Thanksgiving day 2013 we had both of our families over for a feast. We thought it would be the perfect time to announce that I was pregnant. I was only 4 weeks along and we usually won't have told everyone at that point but we had basically every person in our family at our house that day so we decided it would be a perfect time to tell everyone. It was a great experience as we all gathered around to say a prayer on the food we told everyone we want to say a few words. We explained that we were all sad that we are missing someone very special today (my dad!) but that we will be having someone new join us in July! There were tears and everyone was so excited!
My pregnancy progressed as usual and I didn't get sick until about 9-10 weeks just like I did with Brooklyn. This pregnancy felt different and I wasn't too excited about it. I figured that it was just because it was my second child and the second time around it wasn't something that was so new.
On Friday January 3rd, at about 10.5 weeks along I decided to run home from work to grab some lunch because I hadn't brought anything to eat. I never go home for lunch but it sounded like a good idea this day. When I got home and started eating my lunch I starting gushing blood. I ran to the bathroom and knew something was wrong. I called Adam quickly and then called the doctor as well. They wanted me to come in for an ultrasound in the next few hours to see what was going on. It was pretty nerve racking wait for our appointment. It was finally our turn and they did the ultrasound and found nothing in my uterus. Not even a fetus with no heartbeat. There was nothing in there except some blood and tissue. They weren't really sure what was going on. They decided to take some blood and test my HCG levels and then re-test on Monday to see if they were increasing or decreasing.
The results of my Monday blood test came back on Tuesday and my HCG levels had risen. This is not normal for someone that is having a miscarriage. The levels should be going down. They determined that I had a molar pregnancy. This is a very rare type of pregnancy where something goes wrong with the chromosomes right when the egg is fertilized and all of this weird tissue start growing rapidly in my uterus so the fetus cannot continue to grow. However my HCG levels continue to rise so I get all of the symptoms of pregnancy. The scary thing is that this tissue stuff can spread to other organs and turn into cancer if not taken care of right away. So they scheduled me to have a D&C the next day to clean out my uterus.
Adam was so sweet to me this whole time and took such good care of me. He took the day off work to take me in for my procedure and stayed with me as long as he could. The D&C was really quick but they had to completely put me under anesthesia which is never fun. I only had to stay at the hospital for about an hour after the procedure and then we headed home and I rested for the day. I also took the rest of the week off work to rest and heal.
My throat felt so sore after the procedure and by the next day it hurt so bad I could barely swallow. It felt like there were cuts in my throat. I asked the doctor and he decided that my throat had just been torn up when they put the breathing tube down my throat. I was a good two weeks of horrible pain and hardly being able to eat before my throat healed up. It was the worst experience. The actual D&C was pretty painless but the throat problems were unbearable. I felt like my whole like shut down for a few weeks while I just rested as much as I could.
With a molar pregnancy you have make sure your HCG levels get back down to zero and then stay at zero for a few month before you are able to start trying to get pregnant again. The only way to tell if the tissue has spread is by the HCG level so if you get pregnant you have no way of know which can be very dangerous if it turns into cancer. It took about 2 months for my levels to get down to zero and then I had to wait 2 months of it staying at zero. Right now I only have one more month to wait and as long as it's at zero still then we can try again to have another baby.
This whole experience has been so crazy and so physically draining. I fell like this has been such a physical trial for me rather than an emotional one. Sure, I was sad about it and the situation isn't ideal but I wasn't too surprised that it happened and I was never depressed about it. It was mostly so physically challenging on my body and I felt like my life was in shambles for weeks. I am glad the hard part is over and we at the point just waiting. We are ready for another little baby in our family and we can't wait until we are blessed with another precious little soul!
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