Catchin' Up-- Highs and Lows

It has been such a long time since I've updated our blog and SO much has happened in our lives that it's kind of overwhelming to be so far behind. It's only going to get worse if I don't get started though! I'm not much of a journal keeper, so blogging is my way of doing it. Most of you may know the info I am posting in this blog but I want to keep of record of it so I'm going to go into more detail.

Joe found out around the beginning of May that he would be going to California for a few months to do a project for work. We were excited for a new adventure and especially that we would be able to escape the extreme summer heat in Texas. I found out a couple weeks before we left that I was pregnant! I had stopped taking birth control in October and was expecting to get pregnant in a month or two. I have learned that things don't always work out like you plan. At the end of May my allergies were out of control. I had been feeling different and hadn't had my period yet. I was afraid of being let down so I waited a few days to get a pregnancy test and I didn't say anything to Joe so that he wouldn't get his hopes up, just to be let down. I had a trip planned to Utah for Tiff's baby shower and my cousin's homecoming. A few days before I left I decided that I needed to get my allergies under control but I knew there was a possibility that I might be pregnant and that would limit the medicine I could take. I was out doing some grocery shopping with Andrey(the autistic boy I nannied) and decided to pick up a test. I brought him to our apartment and turned on some cartoons to keep him occupied while I went into our bathroom and nervously took the test. I can't even explain how nervous I felt while I was waiting. When I looked down and saw two pink lines I burst into tears! I couldn't believe I was really pregnant! I was leaving for Utah the next day so I wanted to tell Joe, but I wanted to do it in a cute way. I went to academy before he got home from work and got some Aggie Onesies and Pacifiers and taped my pregnancy test to them and then wrapped them in a box.

I had bought him some fun foods to enjoy while I was gone and told him I had one more surprise before I left. He thought it was a video game or something to keep him occupied while I was gone. Boy was he surprised!=) I recorded him opening it, but it's not letting me upload it to blogger.

It was funny to watch Joe the rest of that night. He couldn't stop thinking about it. He would be so excited one minute, then stressed thinking about the financial aspect of having a kid, then he'd fall into kind of a daze, then back to excited. We wanted to tell his family before we left so he told some of his siblings that weekend in person and called the rest of his family.

When I got back from Utah we packed up our clothes and things we'd need in California and headed off. By this time I had started feeling nauseous so the drive wasn't the funnest. Shelby and James made me a care package for the drive complete with mints, prego pops, and a bunch of other things to help my nausea. So sweet! We stopped in Utah for a few days to see my family and had a wonderful time there. I knew Joe and I wouldn't be together in Utah for a while so we told my family while we were there.

When we got to California we were in heaven! We loved it so much there! Joe didn't have to start work for a few weeks so we got to spend lots of time together. By this time I was feeling really sick though. There were days I would just lay in bed, and some days when I would feel well enough to go out for a few hours. I hadn't been to the doctor yet and figured I was about 9 weeks so we booked an appointment. When we went in for our first visit the doctor did an ultrasound. Joe was up by my head and we were both looking at the monitor when the doctor got quiet and started to really focus on the screen. Joe broke the silence by asking what she was looking at. She pointed to the sac and Joe said " It looks like there's two!" The doctor said "That's what I'm trying to figure out. It looks like there are two sacs, so that would mean twins!" Joe got nervous and said "Two! We just wanted one!" Ha ha! The doctor said without heartbeats she didn't want to confirm 100% that there were twins. She said she would schedule us to come back in a week and do another ultrasound. By the size of the sacs she estimated I was about 6 weeks so there should be heartbeats the following week. Joe asked her in her opinion, since she had been doing this for years, what did she honestly think. She responded "I think it's twins." I think we were both in shock! We had been trying for so long for one.... now the possibility of two!

So, by what she said I wasn't as far along as we'd thought. It didn't really add up in our heads because we had used an ovulation kit and knew when I got pregnant. Going by that day, yes I would have been about 7 weeks, but they usually go by the first day of your last period. Which would have put me at 9 weeks. We left the appointment and went to the lab to have blood drawn and my hormone levels tested. Then we went home and called or text our families to let them know we may be having twins!

What happened over the next few days was for sure the hardest thing we've gone through together since we got married. Instead of retyping everything I'm just going to copy a portion of an email I sent to our good friends letting them know. "We had our first doctor appointment on Friday June 24th. They did an ultra sound and there appeared to be two yolk sacs. Going from the first day of my last period, I would have been about 9 weeks, but we knew when I ovulated because we did the kit so going by that it would have been about 6 1/2 or 7 weeks. Judging by the sacs she said I was only about 6 weeks. She said to come back in a week and she would be able to tell better if there were embryos in both sacs and there should be a heartbeat. We were pretty shocked at the prospect of having two. Joe was in shock. He said " Um, we just wanted one" in a joking tone. We made an appointment for a week later. I went and had my blood drawn after the appointment so they could do tests. We really started to get excited about having twins. On Monday the dr. called and said she wanted me to come in again to have blood drawn. She said my hormone levels were at 122,000. She said that that would mean I was about 9 or 10 weeks and the sacs she had seen in the ultra sound weren't matching up with that. She said she also wanted me to go to have an Official Ultra Sound at the diagnostic department the next day. Well, on the way to that appointment she called and said she had the results from the blood work that was done the previous day and my levels had dropped to 99,000. She said they should double every couple of days so the fact that they were dropping meant I would most likely miscarry. Talk about going from a high to a low in a matter of seconds. I started crying immediately, and Joe pulled over when he saw I was crying so he could hear what was going on. The girl that did the official ultra sound couldn't tell us anything, but luckily the dr called shortly after to tell me that they didn't see a viable pregnancy. The embryo or embryos had just stopped developing and there was no heartbeat. We were devastated to say the least. We were in the parking lot of a store Joe had to run in to when I got the call. I waited for Joe to come back and then we listened to her telling us our baby wasn't going to make it. After we hung up we both just sat there holding each other and cried. They couldn't confirm twins without heartbeats and larger embryos. We had already told our families about the possibility of twins, so it was heartbreaking to have to tell them we actually had no baby.

We're doing better now. We needed a few days to cry it out and deal with our emotions. We had already made an appointment to see the Dr. last Friday so we just kept the appointment to go in and chat with her and decide what we wanted to do now. I was still so nauseous and sick and she had mentioned being able to give me some medication to help my body recognize that the embryo was no longer developing. I wanted to just make sure one last time that it wasn't growing. She was more than happy to do another ultra sound for us. We could see one sac sort of diminishing so she said that that embryo probably stopped developing before the other. We still just saw an empty sac with a spec in it. I had looked at people's ultrasound pictures online and for how many weeks I should have been, ours was no where near that. So, it gave me some closure. She turned on the heartbeat monitor also and said by now there should have been a heartbeat for sure. All we heard was static. So, we decided it was time to deal with it and move on. I want to go to Utah when my sister has her baby (which should be any day) so we decided to take the medication so that I could flush it out and start to feel better. I did that yesterday, and it was not fun at all. It just felt like really bad cramping, and I bled a lot and felt SO tired. Joe has been an angel during everything. It really helped me grow to love and appreciate him more. He would do anything, or get anything at all that I needed and was just so sweet and attentive. Ever since I've been sick he's been like that, so that helped me so much.
Our ward has been so sweet. Right after we got the news from the official ultrasound the relief society president called like 3 minutes later to invite me to some activities they had going on that night, and I kind of broke down telling her what we had just found out. She was so sweet and called the next day to check on me, and came up to me when I walked into sacrament meeting today and gave me a hug, and all the ladies have just been so sweet. I think it was kind of a blessing to have this happen here. Just because I think seeing all the pregnant women in our ward there would be hard right now until more time passes. Anyways, just wanted you to know. Hopefully it won't be long until we get another chance at it. I'm glad to know that I can get pregnant at least, and grateful for that."

Things have gotten easier as time passes. There are still times that I think about it and get emotional. When we got back from California and were unpacking and I opened the closet and found the onesies and pacifiers with my pregnancy test, I couldn't help but feel sad and shed a few tears. When we left those in the closet, I never imagined I would be coming home without still being pregnant. We are optimistic and hopeful that when the time is right, we will get the opportunity and blessing to be parents. We're so grateful to be close to nieces and nephews. It really brightens our spirits to be around them.