Coffee Stains

The title of this post was going to originally be the title of my blog.  One, the blog is about me and the kids in Jr. High used to call me "Coffee Stain" because of a scar on my right arm due to a coffee burn I recieved when I was eight months old.  Before you go into the "kids can be so cruel" mantra, neither the nickname or the scar ever bothered me. But the second reason I was going to call the blog "Coffee Stains" was because as a perfectionist, I often get sidetracked and discouraged by all the imperfections in my life, much like when those few drips of coffee that you can't get out of the carpet make you cringe every time you look at them.  But after the year I've had, I started thinking that how if you let them those few drops of coffee on the carpet, that are bound to happen, can make you hate that carpet even if the rest of it is pristine. 

So instead this blog is about the small miracles that happen everyday.  The opposite of "coffee stains", these miracles  are such a part of everyday life we forget see them as such.  It's the extra cash that comes in just as the hospital bill does. ( My dental bill was $256 and change, my state tax refund $256.) It's the extra shifts they offer you at work when money is tight.  It's the phone call from a friend just when you need it,  the minimal damage to your car and yourself in what could have been a very bad accident.

So often we ask, "Why me?" when bad things happen.  As if for some reason we should be exempt from them. As if it makes more sense if the person down the street, around the corner, on the other side of the country, falls into the percentile of the statistic of the bad thing.  I am that person.  The statistics say that twenty percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Include situations where the women didn't even know that she was pregnant (chemical pregnancies perhaps) and that statistic increases to almost fifty percent. Recurrent miscarriages only happen to one to two percent of the fertile population of women.  I fall into that fifty percent. I fall into that one percent. But what happens when we fall into the other side of the percentile? Why don't we ever ask "Why me?" when the good things happen? Maybe if we spent more time appreciating the good things instead of FMLing (and after a fourth loss, I have plenty of reason to FML), we would all be a little happier. I've learned in the last year that most of the time the small miracles are there if we decide to recognize them as such. And the coffee stains, well if they don't scrub out, you can always move a piece of furniture to cover them up.

The Fine Pink Line

After our second loss, a missed miscarriage discovered at 11 weeks, I wrote the following as my facebook status: "If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result, then sometimes there is a fine line between insanity and hope."  For couples suffering with recurrent pregnancy loss, that line gets blurred everytime they try to concieve after loss.

I got pregnant quickly with Squirt.  We had only been trying for a month and frankly, I was a little surprised when the test came up positive.  I didn't think I was ready to be a mother yet and was hoping the universe would buy me some time by letting it take a few months before I got pregnant.  Instead, the universe taught me one of the hardest lessons of being a mother.  Sometimes, despite our best efforts, our children still have bad things happen to them.  We lost Squirt at seven and a half weeks.

The doctor told us to wait two cycles before we started trying again.  My husband and I were eager.  I missed that second period and yet again there was a positive test.  And just as with Squirt, we did not wait to tell people about Chicken Little.  Because although miscarriages are fairly common, two in a row would surely not happen to me.  Oh, how naive I was.  There was no heartbeat on the doppler at eleven weeks.  The baby had died at eight weeks.  We knew we would try again and that is what inspired the facebook status because although the same thing seemed to be happening over and over again, we would try again. The next time, in the new year, with progesterone treatments and baby aspirin.  All my tests had come back negative for miscarrige causing disorders so that treatment is considered "the can't hurt, might help" treatment for those with unexplained recurrent pregnancy loss.

The new year started and again I got pregnant on the first try.  I tested five days before my missed period because I just "knew" that I was pregnant.  The early test came up positive.  You would think we would have learned by now.  But we were crazy with hope.  This time we only told our parents. Out we went to buy me a prenatal fitness DVD and Fit Pregnancy magazine. For a third time, I signed up for those weekly emails that send you an update of how your baby is developing  My first one was titled "You are three weeks and six days pregnant."  I had not even missed my period yet.  By the time I had finally tested after I had missed my period (because when you suffer from recurrent pregnancy loss, you test like a maniac to make sure there is still HCG in your system), my tests were coming up negative.  It was a chemical pregnancy. Snowflake ( I came up with that nickname because it basically melted as soon as it landed) never implanted.

So after three lost pregnancies, we continue to hope. We continue to try. We will continue to plan for each child after discovering it's conception.  Because what else can we do?? Not telling people and not planning for them isn't going to keep me from miscarrying.  I would rather live in hope that a subsequent pregnancy will stick, than the constant fear thet it will not.  Call me insane because I keep expecting a different result even though prior experience tells me otherwise, but to quote Dale Carnegie "Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."