Loss

What a difference two weeks makes.

Two weeks ago, we were in Iowa visiting my brother and his family. 

Two weeks ago, I was technically still pregnant.

Then last Wednesday, I went to my OB appointment and everything spiraled downhill from there...

My OB went to listen to the baby's heartbeat, but couldn't hear one.  I immediately thought "not again, Lord!" She then went out and got a portable ultrasound machine to see if the baby was moving at all.  The picture was fuzzy, but she didn't see any movement.  She then told me that it has happened before where she didn't see anything but when they did the actual ultrasound upstairs, it was a different story. 

That gave me very little hope.  

I had to wait an hour before the ultrasound tech could do the "real" ultrasound on me.  For that hour, I sat in my car and cried and cried out to God - begging him to work a miracle and for this baby to actually be okay.

It just simply wasn't meant to be.

The ultrasound tech confirmed what I already knew - the baby was dead.  I then had to wait for someone to come and escort me back down to the OB floor so I could talk to my doctor about what to do next.  My doctor informed me that the baby had likely died at 9 weeks (I was 11 weeks at the time of my appointment), which is the exact same thing that had happened with the first miscarriage - just a little less than 8 months ago.  This one was a little harder to swallow because I had had a viability screen done at 7 weeks and 6 days and I saw the baby, its heartbeat and it moving all around.  How could the baby have been dead just a week after that??  My human mind is not capable of understanding such things - the logic is just not there.

So here I am faced with another surgery and more questions.  Why did this happen again?  What am I doing wrong?  How can I have 2 healthy pregnancies and then back-to-back miscarriages?  They tell you over and over again that "you did nothing to cause this", but I can't help but second-guess every single decision I made during both of those brief pregnancies. 

After my surgery this past Friday, I decided to face this loss with more of a head-on approach than I did last time.  Last time, I basically avoided the issue and never really dealt with it.  I just felt numb.  I allowed myself to be in a dark fog and I just muddled through it.  As I read different people's stories of their own losses and struggles, I start to think "I just need to suck it up - other people have it way worse than I do!"  Then other times I'm like "everything happens for a reason - God is in control and I am not".  And then there are the times where I just cry out "why?!" and then all sorts of bitterness enters in.

I don't know what the future holds.  I don't know if we'll ever find out a reason as to why this has happened.  I don't know if we will ever have another baby.  But I do know that God is the one in control and I just need to lean on Him to get me through this.