The One Where I Let It Out

Mr. Superman and I have been together for well over four years and married for just over three. Even though that's a relatively short time, it feels like its been forever, but not in a griping sarcastic way. I mean it in the way that we clicked so fast, so perfectly, so smoothly and everything for us relationship wise has always been border line heavenly that it is hard to imagine my life before him.

Very shortly after we began dating, we knew we would be getting married. Its as cliche as it sounds but when you know, you know. Before we got married, a few months I'd say, we knew we wanted children. Immediately. You know how some people feel drawn towards attending a certain university or feels as if a specific career is their calling in life? For us, we knew that kids is what we wanted. It was the only thing that could have possibly made our love stronger and more perfect.

You all know, we tried.

I wrote all about our Two Angel Babies for the first time a few months ago. I have answered many, many questions about our plans for becoming parents. With my health issues, things were laid out by the doctors in a way that gave us little to no hope of being able to conceive on our own and have me carry a baby to term or even to a time that the baby could be delivered and still live. I was told in February of this year in a post-op appointment that without invitro fertilization, we wouldn't be able to become parents and even then, my chances were below 6%. We were absolutely heart-broken.

A few months later, I was diagnosed with a blood disease called HHT. After speaking with my hematologist on several occasions about the medical issues I've had through out my life and recently with difficulty in getting pregnant, and then the loss of our babies, we discussed treatment options to attempt to bring our odds of success up. He felt that my HHT was a major contributing factor to our losses. The treatment plan worked for most of my HHT symptoms but it made everything else much worse. After researching the long term side-effects of this treatment, which just so happens to be the same thing they give breast cancer patients, I discontinued the use of the medication. Around the same time I was diagnosed with HHT, Mr. Superman and I had discussed with each other and with several doctors our options of birth control for the sole purposes of easing my chronic pain (stupid woman issues) and to prevent us from losing another baby. The only form of BC I had not tried, was an IUD. It hurt like Hades (the doctor said it was because I had never had my uterus expanded by a baby. Well duh there genius, thanks for rubbing it in.) After a couple months it seemed to be doing the job. My pain level was down a smidge which was the essential goal.

Well Lovelies, it didn't work.

On October 19, 2010, I woke up feeling a bit scared (I was facing the re-opening of some old wounds) but hopeful for a semi-decent day. It was my 3-year wedding anniversary and I was expecting a gift delivered via UPS from my darling husband who's love I could feel from 8,000 miles away. I had plans to go shopping and maybe get a pedicure, you know, because it was my freaking anniversary! Let me just say now, that my day couldn't have hardly been any worse or gone any different than what I had expected. The re-opening of old wounds was horrendous. It was dramatic but more than that, it was terrifying and lonely having to do it alone. After that, I realized that the abdominal pain I had been having for about two weeks was getting much, much worse. I decided I had better kip into the Urgent Care and see what was going on. I had suspicions that it was a ruptured cyst that had arrived about two weeks before Mr. Superman deployed. Boy was I wrong.

Within two hours I was once again given the worst news I have ever received. I was losing another baby. Another baby we had not thought probable let alone possible. It had torn away from my uteran wall and I was in very real danger of my uterus itself splitting open, causing massive internal bleeding which in turn would either land me in the hospital for months or kill me. My HHT complicates everything but when it comes to internal bleeding, it makes it nearly impossible to do anything, medically, to stop it. One more reason we know its a miracle I survived my ectopic last February. I was asked if I had a primary care doctor or an OB here in AZ. I said no. I was asked if I had anybody in the waiting room. I said no. They asked if they could call my husband to come pick me up. I actual laughed at that one. If only right? I called my sister and my mother and let them know. My mother asked me repeatedly if she could come and be with me. I insisted she didn't because the doctor was almost finished and I would be heading home to my sister's. They removed my IUD, wrote me a prescription for an antibiotic, a mild pain medicine, and nausea pills. I was told 14 days strict bed rest for my uteran lesions to heal enough to no longer be in the danger zone of internal bleeding and a follow up with my OB.  I drove home in a daze.

For the last month, I have been in shock. I have been at a loss for words and the ability to outlet my emotions into something else has failed me. I have questioned, re-questioned, and continued to doubt if I could have done something different. Right after Mr. Superman left, we both began to have dreams and feelings about getting pregnant, being pregnant, and delivering a baby. I laughed it all off and refused to take a test. Taking a test that would turn out the be the 200th some-odd negative result would only depress me. I asked the doctors if I could have done something and was told that no, there was no prevention to the uteran wall tear. After all of that sank in, I began to question. You know, the age old question of WHY? Why would God allow this? Why allow me to once again get pregnant, but before I even realize it, take another baby away? Why have this happen when I was at my most vulnerable and alone. My husband is in the middle of a very real war-zone over 8,000 miles away. There is absolutely nothing he could do to comfort me and having to tell him would only cause him extreme pain and stress. Telling Mr. Superman was the second hardest thing I have ever had to tell him. I could see the worry and fear in his eyes.

I can honestly say, without fear of offending anyone, that I can count on one hand the amount of people who get it. Out of those three people, only one has suffered a loss so deep that I cannot even begin to imagine what she has gone through. Her attempts in helping me, to comfort me, have left me awed at her strength and selflessness. Being able to correspond with her though, and open up to her, has helped. Only a tiny, microscopic bit, but it has helped. Emily, you know I'm talking about you. I was able to confide in her that I felt as if I had not even begun to mourn and I had people acting as if nothing had happened or that I should already be over it. Let me say this, it hasn't even been a month yet. There is no time line for grief or mourning. There is no right or wrong way to do it. No matter how much I may seem okay or able to deal, it is 95% a facade. I have lost a friendship so very dear to me in the course of all of this which has made it all the more difficult. Losing anybody, let alone a child, is something you never, ever get over whether that child be 8 weeks along in conception, 4 months, a year old, 12 years old, or 60 years old. It is one of the impossibly difficult, seemingly unconquerable hurdles thrown into people's lives when they least expect it that tests us to our cores.

So there you have it. We now have 3 Angel Babies awaiting us on the other side. Its a very bittersweet notion. I think it always will be. Some days, most days, I ache all over from the emotional pain. It has been unspeakably heart-wrenching to go through this without my best friend, my husband, and the other half of my heart by my side. This is one of those things that you just don't want to believe and yet no matter how often you tell yourself it isn't real, or how many times you close your eyes in hopes that when they open, it will all have been a horrible dream, it just doesn't go away. You always want to believe things will get better and I know, deep, deep down, that it will. Eventually.

Right now I take it one day at a time. I still feel as if it was truly, one of the most unfair things I have had placed upon me, but then I think about how much worse it all could have been and I regret being angry at my Heavenly Father. He is in control and He by far, is the only one who knows why. It is human nature to question everything, especially in our weak moments, but human nature is not an excuse. He knows my capabilities much better than I could even guess at which is why I have not yet given up. That along with the fact that I have to be whole and healthy when Mr. Superman steps off that bus next year.