Let me take you back to June 20, 2014 - my morning started out rough. I woke up around 5am with sharp shooting pains running up my entire right side. By 8am I was able to nod back off to sleep. Ryan was off for summer vacation so he took Nolan to daycare and then headed to the gym. When he called to check on me I told him that I wasn’t getting any better and at that point I had called out of work. All I kept telling him was that the pain was something I had never felt before. It didn’t feel normal.
I tried to lie down on the couch. I tried to lie down on the recliner and I really just couldn’t lie down. Every time I would get the shooting pain running up my side into my shoulder blade. It got so bad at one point I fell to the ground in tears. That is the moment Ryan picked me up and told me he was taking me to the hospital.
Hospitals freak me out. I called my dad immediately when I got in the car. In tears I told him we where we were going and that I probably had appendicitis, kidney stones, gull stones or something wrong me. He calmed me.
When we pulled up to the ER I tried to act calm and mentally tell myself that the pain was gone, but it wasn’t. After 8 hours in the ER (thank you to my sister for picking Nolan up from daycare, picking up Chuggins, taking care of them and keeping them over night) it was finally time to be seen. Mind you every time I sat down I had sharp shooting pains and I hate when people see me in pain so I really just paced the waiting room and bit my lip, cringing in pain for 8 miserable hours. They even bumped people ahead of me in front of my face. Just when I was at my whit’s end they finally called my name.
When the nurse saw me they first asked routine questions, “when was your last period?” stuff like that. I had just had my period at the beginning of the month, but some part of me felt the need to tell them the date followed up with a, “but we are trying”. Ryan just looked at me as if to say ,why do they need to know that?
Well, the news that the ER doctor delivered next caught Ryan and I both off guard and in shock. “You are pregnant.” As most do when they find out news like this, I smiled. Immediately, reality sunk in and I felt sad, scared and worried for my precious baby.
I honestly was hoping for an appendicitis, kidney stones, gull stones, something. Any of those would do. Please let it be a hernia. I was taken immediately for an ultrasound. It was horrible. I could not lie down. I was in tears from the pain. My wonderful ER nurse felt sympathy for me and got the OK to give me pain meds. My husband stayed by my side the entire time. I cringed on the table looking for that tiny jelly bean shaped baby and to hear my baby's heartbeat. I felt hopeful that the baby could be ok and that this pain running all the way up to my shoulder was something completely not related.
My OBGYN was on call at the hospital that evening. He delivered the worst news possible about 30 minutes after I had been seen for the ultrasound. I was miscarrying. But it wasn’t a “normal” miscarriage. The pain was because I was bleeding internally and I was told that I had to have surgery immediately. I had to sign off on blood transfusion paperwork. I was told that it is possible that my tube burst and I was having a tubular miscarriage. I was told I may have to have either my tube or ovary removed. Everything was unclear and the only thing that was visible is that I was internally bleeding and that if I wouldn’t have gone to the hospital I would have lost so much blood that I would have eventually passed out. I was flooded with horrible news in a matter of minutes. I cried.
Ryan stayed strong, held my hand and told me everything would be ok. I told him he had to call my sister immediately and she could be responsible for filling in my dad, brother, his parents, etc… Ryan was strong until he made that phone call. He got choked up and at that point I lost it. Seeing him scared only terrified me more.
The next part is fuzzy. I can barely even remember going into the operating room. I just remember having to say goodbye to Ryan and being shaken with fear. The surgery that was performed on me was a laparotomy for an ectopic pregnancy. Just that fast, I was no longer pregnant.
Through this horrific journey there was some “good” news. My tubes were fine, neither had burst. My ovaries were healthy. Well, there was a cyst that was bleeding on one of them, but my doctor told me the cyst was from the pregnancy. Neither my tubes nor ovaries had to be removed during the surgery. There was a lot of blood, but I did not need a blood transfusion. From what I remember, the doctor was still unclear as to what had really happened.
I stayed in the hospital overnight and then was anxious to get home to Nolan the next day. The recovery was similar to that of a C-section. I was told not to lift Nolan for 2 weeks. That caused more tears, for both of us, throughout the recovery process.
The recovery doesn’t seem to end. When you miscarry the pain stays with you. What helped more than anything though, the support from my family and my friends. The outpouring love and well wishes for a speedy recovery, friends taking the time to cook for us, everything. It really just blew me away.
I am grateful. I am grateful for the people in my life. I am grateful that I do have a healthy, happy little boy that fills our lives with more happiness than I can even describe. I am grateful for everyone how has helped us through this obstacle in our lives.
I am sad. I am sad that anyone has to go through this. It is emotionally and physically draining. I am sad for the amount of women that are close to me and that I have come to know have experienced this loss. My heart hurts so badly for them.
I feel guilty. I feel guilty about the emotions and struggles I have had because I am fortunate to have a healthy child. It is hard to describe. I have struggled with this miscarriage, and yet I feel guilty for being sad. It might not make sense to some and be hard to comprehend. The reason I feel this way is because I do know that I have been blessed, and honestly it is because I want those I know who have had a similar experience to so badly have a healthy pregnancy, birth and child. I so badly want this for them. My guilt is because I was fortunate to have already experienced all those things with Nolan and that as a result I feel like I should not be sad.
The statistic is unreal, 1 in 4 women miscarry. That is 25% of all pregnancies. Unreal.
When you date everything back, Ryan and I had put the plan in motion to extend our family back in March. We got pregnant in May, unbeknownst to ourselves due to my false period in June. After the surgery, I was scared. The idea of becoming pregnant again became so scary to me that here we are in October and everything is finally starting to feel ok again.
Maybe, just maybe, there will be another little Hurd baby in our future. I will hope for the best. I do firmly believe that everything happens for a reason. I will continue to feel blessed that I do have a little boy that brings a smile to my face every second of every day. I am blessed to have such a strong family and friends as my support system. I am blessed to be able to share stories with some of the people closest in my life and have so many to lean on. Through all of this, I am grateful.
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