Mourning the 80 Percent

I have lost four of my last five pregnancies (Andrew being the 5th).  That's 80%.  I know that I had two healthy pregnancies (and boys!) before that, but mentally those don't factor in for me.  Those came from a time of blissful ignorance; a time when I didn't personally understand all that could go wrong and all the heartache that could result from the attempt to bring a child into the world.  I am so thankful, however, for the blessing of those two, as their presence in our family certainly does much to ease the pain of missing children.  I won't say it eases the pain of loss though, because that is the same no matter how many living children one has. 

Andrew continues to be a ray of light in our family.  What would we do without that boy? :)

This one hits hard.  This one leaves me saying "can I really try again?"  It's not as simple as "being pregnant."  I know many women are blessed with easy pregnancies with minimal issues.  I am not one of them.  Mine could certainly be a lot worse, but they are bad enough that's it really tough to muster up the mental stamina to want to willingly subject myself to it again.  This pregnancy I had specifically prayed that I would not need to take anti-nausea medication (which you may recall I was still taking the day Andrew was born).  I have used for it all six previous pregnancies and just didn't want to this time.  And I didn't.  And I was amazed (and slightly concerned) when at 9 weeks the 24 hour nausea I'd been experiencing for three weeks suddenly lifted.  Now, I know why.  In this case I actually had a cessation of nausea symptoms as a result of the lost pregnancy.  So while the nausea wasn't nearly as bad this time, the physical exhaustion was awful.  I felt like many days I could accomplish nothing other than some school with the boys and feeding them lunch.  Forget dishes, forget laundry, forget running errands or making dinner.  Or taking a shower.  Just took too much energy.  And of course on top of this I still continued to struggle with my gallbladder/digestional issues.  Although, I am so thankful that they were not worse as a result of being pregnant.

So, I am just not sure I can handle another first trimester.  I've had seven of them.  This was the only pregnancy that ended before the second trimester began.   When I lost the two babies and then had Andrew, I felt like I was pregnant for two years, as that's how long it was from the beginning of the first pregnancy until Andrew was born.  And it was basically three first trimesters in a row.  That was rough.

Apparently the miscarriage that I experienced this time is the "normal" flukey kind of miscarriages that most people experience.  I just had the misfortune of not finding out until 10.5 weeks, despite the fact that there probably had been no baby since 6-8 weeks.  I didn't have an appointment for so long for a variety of reasons, but my midwife and I have decided that if I do get pregnant again, I should just come in weekly starting around six weeks.  So, I guess it's better that it was this kind of miscarriage and not the inexplicable kind that I have experienced three times before.

This post is getting too long to talk about how I am processing through this, so I guess I will have to come back to that.   For now, thanks for your prayers.