tightening. I managed through the rest of my shift and my boss happened to show up at 11:30 so I let her know what was going on and that I may or may not be at work the next day. I wanted to let her know then because I didn't want her to think that I was calling in the day before a 4 day long weekend since that's not like me at all. I was worried that I'd need a D&C or ultrasound right away and if I did call in sick I didn't want her to worry if I didn't call her in the morning like I'm supposed to. She told me not to worry and if I did call in sick she wouldn't expect a call from me.
The tightness came and went the rest of the day but didn't get intensely painful more just annoying. At 5:30 I went to the washroom just after Dan got home and when I wiped there was something on the toilet paper. I knew it wasn't a blood clot and it looked like it was tissue. I knew this wasn't normal so was going to go to a walk in, take the sample and ask them if it looked like something left over from the pregnancy or if it was normal (pretty much knew it wasn't but I was in a little bit of shock.) Thankfully I had lots of unused culture container from when we tried to get a urine sample from Lauren last week so I placed the tissue in the container. We went to drop Lauren off at my mum's and she suggested we go to the hospital instead as the clinic was unlikely to be helpful. So off we went to the hospital. We arrived at 6:15 and they came to take my blood at 7. At this point I'd yet to see the doctor but apparently now their standard protocol is to do blood tests based on the symptoms to hopefully speed up the process. The doctor came in at 9:15 and having not yet spoken to me said that my HCG was 0 so the miscarriage was considered over. I pointed to the sample container sitting on the counter and told him that I'd passed that a few hours ago. He said "Oh" then said that I must've had left over tissue and he'd send it off for testing and request an ultrasound for the next day to confirm there was nothing left and that we were free to go.
This is the frustrating part about what's going on with me. I know that NORMALLY if your HCG has dropped it means the miscarriage is complete and that there's no left over tissue but my HCG was 7 on the 19th yet I managed to pass tissue a week and a half later. I've had this feeling for a few weeks now that something wasn't right. Nearly 5 weeks after a miscarriage you shouldn't still be bleeding. I don't care that my HCG's are normal, something is wrong. On the positive side because I passed the tissue there's a chance we can get genetic testing done off of it. I'm not holding out too much hope since that tissue has been hanging out in my body for nearly 5 weeks post miscarriage but you never know.
I had the ultrasound done Thursday and they basically told me that he couldn't really see anything and some doctors will just do a D&C to clear anything that could potentially be there that's unseen while others will wait it out and do another in a week or 2 if the bleeding continues.
I'm in limbo right now. The bleeding has gotten heavier and the cramping is worse. No more contractions just intense cramps that make me have to take Panadeine Forte to alleviate the pain for a few hours. I've promised myself to only take 1 or 2 a day as I hate taking drugs so most of the day I'm in pain with a few hours of relief when I can't stand it any longer. I couldn't get in to see my GP until the 9th but I'm hoping to get in sooner. At this point I think I may need to see an OBGYN. As much as I hate the thought of a D&C I'm also leaning toward this option. Something isn't right and hopefully like the ultrasound tech said it'll clear it all out and we can start fresh. Will have to just wait and see since it's a long weekend.
The tightness came and went the rest of the day but didn't get intensely painful more just annoying. At 5:30 I went to the washroom just after Dan got home and when I wiped there was something on the toilet paper. I knew it wasn't a blood clot and it looked like it was tissue. I knew this wasn't normal so was going to go to a walk in, take the sample and ask them if it looked like something left over from the pregnancy or if it was normal (pretty much knew it wasn't but I was in a little bit of shock.) Thankfully I had lots of unused culture container from when we tried to get a urine sample from Lauren last week so I placed the tissue in the container. We went to drop Lauren off at my mum's and she suggested we go to the hospital instead as the clinic was unlikely to be helpful. So off we went to the hospital. We arrived at 6:15 and they came to take my blood at 7. At this point I'd yet to see the doctor but apparently now their standard protocol is to do blood tests based on the symptoms to hopefully speed up the process. The doctor came in at 9:15 and having not yet spoken to me said that my HCG was 0 so the miscarriage was considered over. I pointed to the sample container sitting on the counter and told him that I'd passed that a few hours ago. He said "Oh" then said that I must've had left over tissue and he'd send it off for testing and request an ultrasound for the next day to confirm there was nothing left and that we were free to go.
This is the frustrating part about what's going on with me. I know that NORMALLY if your HCG has dropped it means the miscarriage is complete and that there's no left over tissue but my HCG was 7 on the 19th yet I managed to pass tissue a week and a half later. I've had this feeling for a few weeks now that something wasn't right. Nearly 5 weeks after a miscarriage you shouldn't still be bleeding. I don't care that my HCG's are normal, something is wrong. On the positive side because I passed the tissue there's a chance we can get genetic testing done off of it. I'm not holding out too much hope since that tissue has been hanging out in my body for nearly 5 weeks post miscarriage but you never know.
I had the ultrasound done Thursday and they basically told me that he couldn't really see anything and some doctors will just do a D&C to clear anything that could potentially be there that's unseen while others will wait it out and do another in a week or 2 if the bleeding continues.
I'm in limbo right now. The bleeding has gotten heavier and the cramping is worse. No more contractions just intense cramps that make me have to take Panadeine Forte to alleviate the pain for a few hours. I've promised myself to only take 1 or 2 a day as I hate taking drugs so most of the day I'm in pain with a few hours of relief when I can't stand it any longer. I couldn't get in to see my GP until the 9th but I'm hoping to get in sooner. At this point I think I may need to see an OBGYN. As much as I hate the thought of a D&C I'm also leaning toward this option. Something isn't right and hopefully like the ultrasound tech said it'll clear it all out and we can start fresh. Will have to just wait and see since it's a long weekend.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Going for an ultrasound
Yup, unfortunately I'm still blogging about the miscarriage. I saw the doctor on Thursday and although I didn't really need the appointment as I knew my hcg results were 7 and considered negative I kept it and we talked about what the plan would be when I do get pregnant again. I've decided to go back to the maternity group I was with when I was pregnant with Hailey. They have an ultrasound machine right there and will be able to put my worries at rest each appointment. I'll also go see my doctor right away to get my ferritin and tsh checked to decide if I need to go back on synthroid and up the iron I'm already on. I told her I'd finally stopped bleeding that Tuesday (19th) and she told me that's good but to come back and see her if it starts up again. Dan and I had recently decided that with the extra long bleeding and potential for complications we were going to use condoms this month. I was fearful of something going wrong and having an ultrasound only to have them unsure if it's leftovers from the miscarriage or a new pregnancy. I'm glad we did because yesterday I started bleeding again. It started really light at 5:30am and peaked at 9:30am. It was never really that much but I had this dull pain from 8-10 so decided to make a doctors appointment for this afternoon. I had no bleeding today and since my appointment was at 4:50 I went to the washroom just before I left at 4:40 and there was nothing. I told the doctor about the bleeding and how I hadn't had any today. She said the only thing left to do was an ultrasound to make sure and asked if she could do a pelvic exam. I've never been shy with doctors so I dropped my pants and when I did noticed that I had a little bit of blood on the panty liner I'd put on. I showed her and said that I guess I'd started again. She did the exam and yes I definitely started bleeding again. She told me she wanted me to have an ultrasound done this week and that they'd call me to let me know when. It is however a good sign that during the exam I wasn't tender. Hopefully it's just my hormones acting funny and trying to regulate themselves.
I just want this to be over. I hate not knowing what my body's doing. I want my normal cycle back so we can finally start ttcing. Patience is something I've really been working on this past month. I have been much more relaxed though since we decided this would not be our month.
I just want this to be over. I hate not knowing what my body's doing. I want my normal cycle back so we can finally start ttcing. Patience is something I've really been working on this past month. I have been much more relaxed though since we decided this would not be our month.
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