Thank you for following along with me! In the last post, I shared the disappointment of our 1st fertility clinic and the heartache with feeling like there was no hope for our family. Today, I want to tell you all about the hope that came in meeting our doctor and our first week going to a new clinic. Sorry, it’s a long one. 🙂
Clinic #2 and Dr. T were not easy to get an appointment with. However, I knew that he was the Dr. I needed and was willing to do anything to get an appointment with him. When I first called, I was told that it would be 6 weeks before he would be taking any new patients. I impatiently made my appointment for the earliest possible date, because in my mind, we were loosing more time in our journey and I needed to see him right away. I ran out and bought a new notebook (because of course fun notebooks make everything better), I requested all the information from dreaded clinic 1, and I counted down the days to my appointment. I had lots of hope y’all… it was a new day!
Two days before my appointment I received a phone call from our new doctor’s office. Yay! Time to confirm our appointment… Wrong! It was Dr. T’s secretary calling to tell me that the appointment would have to be rescheduled because another patient had a medical emergency and that he needed to be there for her. She told me that he would be going out-of-town the next week and that he would see me once he returned. I was crushed. To be completely transparent, in that second, I was selfish! This was to be MY moment. Why couldn’t people understand that I finally had hope back and now some “medical emergency” was going to delay the new plans for the future… This was not my finest hour! I reluctantly scheduled another appointment for two weeks later. I tried to be understanding and considerate, but I was crushed. Was this a sign that this was not where we should go? Was this God’s way of telling us to just stop?
Two weeks later, we walked in to meet the man who would change our lives. I remember clearly walking in to his office and seeing other charts sitting on his desk. I couldn’t tell the names but I could tell they must have a history of some kind. You see some of the folders were two file folders put together and expanded over 2 inches thick. That’s a lot of paper and information! When he came in with my little folder, I was so happy to “not be one of those cases”. He even said, ” Hopefully you will never get to this, as he moved the other folders. We are going to figure these things out well before you get this far. Hi, I’m Dr. T and I’m here to help you have a baby!”
YES! Someone who is finally there to help. Not once did he tell me about how bad my diet was or that I needed to lose more weight. We sat and talked for 45 minutes about everything. He told me that size and food were not why I wasn’t getting pregnant. He was shocked to read the notes from our previous clinic and the notes Dr. B had written about us. He knew Dr. B well and was very apologetic that anyone in his profession would treat us that way. (YAY! He understood and saw what we went through.) He asked us if we were okay to do some blood work that day and for my husband and I to come back once they had gotten levels for us both. At this point, I would have climbed Mt. Everest for this man. You see, he had this genuine tone that showed he truly cared about us. He had a determination to make things right for us and he assured us that he would do everything he could to help us have a family! What a breath of fresh air! My husband and I did the blood work and completed more necessary paper work and left the office with a weight lifted off our shoulders. We had found our doctor. We had found the man who we knew in our hearts would help us have a family!
The next day as I was driving home from work, I received a phone call from one of the nurses in Dr. T’s office. She asked for some verifying information and then began asking me some follow-up questions from the paperwork the day before. I answered them all and thought, “Man she is very thorough.” Then she said something that took my breath away! Something I never in my wildest dreams expected to hear. “I am going to need you to come in Monday for more blood work. The labs we did yesterday showed that you are a few weeks pregnant and we want to confirm the pregnancy by running another blood test to confirm. Congratulations… you are PREGNANT!” The rest of the conversation went something like me telling her she had the wrong person and that the blood work was to get us cleared to begin medicine to get pregnant. I assured her that she had the wrong patient and she confirmed everything with me again. As I hung up the phone, I was completely shell-shocked. What just happened? Pregnant?!
Immediately I called my husband from the parking lot of Michaels, where I pulled over because I couldn’t believe what she had just said and had no business driving in that moment. Now prior to this, I dreamed of how I would announce to my husband that he would be a father. I planned out cute gifts and a special dinner. Y’all, having this women tell me I was pregnant was a complete surprise! As he answered the phone, I immediately said “Babe, this is not the way I wanted to tell you this but, I am pregnant!” I don’t know if he thought I was joking or crazy or what. I honestly don’t remember much of the conversation except that when I got off the phone I called the doctor’s office back because I was sure that they had made a mistake. When I called, a different nurse answered. I explained the situation and how someone called me to say I was pregnant but that I was sure she had given me the wrong information. The nurse laughed and said she would transfer me. I politely asked her to please get the chart herself so that I could be sure this was true. Thank goodness the people at Clinic 2 are patient and loving! She retrieved my chart and relayed the same information to me. I was indeed pregnant! She said it was early, and that I should come in Monday for another beta test, but looking at the numbers, I was pregnant. WOW! I thanked her and wished her a great weekend.
All my dreams had come true. We didn’t even need to have a fertility doctor. We were pregnant on our own and didn’t even know it! Yay us! Thanks God! I thought, so this is why we had to wait. We were waiting for an appointment because we were supposed to find out that we were pregnant. It all added up. That weekend we went to a Halloween party at my best friend’s house. You see she was 6 months pregnant with her 1st child and I was on cloud 9. She and I were pregnant at the same time! Although we didn’t tell anyone at the party but had a great night because we knew our secret. My husband and I talked about how exciting it would be to have kids just months apart from our friends. We discussed how we would tell our parents, family and friends. We planned our future with this new baby. It was awesome! I went in Monday morning, just as I was instructed to do. They took my blood and smiled as we chatted about how exciting it was. You see, they were the only ones to know my secret. The nurses and staff all knew why I was there and they were so happy for me. I went about my day, happy as could be.
The nurse said they would call with numbers around lunch that day and to have my phone near me. Lunch time came and went with no phone call. I figured the day had gotten busy, since there were at least 10 other women having blood drawn that morning, and so I kept working. Around 3:45 my phone rang, the office knew that I would be off work by then. When I answered and heard the voice on the other line, my heart stopped. You see, you can always tell when someone on the phone has bad news. “Hi, we got the results back from your labs today. The HCG levels have dropped since the blood work we took the last week. I’m sorry to say that we believe this was a biochemical pregnancy. You will probably start a period within about 2-3 days. We will need you to come in for blood work again to confirm the HCG levels have left your system. Ma’am I am sorry! Do you have any questions for me?…” WHAT?! Yes, I have questions… my world has just been crushed and I don’t know up from down. Inside I was screaming with a million things swarming in my brain! All I could manage to ask was, “what does biochemical pregnancy mean and does this mean I am not pregnant any more?” She went on to explain that medically they don’t consider a pregnancy viable until certain factors are met and that even though my body was producing HCG (the pregnancy hormone only detectable with a pregnancy) it was not medically a “true” pregnancy because of how early it was. She went on to say that had I not had blood work the week before on that exact day, I would never have even known. She said to consider that it happens all the time to women who may never know. I made the blood draw appointment, politely thanked her and got off the phone as fast as I could.
So many things were going through my head. Not a real pregnancy?… You never would have known?… What did this all mean and add up to?… Why was I going through this?… How would I tell my husband?… Then I thought, “Okay God. What are you doing right now?”… (You see this is when God and I had one of our “angry talks”.) I know God has a plan and I know that my little human brain has no capacity to understand the greatness of the plans He has for my life, but in that moment, I was angry. I was lost and confused and I told Him all about it. Once I gathered myself and stopped angry crying. I called my husband who was about to leave for work. I told him everything and in a matter of words broke his heart with the news. Not only was it bad enough to have to hear it all myself, but then I had to call the love of my life and relay the message that even though my blood showed the pregnancy hormone, I wasn’t “really” pregnant and that in 9 months we would NOT be parents! That was hard! Maybe one of the hardest things I had ever had to go through with him in our marriage at that point.
Even today when I hear the phrase biochemical pregnancy, I cringe. I cannot stand medical terminology that lessens what I am going through. I don’t care if it was early. I don’t care if I possibly would have never known. I care about the fact that I did know and that my body produced, on its own, the hormone that shows a pregnancy occurred. I have read a lot and asked various medical professionals about biochemical pregnancies. Some say it is not a “real” pregnancy while others say that it is a true pregnancy. For me, the fact that the hormone was present (which doesn’t happen as a fluke) and that we had the blood work to prove it, means that I was pregnant. We lost a baby… our baby! Our Angel #1 was now in Heaven. No one has been or will be able to convince me otherwise. You see, what I didn’t understand at the time, is that having those blood levels documented was actually a part of God’s plan. The office now had a real picture of what my levels of HCG and other hormones could look like. This later helped them to make a plan on what hormones we needed to add as a supplement to help me become and stay pregnant.
This is when I once again was humbled and amazed by the plan that I didn’t see at the moment. You see if we had gone to the appointment when it was originally scheduled, the levels may not have shown up. This means we never would have know about the pregnancy and never would have seen the low hormone levels which could be monitored and fixed. This is God’s plan at work. Now I don’t believe that God liked for us to hurt. That was not the purpose. The purpose was the result of the experience. The knowledge gained that would help us later. Just like a glass maker has to put the glass in to the fire so it can be molded and shaped, sometimes we have to be put in the heat and fire of life in order for us to be shaped into who we are meant to be!
Our Angel #1 has been in Heaven 6 years this October. The hurt is still there for our little one that I never got to hold, but I know one day I will get to meet our baby in Heaven. Until that day, I will hold our child in my heart.
“Pearl of Wisdom”- “For I know the plans I have for you,” declared the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
Request/Thought: Pray for/Think of anyone who has lost a child. No matter if the got to hold them in their hands, or if they hold them only in their heart, they need our prayers for continued healing daily!
Thanks for reading!~ Me 🙂
My Life in Pearls 