7 weeks, 1 day

Scene: A bright spotlight shines on Universe as he walks out from behind the curtains. He holds his hands up in the air and the audience quickly hushes. "Intermission is over. Please take your seats folks. There is a lot more to this show yet!" 

I'm exhausted. I don't want to write this post. I don't want to do anything really. But at the same time, I feel the need to update. So fair warning, this will be a dumping of events and that is all. It is all I am capable of right now.

Friday I went into the clinic for my last u/s so that we could finally schedule my D&C. For the most part, I was ok. I wasn't weepy or angry. I was just anxious to move forward. It was appropriately silent during the u/s. So needless to say I was wholly unprepared when Dr. D, very tentatively, said that she found a heartbeat. It was tiny, but it was most certainly there at 105 bpm. I swear at that moment I felt something snap in my head. I felt like I was going crazy. How was this possible? I'd already started grieving the loss of this pregnancy. How much more back and forth could I possibly take?

I measured a few days behind, but more concerning was that my yolk sac was still quite large. I had previously refrained from researching this because I figured it didn't matter- it wouldn't change the outcome. Confused and overwhelmed, I asked Dr. D to be honest with me: what were my chances? She said that she was quite worried and that when she had seen situations similar to mine, more often than not, they hadn't ended well. However, in my head that still left room for a tiny, tiny bit of hope.

When I got home I assaulted Google. To not, would have been naive. I needed to know what was going on. And this is what I learned: 1) A yolk sac measuring over 5mm was considered "enlarged". Mine was 9mm. 2) This was indicative of a chromosomal abnormality 3) This was bound to end in miscarriage. It wasn't really a matter of if, but when. I found two or three anecdotal stories from random 2006 chat rooms where women had slightly enlarged sacs (6mm) which ended in live births. However there were 100's of bad stories to counter each good one. Even more conclusive were the scientific papers. That is when my tiny, tiny bit of hope was snuffed out. Again.

This is no longer an anembryonic pregnancy. No, now there is a tiny baby with a tiny heartbeat. My pregnancy symptoms are growing stronger. The spotting (ironically) has stopped. All this, yet I know how this is going to end. I head back on Wednesday for a followup. I know that there is a good chance that the heartbeat will have stopped by then. And if it hasn't, I'll have to wait even longer. Can you imagine? Just hanging out waiting for your baby to die? I can't. And I'm living it.

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Note: I know there are some of you that are still hopeful. That some still believe in miracles. But I don't, not anymore. I'm not asking you to not be hopeful, just please don't voice it to me. I need to face the facts and grieve my third loss for the second time. I can't manage to get through this any other way.