History Has Repeated

Well, as luck would have it, the same day I finally feel comfortable enough to share my news, I find out I've miscarried again. The worst part is, even after the D&C tomorrow, I could still experience this awful morning sickness for weeks to come. This life is too hard sometimes. Day 277

Day 276

If you've wondered why I have been MIA the past couple months, aside from the random posts, it is because I have been going through one of the most exciting and terrifying trials I've endured so far. On February 16th I went to the doctor because my blood sugar had been kind of crazy while we were on vacation in Vegas. I decided to get it checked out and while I was there she ran an HCG test to rule out pregnancy. Monday the 21st I returned for the results and my A1C was in the normal range (meaning I wasn't diabetic) and my HCG was negative (meaning I wasn't pregnant). Despite the results, I found myself standing quietly in my Mom's bathroom the very next day, waiting patiently for the results of another hpt. It was one of those moments I could feel my pulse in my tongue. I still don't quite understand why this particular time I had such feelings of anticipation. It's not like this was new to me. After 7 months of trying to get pregnant, I had this pregnancy test business down to a science. I even reduced myself to becoming one of those women that breaks the test apart and holds it up to natural light, with such sincere hope that there would be a shadow of a line. Anything. But this time I was excited, because somehow I already knew there was a little thing growing inside of me. The second line didn't waste any time appearing and I collapsed in my Mom's arms, crying for a good 20 minutes. You have to understand...I had a miscarriage, surgery, and 7 months of pain wrapped up with the news of this pregnancy. How could I possibly approach the next 9 months with any sort of normalcy? But I still tried- and broke the news to Trenton by wrapping Ben in a shirt that said, "Big Brother." Trenton was elated. We made a pact to keep the world wide web out of the loop until things seemed a little more promising. And this is where we made our mistake. We were already expecting something to go wrong.

My first prenatal appointment was earlier than it usually would have been because of my previous miscarriage. My doctor and nurse were so excited and did everything in their power to sweep out the memories of the last time I had been in that office. It was too early to get any images so they drew my blood and let me know I'd be receiving a call in a couple days. After a week of having my HCG levels monitored, I got the call that things didn't seem to be progressing like they should. In a "normal" pregnancy, a woman's HCG levels should double every 48-72 hours, and mine were only mildly increasing. The nurse then told me, in the least compassionate tone imaginable, "This is most often a sign that you're miscarrying. You should prepare yourself for that reality." How does one prepare themselves for something like that? Should I be doing something to prepare physically? Is she talking mentally and emotionally? All I know is that with a few words, this woman crushed me, and I was somehow expected to accept the reality for what it was. Which would have been fine, honestly, except that we weren't positive that I was truly miscarrying. I was left with very little hope, but I couldn't shake the fact that there was a slight chance this baby could survive. I was stuck in this dark, detached pocket of fog where I couldn't bring myself to feel excited, or sad. I had to watch and wait, for what felt like an eternity. That next Friday, I began bleeding.

The following Monday I went to my doctor so she could confirm that I was, in fact, miscarrying. While performing the ultrasound she noticed a yolk sac beginning to form. There was no baby, but my body hadn't expelled the sac yet. "This doesn't necessarily mean anything. But if your baby is viable, we should be able to see the heart in about a week. We'll repeat an ultrasound then." So for the next week, I again lived in limbo. Hell, actually. Trenton and I showed up for the ultrasound with high hopes, which were quickly dashed when the sonographer did not find a heartbeat. For as far along as I was said to be, they should have seen a heartbeat. "It could just be too early. I really can't give you any more information than that. We'll just have to watch and wait." Trenton and I walked out of that office completely numb, and that's when he got the call that his father had passed away and everything baby related took a much needed backseat. I continued to bleed through that week and the days following our return home from Iowa. But at my next appointment, my doctor did an ultrasound with their low-resolution, portable machine, and even without having to squint, I saw that familiar flutter of a heart. This baby was thriving! All four of us- my nurse, doc, Trenton, and I were speechless. It didn't make any sense. None of this made any sense, but I was not going to question it. Unfortunately since then, I have been placed on bed rest because of the bleeding. And I have had the worst morning sickness I've experienced. But as far as we know, I am almost 9 weeks pregnant.

Richard Joseph Schlosser- 03/09/11

Day 275

During our almost 6 years of marriage, there have been many nights that Trenton and I stayed awake talking about how we'd deal with the passing of our parents. I think both of us assumed it would be my parents taking the first leap, since they have 10 years seniority over Trenton's mom and dad, and they have both endured a heart attack, diabetes, and other various illnesses. Whenever we got to talking about it, Trenton always promised me he'd be there for me- that I wouldn't have to deal with the loss by myself. So it came as a horrifying shock when we received the call last Wednesday that Trenton's dad had suffered a heart attack, at the age of 60, and died. I never figured I'd be doing the comforting first.

The lessons I've learned this week are invaluable and too numerous to share here. But I would like to share something I caught yesterday as I was thumbing through the channels on TV. I just happened to stop on Dr. Oz, and his guest was the famous Medium, John Edwards. Edwards was giving tips on communicating with those on the other side. Normally I would have rolled my eyes and moved on, but something he said struck a chord in me. "It's a lot easier to talk to them when they're gone if you communicate with them while they're here." Then Dr. Oz suggested that if there are any bridges needing to be built, we shouldn't waste any time building them. It's such a normal part of the human experience, to assume we'll always have that opportunity. This week I was given the stinging reminder of how temporal our time on the earth truly is. Shame on me for caring deeply about things that are so insignificant. I refuse to have my retrospective look at life be one of regret, anger, and wastefulness. And I certainly don't want to be left, or leave my loved ones wondering how I felt about them. I'm so thankful for the blessing of another day with air in my lungs, and the opportunity to be with the people I love most.

Because of you Rick, I have my husband- whom I cherish, and my two beautiful children. You will always live through them and their posterity. And you will forever be loved and missed by those who knew you. I hope you find your perfect fishing spot, and rest there peacefully.

Janet

Hope

Day 274

A lesson that I am repeatedly being taught lately is the power of keeping a positive attitude, and just as equally, the destructive power of negative thinking. I'll admit it, I am a recovering pessimist. Why shouldn't I be pessimistic? We're living through a recession, gas prices are on the rise again, our rain forests are disappearing, there still isn't a cure for cancer, AIDS, diabetes, etc...But maybe there is a little good stemming from all this. Okay- so we're in a recession. That's no fun. But an offshoot of the recession is that many families are growing closer as they work through their various financial trials together. People are going back to school, when they might not have otherwise. Kids are learning to work harder- to truly earn what they get, or at the very least, be more thankful for what they already have. And thanks to all the mistakes we, as Americans, have been making for so many years, there are now thousands...millions of resources available to learn about making wiser financial decisions in the future. At least we have the hope that our children will learn from our past. Yes, gas prices are rising- but maybe as a reaction, we'll burn less fuel, and do a little good for our Earth. And while it is horrific that there still isn't a cure for the diseases I mentioned earlier, as a result of the search for these cures, Doctors are becoming more sharp, science more advanced, and many other treatments for many other diseases have been accidentally discovered along the way.
I had a friend that used to always say she didn't mind when things were going badly, because she saw it as a promise that the events in her life would be improving shortly. I don't know if I have it in me to be that optimistic, but I am beginning to see the overwhelming shift that can result from maintaining a good attitude. In the Oct 2008 Conference address, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said that "Hope is one leg of a three-legged stool, together with faith and charity. These three stabilize our lives regardless of the rough or uneven surfaces we might encounter at the time."

And I guess it should be noted that for every negative, there is a positive. It might even be 2 or 3 to 1- positive being in the lead. Heavenly Father has blessed us with so much beauty and awesomeness, especially if we're looking for it.

Janet

Women

Day 273

Women

1. Even little girls, in all their blithe, unharrowed innocence, have a presentiment of sorrow, hardship, and adversity...of loss. Women, throughout their lives, have an intrinsic and profound understanding of Keats's sentiments about "Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu."
2. This sage knowledge of, and ability to abide, the inherently fugitive nature of happiness somehow accounts for the extraordinary beauty of women as they age.
3. Women have an astonishing capacity to maintain their equilibrium in the face of life's mutability, its unceasing and unforeseeable vicissitudes. And this agility is always in stark and frequently comical contradistinction to men's naively bullish and brittle delusions that things can forever remain exactly the same.
4. Women are forgiving but implacably cognizant.
5. Women are almost never gullible but sometimes relax their vigilance out of loneliness. (And I believe most women abhor loneliness.)
6. In their most casual, offhand, sisterly moments, women are capable of discussing sex in such uninhibited detail that it would cause a horde of carousing Cossacks to cringe.
7. Women are, for all intents and purposes, indomitable. It really requires an almost unimaginable confluence of crushing, cataclysmic forces to vanquish a woman.
8. Women's instincts for self-preservation and survival can seem to men to be inscrutably unsentimental and sometimes cruel.
9. Women have a very specific kind of courage that enables them to fling themselves into the open sea= whether it's a new life for themselves, another person's life, or even what might appear to be a kind of madness.
10. Women never- no matter how old they are- completely relinquish their aristocratic assumption of seductiveness.

And here is one last thing I know- and I know this with a certitude that exceeds anything I've said before: that men's final thoughts in their waking days and in their lives are women...ardent, wistful thoughts of wives and lovers and daughters and mothers.

Mark Leyner, a husband, a father, a son, and a brother, is the author of eight books and a cowritier of the movie War, Inc.

Janet