Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day

Today, October 15th, 2013 is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness day. Oddly, it's also around 5 years to the day that I suffered a miscarriage. So, in honor of this day, while it has nothing to do with autism, or my little royals, I thought I'd open up and share a brief but profound moment in my history. I will try to keep the graphic details to myself mostly, but anyone who knows anything about miscarriage knows that these stories are not for the squeamish. So, if you would like, now is the time to go back.

The King and I had only been married for a few months, but together for years when I first started thinking about having a family. After some discussion on the topic, we had decided to start trying to get pregnant. After only a couple of months, we were blessed to have gotten a positive pregnancy test! I was so excited, my family was on it's way. I immediately started to day dream about what life as a new mother would be like. In my excitement, I shared with anybody and everybody who would listen to my news. I was to be a mommy very soon!

Then the morning sickness set in, but it didn't seem so bad. I was counting the weeks, one by one, and I'll admit looking back, my morning sickness did ease up. I paid it no attention, since I was nearly twelve weeks, and almost out of the first trimester. Morning sickness was supposed to ease by now. The morning of my miscarriage started normally enough. The King had to get up and go to work, and I was going to enjoy a nice quiet day at home.

When I started to experience the cramping, I really didn't think much of it, because I'd had some in the beginning part of my pregnancy, and I figured it was growing pains. So I laid down on the couch to watch T.V. and take it easy. They progressively started to get worse. By the point I was doubling over in pain with each cramp, I knew something was wrong. I went to the bathroom, only to confirm my fears. I was bleeding.
I didn't know much about miscarriage up until that point. I knew it was more likely in the first trimester, but once you hit the second chances where less likely. I knew you bled. I did not think it would happen to me. When I passed the first clot, I thought that it was the baby. I didn't know otherwise. I called my mother sobbing, unsure of what to do now. I called my doctor, while she called my best friend. They told me to rest and take it easy, and to come in if I felt the need to.

After about 20 to 30 minutes of handling this alone, my best friend showed up ready to bring me to the hospital. In this process, both my mother and my best friend had also been attempting to reach my husband, who while at work it's hard to reach him. When they finally got a hold of him, he left immediately to rush to the ER, only to beat us there. The way it worked out, I ended up sitting next to my best friend's eight month old son. It's just the way it worked out, I do not begrudge her this, never have. I digress. I remember sitting in the back seat, as he looked at me, thinking about the fact that my chances of motherhood where over. It was hard, but I got through it. When we arrived at the ER entrance, the King was right there waiting with a wheelchair, and had apparently already registered me.

It didn't take long to get back to a room, and finally they had given me something for pain. I laid in that bed, hopeless. I felt like the ultimate failure. My body couldn't do the one thing it was made to do. As ultrasound machines were rolled in, it only confirmed suspicions that the baby wasn't there, they could find no heartbeat. When checking the progress of the miscarriage, it seemed that my body wasn't doing what it was supposed to. It was soon decided that I needed an emergency D&C. D&C, also known as dilation and curettage, is a surgical procedure often performed after a first trimester miscarriage.-- This information was pulled from americanpregnancy.org and you can find the article here.-- I was taken to OR prep, where I was put under.

When I woke up in recovery, I was confused for a bit. As I grasped my  bearings about me, the events of the day came back. I renewed my tears again at the thought of the loss of the baby. MY baby. I no longer had a life inside of me, as I had when I woke up that morning. It was more than 12 hours later, and nothing was the same. I fell into a bit of a depression after that. I no longer wanted to try for a new baby. I didn't want to think about trying to replace what I just lost. Besides, my body failed me. After we left the ER, we decided to go get food. We went to our favorite 24 hour restaurant, and one of the regular waitresses saw us, walked right up to us smiling, and proclaimed "I heard you were having a baby! Congratulations!" I don't know who's face fell hardest, hers or mine when I had to tell her that the news was no longer.

After several months, I started to come around. I realized that my body didn't fail me, that there was likely something wrong with the baby. It was never discovered why I lost the baby, just that it didn't look like it made it past six weeks. I eventually came to the conclusion that I might be OK with trying again. Really, I decided not to prevent. Wouldn't you know it, it didn't take long to get a new positive pregnancy test. I was far more apprehensive this time though, not wanting to share the news with everyone, just in case I lost another. This one was meant to be, though.

Tonight, at 7pm my time zone I will be lighting a candle for my angel baby. I encourage you to do the same.

Sucess, Failure and Soup

When I first imagined life with my new Princess, I expected the first several months to be many ups and downs, and plenty of sleepless nights. Now, almost four years later, it's supposed to be mostly balanced. By now, most children are sleeping through the night, perhaps different times for bedtimes, different struggles to get there; but by the time they're out, that's it until morning.

4:00 am is a time where most are usually asleep. The only real activity amongst the family is deep breathing, and perhaps some snoring. Not in my house. Usually, at that hour, there are at least two members of our household up. The Princess and myself. Depending on the night, it could be pleasant, or it could be miserable. There could be many ups and downs, or there could only be a few. The one constant is that there is almost always someone awake in this house at all times. As I'm sure you've assumed by now, our first attempt at night time meds aren't working as effectively as we'd like.

The first week was great, from there we went straight down hill. The other night was probably the first time that the Princess had woken both the King and I. It was a particularly tumultuous night. The day before was a rough one. Paired with little sleep, and two royals who simultaneously felt the need to scream at the mommy all day, I was in tears by the time the King got home. This happens sometimes, but with the extra pair of hands, things went smoother and eventually everything was peaceful. Until 3:00 AM.

That's when it started. It started similarly to every other late night. The Princess is screaming, I try to change her, get her some milk and a movie. This was not enough for her, and that's when some head banging began. My nerves already shot, that was the final straw, and the tears started flowing again. I attempted to feed her, attempted to get her to calm down, but to no avail. The King decided to step in to lend a helping hand.

When usually the Princess sees her daddy, she's immediately all smiles, this night was different. She kept going right back to the wall to commence head banging. When he tried to redirect her, she went to a different wall. It came time to try to protect her from herself, and he fought to keep her in a hug with him. She's strong. Honestly, when she's in these moods, my only hope is to get between her and the wall. There's no way I can get her to stay in one spot.

Finally, we were able to get things settled down once more, and after reflecting with the King, I realized-- Probably for the very first time-- how lost he really felt in all of this. He's always held this stoic attitude, and perhaps so have I. For the first time I saw his vulnerability in not knowing how to deal with our autistic Princess. It was heart breaking, and heart warming all at once.

We both woke up sleep deprived the next morning, but honestly, I rather see him in a new light these days. He, like me, is just doing the best he can. That's all we can do. That and find extra things to channel the frustration that come with the hurdles. To channel my extra frustration lately, I've been cooking. It's funny because at one point, the word "domestic" in any way was akin to a four letter word. Never let it be uttered, lest it summon up something as unholy as, say Beetlejuice. I digress.

What I've realized is that for me, cooking has become an outlet. My "do-over" button. Life to me trying to raise a Princess with autism is like a series of attempts and failures. I attempt to get her to eat something else, I fail. I attempt to get her to sleep at night, I fail. With each new attempt, I hit another brick wall. Cooking though, I can follow the guidelines, I can experiment. Usually if I fail, I can pinpoint an exact step in which I failed, to correct and be successful later.

As selfish as I feel to say it, it helps boost my confidence. I love the fact that after all of my effort, I can taste it and be proud that I created this. The look on the Prince's face as he eats and enjoys each new menu item warms my heart. So much better than baby food. This is the confidence I think I've needed to continue to push forward and attempt and fail. Eventually, though I wont fail. There will always be small successes, and big successes. Small failures and big failures. Each as significant as the other. In the meantime, between the successes and the failures, I will cook.