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Disclaimer: This blog will not be pleasant for a while. I'm not going to censor myself because frankly, this is the only place I have where I can openly voice what is happening.
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I've only gotten a few hours of sleep since Thursday. Because every time I close my eyes, I either see what could have been or the image of my dead baby on the ultra sound monitor. And yes, it had grown enough in the last week and a half to resemble a little human form.
The knife goes in deeper.
And if it weren't enough to grieve the child I finally allowed to hold all my hopes and dreams, I'm forced to make a decision on how, exactly, I would like to expel it from my body. They've given me 2 choices, both of which carry risks and terrify me beyond words.
A natural miscarriage seems straightforward enough, but the process is, from what I hear, excruciatingly painful. You labor the fetus until it is out, by yourself, completely unaided. I guess they don't have labor and delivery classes for women with dead babies. Or maybe I just haven't earned enough points as a mother yet. Whatever the case, there is approximately a 10% risk of developing a severe infection if all the tissue doesn't expel on its own. If this happens, you have to have a D&C anyway. Sounds like a fun way to spend the afternoon, no? Oh, that's not quite right, it could take over a month for the bleeding to stop.
Or, there is the D&C- a surgical extraction of the fetus. You wake up groggy, in pain, and... empty. Sounds like the easier route to take, but there is an approximately 13% chance of complications due to the anesthesia or permanent scarring of the uterus, which of course, could render you permanently infertile. Oh the irony.
Two really great choices, how ever will I ever pick? But just maybe, while I am in the process of making this decision, my body will force my hand. It is a surreal feeling knowing that literally at any moment, the spotting that has already started, could turn into red blood and I'd be forced to my knees. Not that I'm really in the mood to go shopping at the mall or for a picnic at the beach right now... but still.
I cancelled the D&C that was scheduled by my Ob for Monday. For several reasons I was mad at her and didn't know if I trusted her to do the procedure. There is also the very real possibility that I'm just shooting the messenger because she was the one that delivered the bad news. However, the only doctor I *do* trust is Dr. D, and she is out of the country until early August.
So, I have scheduled a consult on Monday with Dr. D's partner instead. She spent some time on the phone with me yesterday and talked me through the options- something my Ob did not do which left me feeling very scared, very confused, and entirely alone. Mike will be coming with me because he's really concerned about the D&C and scarring. In his mind, he'd rather me go through the pain of a natural miscarriage if it means my fertility is preserved. Which, I totally get and I'm glad he is there to think logically because at this point, I've pretty much shut down. But I'm just so scared to have a natural miscarriage. I don't know if I can physically or emotionally handle it. I'm hopeful that Dr. S will somehow give us the direction we need. But in reality I know that she will just present us with the facts and tell us that this is a personal decision that we must make on our own.
In the meantime, I just want to curl up and die.
