Week 28 - Started With A Scare (everything is OK)

Well we made it to week 28 and that means we made it to the 3rd trimester!  Making it to the 3rd trimester is a huge milestone for us.  There was a time when we honestly didn't see this happening.  We are so happy to put that awful 2nd trimester behind us and move forward.


However, because it is us and we are doomed to never have this pregnancy be uneventful, we had a bit of a scare on Friday.  Only 1 day into the 3rd trimester and we had a freakout.  Everything is ok now, but it was a rough start.

On Fridays I do prenatal yoga which is more like a stretching and meditation class.  At the end, during savasana, our teacher has us recline back and close our eyes and talk to our babies.  It has been a very special time for me since I have been so excited to finally feel out little guy inside me.  He always reacts and I feel him kick and move a ton during this time and its one of my favorite parts of the class.  Anyways on Friday he didn't make one single movement.  I came straight home after class and ate something and laid down as that is supposed to wake them up and get them to move.  Still nothing.  I then googled 'how to get your baby to kick' and tried everything, after 30 minutes of nothing, we called our doctor.  In a very calm voice he told us to hang up and go immediately to Triage.  So Ryan ran upstairs, changed, let Parker out to pee and we were in the car in about 7 minutes and off to the hospital we went.  We arrived about 10 minutes later, checked in and was in a bed and hooked up to monitors within about 3 minutes.  And luckily about 1 minute after all that commotion, he decided to wake up and start kicking and kicking and kicking.  When you are hooked up to the monitors it puts his kicks on like a microphone.  It was the most amazing and beautiful sound and feeling ever.  Afte about an hour we were discharged and we quickly came home and I took a nap.  That was a lot of action for one day.  At least we learned that in an emergency, we handled it pretty well and that our hospital is amazing.

Aside from that scare, things are going well.  Up until this point we had decided to not buy anything or do anything baby related because we just weren't ready yet.  Now that we have turned a corner, things are progressing and we are moving forward nicely, we decided to move ahead and start planning for this baby.  We are in the middle of planning a shower, we ordered things to start putting the nursery together and most excitingly, we made our first baby purchase...

would you really expect anything less??!!!

Thanks for reading,
HEATHER

Therapy & Support

Ryan and I decided to seek professional help to assist us in moving forward from this tragedy.  My biggest concern is how do I continue with the pregnancy in a positive way?  Since having to make this awful decision and living through that awful procedure, I haven't been able to continue the way I was before and that scares me for the baby I still have left.  So with that, we found a therapist that has expertise in pregnancy loss.

She was extremely helpful and very understanding of our situation.  A few of the bigger takeaways that she said was :

• Not every pregnant woman is glowing and happy all the time.  There are lots of emotions that go along even with a normal pregnancy and just because I am sad all the time, doesn't mean that I am causing harm to this baby.
• As human beings, we have the ability to feel multiple feelings at the same time.  The example she gave was when we get mad at a loved one.  While we love them, we can be mad at and angry at them at the same time.  So she said that with time, she feels that I can still feel angry and sad over the loss of baby B and still feel love and excitement towards baby A.

We will continue to see her on a weekly basis for now.  She also recommended a few support groups (Empty Cradle and A Heartbreaking Choice) for us that I have joined, but haven't attended yet.  Just the names alone are tough to digest.  I am still somewhat numb and in disbelief that this has become our reality.  Empty Cradle is a local support group here in San Diego for those dealing with pregnancy loss.  They have paired me up with someone that also had twin loss, but we haven't connected yet.  A Heartbreaking Choice is a national online forum for those that have had to make the painful decision to terminate a pregnancy due to the health of the fetus or your own health.  I just submitted my registration information for that board.  

One of the harder things I'm coping with is up until now, everything I have gone through, I've know someone else through the infertility world that has also gone through something similar.  Our situation now is so awful and so rare that no one else I know has been through this.  It's not the same thing as a vanishing twin or a miscarriage.  The end of life didn't happen on its own.  Ryan and I had to make the decision to end a life.  Even though we knew it was the right thing to do, the emotional side of that is awful.  Making an appointment like that is awful.  Being awake for that is awful.  Having baby B still with us and will be for the rest of the pregnancy is just beyond difficult to emotionally wrap our heads around.  And after finally building a huge amount of support around us, we find ourselves isolated and alone again is really tough.  I am really hoping that with these two other support groups, we can again find ourselves in a place of understanding.

Thanks for reading and thanks for the support,

Heather & Ryan