Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope

Angela

Miscarried on January 16th, 2005 at 11 weeks after infertility due to PCOS

West Jefferson, North Carolina

My husband and I were high school sweethearts and were married in July 2000.  After a year of marriage we decided to go off birth control and try for a baby.  We were not discouraged when it did not happen immediately.  We were busy with our careers and enjoying life as husband and wife.  

It wasn't until over a year later when I began to question why it was taking so long.  We had just moved to a new town, so my first priority was to find a new OBGYN and begin to look into things.  I documented my temperature, did endless labwork,  had my tubes examined for blockages, and even took clomid in attemps to conceive, but to no avail.    After almost a year my OBGYN sent me to an infertility specialist.  I was discouraged but still in the game.  After all, we'd been on this road for almost 4 years now.
 

The infertility specialist was the one to first pinpoint PCOS and put me on glucophage therapy, and to our great surprise, I was pregnant the next month.  I'll never forget calling the doctors office and asking if the medicine could produce a false positive on the pregnancy test.  They probably laughed at that question, but after 4 years of seeing negative results, I could not believe what I was seeing! 
 

I went in for early pregnancy screenings and lab works.  All looked great!  At my 9 week "viability" scan (I hate the name of that!) we saw a precious little baby and a strong heartbeat.  I will never forget the words the doctor said to me, "If I saw 100 pregnant women, I would want them all to look just like this!".  We were elated.  We told our families and even stepped foot into the baby department and made our first "neutral" wardrobe purchase.  Nothing could of pulled us down now.  After 4 years of infertility, we were finally living our dream...or so we thought.
 

It was Sunday, January 16, and I was enjoying a nap on the couch when my husband arrived home on his lunch break from work.  As soon as I sat up, I knew something was not right.  My pants were soaked with blood.  I cried, I panicked, I got sick.  My husband took me to the ER and we sat and cried in the waiting room for hours.  At one point I remember going to the bathroom and I had stopped bleeding.  Maybe, just maybe it was all just a false alarm.  I sat for another hour or so before I began to feel weak.  I stood up to walk around and when I did, I felt the gush of my pregnancy leaving my body.  I almost immediately began to pass out, and I guess that finally got their attention...so they got me in a bed and called my OBGYN.  The first time a doctor came to see me, he confirmed that I was having a miscarriage, but at that point I knew it before he said anything.  They performed an emergency D&C and sent me home.
 

For a week I remember being so sore...my heart ached and my body ached all over.  Probably from all the sobbing...the kind that involves your whole body.  They did genetic testing on the baby and determined that there was no known reason for me to have miscarried. While it was nice to know that there was nothing wrong that could jeopardize a future pregnancy, it did help the loss of our first child.
 

In the five years since then, we have gone on to have three beautiful children.  All were conceived while on the glucophage therapy for PCOS.  The one thing my miscarriage robbed from me (besides my child) was comfort or peace during subsequent pregnancies.   I lived in fear everyday my children were inside me that I would go through that again. 
 

Today I have learned to live with memory of that child.  I will never forget nor understand and it still aches my heart to think about how life would be different if we had that child with us.  My only comforts are my children and the knowledge that my baby is waiting for me in Heaven and one day I will be able to hold him or her the way I was never able to do in this life.

Angela blogs at www.shimel.blogspot.com

You can contact her at shimel5@yahoo.com