Monday, October 4, 2010


Jamie
1st Angel- December 3rd, 2008 (Our Pre-Wedding Surprise)
2nd Angel- May 20th, 2009 (Our Honeymoom Angel)
3rd  Angel- October 2009 (OOPS Angel)
4th Angel- November 3rd, 2009 (Our emotional roller coaster Angel)
5th Angel- December 3rd, 2009 (OOPS Again Angel)
6th Angel- April 6th, 2010 (Our vacation Angel/Happy 1yr Anniversary Angel)
7th Angel- July 4th, 2010 (Our 4th of July Angel)
Long Island, New York

Ever since I was a young girl, I can remember how much I couldn’t wait to have a child and be a “mommy”. I remember my mom telling me how I was such a good caregiver to my younger siblings. My mom always told me, “you’re going to be a great mother one day”. 

When I was 23 years old, I was diagnosed with PCOS. My OB/GYN told me that I was most likely going to have trouble conceiving and would probably need the help of fertility medication to have a baby. I was devastated. I didn’t understand how they were able to predict so far into the future. At that time, it was not something I thought about often. I didn’t have a long term partner and I was still so young.

When I met my husband, I was 25 years old. It was love at first site. I knew I was going to marry him. It was pretty early on that I had the conversation with him. I told him that I may have trouble trying to conceive. He didn’t really have much of a response. He was only 23 years old and we hadn’t even talked about marriage. I felt that it was only fair..to let him know of the possibility.

I wanted to be married and have a kid by 30. No specific reason, it was my plan. So when we got engaged in June 2008, I was 28. Wedding planning went pretty smooth. My friends and family were amazing and helped us out so much. Between my stressful job and planning a wedding, I was becoming run down. I remember clearly, we were at a friends’ birthday party in the beginning of November. I remember eating everything that was on the table, even stuff that I did not like. As I stuffed food in my face, I made a joke and said “I’m pregnant”. For the next few weeks, I had all of these weird symptoms. But a lot of them were menstrual like symptoms. I didn’t think anything of it. I began my cycle on time but continued to have these symptoms afterwards. Then I became bloated, then had acne all over my jawline, urinated 20 times in a day. Very odd things. Then 2 weeks after my period, I spotted. I had never spotted before in between cycles. I typed in my symptoms on the computer. Everything that popped up was “PREGNANCY”. I panicked for a second. I grabbed my pocketbook and almost walked out the door. But I didn’t. I was getting married, I was stressed, I was told I was going to have trouble conceiving. I scheduled an appointment instead. I was told I most likely had an ovarian cyst. No big deal. On that Saturday, after Thanksgiving, I went to McDonalds to order almost everything on the menu when my Dr. called my cellphone. Now, unless something is wrong, your doctor does not call you on a Saturday at 8:00pm. I answered and she said, I got your labwork back. I told her I already knew what she was going to say. Then there was a “but”. Your levels show that there might be something wrong with the pregnancy. UGH. I couldn’t even imagine what could be wrong. We enjoyed our moment. Within 2 days, I began to have severe cramping and back pain. I went to the ER and 8 hrs later, was told I was miscarrying. There were no words, just tears. Then the ER doctor says, well now you can fit in your wedding dress…What?? Seriously? I asked what I should be prepared for. She said just go  home and rest. Well, the next morning, I miscarried. I was not prepared for what was going to happen to me. I sat on the toilet and there I passed this little bean shaped baby. I cried. It was horrible. I was 8 weeks pregnant. When I went for my follow-up, my Dr. Said…well atleast you know you can get pregnant. Did I ever think at that moment, we would go on to have 6 more miscarriages???? NEVER.

After we got married, we were prepared to start our life together as husband and wife. My life consisted of ovulation dates. As it turned out..I was ovulating the week of our wedding/honeymoon. We figured we would try. Well, when we got home from our honeymoon, my sister told me she was pregnant. Wow..What feelings went through my body at that time. I was sooo excited yet sad that it wasn’t me. I still had not fully grieved from my miscarriage, but knew I had to move on and it was going to be my turn at some point. 8 days after we got home from our honeymoon, I found out I was pregnant. How ecstatic we were. On 5/20/10, I began to cramp at work, then came the back pain. I began to miscarry at work. I went home, went into the bathroom, miscarried and went on the computer like nothing happened. My husband came inside to ask me how I was. I said fine. Then I began to cry and yelled at him. I said, how would you feel if you were bleeding out a baby. I never understood why this was happening to us. This is not how I wanted to start off our marriage.
I referred myself to a Reproductive Endocrinologist. All testing was negative. I continued to go on to have 5 miscarriages while under his treatment.

Since then, I have been seeing a new RE. And unfortunately, all of his testing has come back normal and we have hit the end of the road.  I have been offered no more assisted reproduction options or different treatment options. Just to “Keep trying”.

Our marriage has suffered so much heartache. Between the financial issues, the emotional issues and most of all the feelings of loneliness and hopelessness, it has not brought us closer. At the beginning, our miscarriage made us stronger people. But now, there is some resentment. I feel guilty that I could be the cause of all of this. I am sad that my husband would accept living a childless life. I feel sad that the last 2 years of our lives have been consumed with having sex only when told, miscarrying each time we were pregnant, arguing over money and dealing with my emotional instability.  This isn’t life, this isn’t happiness. But when does the pain end?

I wish it was that easy. But the “keep trying” method brings the chance of more and more miscarriages. So we are at the stage in our life where we need to make a decision.

Do we want to continue to try with the chance that we will continue to miscarry or go on to have a child OR stop trying and move forward with our life?

I have been diagnosed with Recurrent Pregnancy Loss and Unexplained Infertility. 

 You can contact Jamie at Jlabruzese@gmail.com

3 comments:

Ausmerican Housewife - Creating with Kara Davies said...

:'( We lost our son (at 4 days 2 hours old) 15 weeks ago this Tuesday. We lost his sister (at 17 weeks gestation) 2 years ago this November. I thought we were doing pretty good (all things considered) after we lost Julia and were pregnant with Evan. Now that he's gone, we're feeling the strain too. Evan was buried the day before our 3rd wedding anniversary. I feel your pain at do we try again or just give up and live as married people w/o kids that will be raised by us?

Carolyn said...

Hello ladies. I am right there with you. I got pg with baby #1 6 months after we got married (2nd marriage, we were both 35 but neither of us had kids). He was s/b 3 weeks before our 1st anniversary. The next 4 years turned into confusion and heartbreak as 2 greedy fertility drs told me I was "old" and subjected me to a total of 11 IUIs and 1 IVF without ever really checking DH. I had my suspicions because he's morbidly obese and I was right. He started on hcg injections for extremely low testosterone and the month he had his first normal s/a, I got pregnant. I had told him on my 40th birthday a month prior that I was DONE, we were too old and we have no family for a child to bond with, much less care for him/her if something happened to us since we were both 40.

So here I sat pregnant with a miracle; I'd "given up and given it to God". Man, was I naive!!!!!!!!!! At 19 weeks we learned that our baby had Trisomy 13 (which I believe was caused by the off label use of Femara/Letrozole) and holoprosencephaly. Someone had just poured gasoline and lit a match on all the pain we had been through. For this stillbirth, I would not go to the hospital for monitoring and find no heartbeat. For this stillbirth, I woke up every day for 15 WEEKS (I didn't terminate b/c it's hard on the cervix and I live in a bassackwards state @@), just waiting for the inevitable to happen which happened on September 10, 2009.

Now we're into the resentful period. My husband chose to be fat and now medication can overcome what obesity has caused. It is what caused the years of supposed "unexplained IF" (dr didn't do a krueger analysis). It subjected me to waaay too many cancer risk drugs. It's was a day late and a dollar short. I will be 42 in 6 weeks. Our daughter has been dead for a year and BFN #11 just passed. He doesn't "get" that with me, it's personal. I can't change the age of my ovaries, nor do I know if all the unnecessary fertility meds scrambled the rest of my eggs. Yay! He's fine now @@. I have told him more than once that if his compulsion to breed is more important than his wife, he can find a 25 year old. I want to put this BEHIND us. We prayed and prayed and look what that got us - another dead baby after more than 4 years.

Carolyn said...

oops, still new to this comment thingie. Our ENTIRE marriage has been defined by tragedy and grief. We only have sex on command. It's drugery and I find myself counting down the days until I *have* to do it. My husband doesn't understand that libido wanes as you get into your 40s, never mind all the crap that we've been through. I have thought many times about leaving, but he has a good job that we moved away from our families so he could take (good move, don't begrudge him for that)and I have some unresolved physical issues that would make working really, really hard. The only thing I have in this world are my 3 dogs and I shudder to think where I could live with 3 dogs (where they can't be outside 3 months of the year. I used to live where that wasn't a problem).

In many ways we're just roommates.

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