Worst July 4th Ever – and 8 weeks

On the Fourth of July five years ago (that would be 2006, if you’re too sleepy to do the math), my then-boyfriend, now-husband, proposed to me.  He was sick with a nasty cold and I picked out the ring myself, but it was still a romantic and special day.  That was a very, very good fourth of July.

Yesterday, however?  Was the worst fourth of July I’ve ever had.

We returned from our trip to Europe on July 3.  It was a pretty great trip, though I was exhausted and nauseated through most of it.  Still, we saw a lot of amazing things, spent a lot of time with family, and overall enjoyed ourselves quite a bit.  I’ll try to do a post about it with some photos later this week.  We got home in the evening after a rough flight involving some sick bags on my part….and I tried to force myself to eat a little food before going to bed.

I woke up on the morning of the 4th feeling way better.  My husband made me breakfast in bed, which helped a lot.  I had a leisurely morning, caught up on my food network shows, took a long and luxurious shower.  And then, my friends, the nightmare began.  While I stood wrapped in my towel post-shower I felt a gush of something coming out of me.  Um, yeah.  I’ll admit that I thought I was wetting myself, which was weird because I didn’t have to pee.  I rushed to the toilet and sat down in time to see a stream of bright red blood that ran all the way down my leg.  Stupidly I had a moment where I thought “wow I must have cut myself really badly when I shaved this morning” – only to look down in the toilet and see a LOT of blood.  A super alarming amount even if I hadn’t been pregnant.

Only I was.  Am.  Pregnant.

I called out for John and he called the RE’s office, which of course was closed for the holiday.  They patched us through to the doctor on call, who was not my doctor, and who also happens to not have a great bedside manner.  He asked if I had been taking progesterone and I said yes.  He said we should go to the emergency room and get an ultrasound done to make sure everything was okay.   So I managed to clean myself up and put on some clothes, constant tears and sobs racking my body.  And we went to the emergency room.

What followed were some of the scariest hours of my life thus far.  All I wanted was to see my baby on the screen, and to see a heartbeat.  It was all I wanted.  I was one day shy of eight weeks pregnant, only two days away from when I was supposed to have my next ultrasound and see what marvelous things were happening inside me.  And I was bleeding as if I was on the heaviest day of my period.

The doctor at the ER was pretty good, even though he wasn’t an ob/gyn or anything similar of course.  He did a pelvic exam and said my cervix was closed, which was good.  He had several vials of my blood drawn.  Then we waited what seemed like hours for the test results (which yes, confirmed that indeed I was about 8 weeks pregnant) and FINALLY, literally about three hours after we arrived at the ER, I was put in a wheelchair and wheeled over to the ultrasound room.  The u/s technician wasn’t supposed to tell us what she saw – she was supposed to let the doctor tell us.  But I wanted to kiss her when she showed us the image of our baby, with a strong and beautiful heartbeat, tucked neatly in with the yolk sac and looking perfectly fine.

In the end they called it a “threatened miscarriage” and they sent me home, ordering bed rest for the day and saying I should go to see my doctor the next morning.

I still don’t know what caused the bleeding.  It continued throughout the rest of the day, lessening at times only to pick up speed again and freak me out.  There were clots at times, or what I can only hope were clots and not tissue.  I am waiting now for my RE’s office to open so I can get in there ASAP.  I want Dr. T to tell me his theory on what happened.  I can’t help but believe the stress of international travel had something to do with all this, and I really am wishing right about now that we hadn’t gone on vacation at all.  But I guess if this had to happen, I am just grateful it waited until after we got home.  If this had happened while we were in another country I might have literally lost my mind.

So today I am eight weeks pregnant.  During the night I barely bled at all, and the bleeding seems to have slowed right down this morning. I am praying and hoping and wishing with all my little heart that this continues and that our chickpea stays safely in there.  And yesterday was officially the worst July 4th of my life.

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