First post . . .

I'm wondering how I got here. A year ago I was thrilled to be expecting my second child. I was about to finish law school and my second child was due a few months later. So what happened?

I guess I should start from the very begining of the story. My husband, W, and I were married in 2005. In the summer of '06 we decided we were ready to start our family. I was excited and nervous. I didn't tell anyone we were trying. I was worried something wouldn't work out. There wasn't a problem at all and after one month I found out I was expecting. The pregnancy was wonderful and 2 days after my 28th birthday, my beautiful little girl joined our family. She has been such a source of joy to us. I cannot even explain how she's helped us keep going through this dark year. Which leads me to what happened.

W and I were anxious to start trying again after AJ was born. She was such a wonderful baby. But I was still in law school. So we waited until AJ was 16 months old. After 2 months we found out our second baby was on the way. The pregnancy started off completely normal. I had good bloodwork, followed by a good ultrasound, followed by more good bloodwork and another good ultrasound. I was sick and exhausted. I had a totally normal first trimester. I was not worried at all that anything was wrong until a few weeks after the second ultrasound. I had thought I had been feeling the baby move, but it had suddenly stopped. Deep down I knew something was wrong, but I didn't really believe it. Surely it had been gas I was feeling before. Surely everything was fine. I wasn't really freaked out. Just had a feeling of dread somewhere deep down.

I went to my third appointment and it was confirmed. The doctor spent what felt like an eternity looking for the heartbeat with the doppler. I knew he wouldn't find it, but he kept looking. He suggested an ultrasound, not indicating that he thought anything was wrong. The baby must be hiding and an ultrasound will tell me where to look with the doppler, he said. But I knew it wasn't true. I followed him to a room with an ultrasound machine. I didn't want to, but what choice did I have? Sure enough, there was my baby, completely still with no heart beat. He said something (don't really remember what). I asked if he was sure. He measured the baby and it was about 2 weeks behind. I didn't cry. I told the doc that I just knew something was wrong. He said something about women's intuition.

A few days later I was thinking I skipped a few of the stages of grieving. Looking back on it that wasn't exactly true. I was in denial. Not denial that my baby was dead, that was perfectly clear. I was in denial that I had to do anything about it. I couldn't understand why the doc was in such a hurry to schedule the D&C. What difference did it make? He went on about bleeding and infections, and I tried to remember everthing I had to do that week (I was 1/2 through my last semester of law school and had a million things to do). I finally agreed to come in three days later which required me to cancel my Friday morning mediation appointments.

I dont think it started to sink in until the next morning. All the things I had been worried about not missing got skipped anyway and I wondered why I put myself through 3 more days of carrying my dead baby.

Friday morning I woke up early to bright red blood and very irregular contraction-like cramps. I knew what was happing but figured I'd still easily make it to my appointment. W went to drop AJ at daycare and I got ready to go. I was wondering what was taking him so long, when I felt a gush. My water broke and a few minutes later my little boy was born in the bathtub. I didn't know what to do next. I tried to clean myself up and find something to put him in. But I started bleeding heavily. I freaked and tried to call W but he left his phone at home. I called my mom. Really silly because she lived in Maryland. She wasn't home. Thank God, W got home right after that. He took care of the baby, calling my doc and getting me ready to go. I had to use one of AJ's cloth diapers because the bleeding was so heavy.

Some how we made it to the doc's office and he helped detach the placenta without surgery. I was very grateful. He let us bring our little boy back home and sent the placenta off for testing. We would later learn that he had Patau's syndrome (trisomy 13), but we already knew that he was not normal.

Grieving him was slow. At first I didn't even acknowledge that I needed too. Part of that was because I simply couldn't afford to fall apart. I had to finish school, pass the bar, take care of my daughter, hold my family together. I could not stop. I had to keep going. So instead I focused on moving on.

I was convinced that I could get pregnant again quickly and get us back on track. I knew we'd always miss him and feel the hole in our family. But I really believed that we could move on and be normal. Of course this would work, wouldn't it? I had gotten pregnant so quickly before, right?!? Everyone says your more fertile after a m/c, right?!? Not so much for me. And unfortunately I think this expectation made everything so much harder for me in the long run.

The first few months weren't so bad. I wasn't suprised that things seemed a little off at first. But after a few more months I began to wonder. My skin had gotten so bad, my cycles were short and I had days and days spotting before my periods. I had terrible PMS that I had never had before. Everything seemed off. Even though I felt like I was being a bother, I called my doc after the fifth month of this. He was awesome and suggested a progestrone test and possibly Clomid.

So we decided to take a break that next month, do the test and let me get the Bar exam out of the way before we started Clomid or anything else. So much for that. On Valentine's Day we concieved for the third time. I knew by the time I went out of town for the Bar that I was pregnant but I waited until I got back to test. I was a little worried about the stress I was under from the exam, but so excited! Unfortunately I started to suspect things weren't going well when my tests didn't get darker. So I went for bloodwork. Beta 14, Progestrone 4 (had been 27.5 on CD 21). I started bleeding later that day. I was completely crushed. It was so much harder than the first time. I felt like someone had taken all my hope away. But my doc said it was just bad luck again. He thought my cycles would go back to normal now and we'd be fine. I wanted so badly to believe him.

I pulled it together after a week or two and decided to try again. Maybe that was a bad decision, but I couldn't see any other way. Again my cycles were off. They got worse and worse. I tried B vitimins, eating healthy and exercise. But the fourth cycle I started spotting at 8DPO. In complete frustration I called my doc again. He suggested Clomid and I gratefully agreed. We were now looking at a due date one year after our first angel. A whole year off track already. Hard to swallow for a control freak like me.

So I started Clomid and that's what leads me here. But that's for another day.