May 24, 2004, Miscarriage

On Sunday, May 23, 2004, I started to get some really bad cramps. They hurt so bad, and I was definitely worried about what was going on. However, being a Sunday, my doctor's office was closed. I couldn't really do anything but wait until the next day to call the doctor. As the day went on, the cramping got worse. And then the bleeding started. Heavy, heavy bleeding. I was still naive enough to think that things could still be okay.

I prayed fervently for Heavenly Father to stop whatever was going on in my body. I had Aaron give me a priesthood blessing. I remembered all of the teachings about having the faith of just a mustard seed would make it possible to move mountains. I honestly had never had more faith in my life that the Lord would fix whatever was wrong. I believed it in my core and with every prayer I said that day. I just knew things would be okay.

Aaron's family was getting together at Leslie's house for dinner that night. I asked him to apologize to them for me, but that I thought I'd better take it easy and lay down so that whatever was happening would stop. However, it didn't stop.

We went to bed that night with a lot of questions on our mind. It was pretty late and I finally called the E.R., hoping that they would give me some insight into what was going on and what I should do. They wouldn't give any information over the phone and said that if I needed any opinion from them that I needed to come in. I recalled my doctor telling me that I should go to the E.R. if I was soaking through more than one pad an hour, and I wasn't at that point. I wanted to call my sister, Stephanie, to ask her because she is a nurse. But it was midnight now and I didn't want to call her so late.

We decided to go to bed and call the doctor in the morning. I don't know that I ever fell asleep. Aaron did, and I tried not to wake him. The pain was so much and kept coming in waves, closer and closer together. I had never felt cramping like this. I went into the bathroom and was bleeding so heavily that I just sat on the toilet. I was still dumb enough not to go to the E.R. because I hadn't technically soaked through a pad in an hour, it was in the toilet, and how would I prove to them that I had soaked through a pad if I hadn't really? Someone obviously needed to clue me in, but I had never been through anything like this.

I finally woke up Aaron at around 2:00 a.m. to let him know that things were getting worse. He felt really badly for not realizing that I had been up all this time with so much cramping and stuff. We decided to go to the E.R. I remember my mom telling me a story of when she had a miscarriage that the doctor was upset with her for not bringing in the tissue in a baggie or something. I wondered what to do about that, but didn't think I could really scoop it out of the toilet at this point. So we got ready to go when suddenly I felt better. I told Aaron that maybe we should just go back to bed because the cramping stopped. So we did. Five minutes later it started again. We got up to head out and I could barely walk, so Aaron was helping me. Then after a couple of minutes, it stopped. So once again I suggested that we wait until morning. After a couple of minutes, it started again, and Aaron insisted that we get to the E.R.

While driving there, the pain subsided again. I contemplated turning around and going home because they would surely laugh at me if I showed up and nothing was going on anymore. Aaron had the good sense to keep going, and just like that, it started again. I realize now, after having a child, that I was in labor, hence the contractions/cramps coming every couple of minutes and then subsiding.

We checked into the E.R., and I don't remember a whole bunch from there. I don't think we waited very long. I was taken back pretty quickly and the nurses started to give me morphine in an IV for the pain. From that point on I was pretty out of it, but I still was crazy enough to think that they were somehow going to be able to stop the cramping and bleeding and that we would go on to have a healthy pregnancy. I'd seen it on t.v. plenty where the doctors give some sort of medicine that stops labor. I figured that's what they were doing and that soon enough, everything would be fine.

Finally around 5 a.m. a resident doctor came in to examine me. She said that she believed that I had passed everything but that she would need to examine me. After an exam, she said that there was still a little placenta left that she thought she could clean out on her own without doing a D&C. I was still hooked up to a morphine pump and didn't really notice much of what was going on. But suddenly it hit me, the doctor was cleaning everything out. She said that I had passed the fetus at home. The fetus. Wasn't it a baby? And then it hit me. The baby was gone. It had happened sometime around 2:00 in the morning on May 24th. What do you call it? Time of birth? Time of death? The medical term is spontaneous abortion. That's what's on my medical records. How awful is that?

Aaron and I drove home around 7 in the morning, stopping at the pharmacy to pick up some pain meds. He practically carried me into the apartment because the pain was so great still. He had to call my work to tell them that I wouldn't be in for my shift that started in an hour, and had to explain why. We went to bed and just held each other and cried. All I could tell him was that I was sorry that I lost our baby.

Spotting, week of May 16, 2004

I started spotting a dark brown color. This was very concerning to me because this is what always happens prior to my menstruation. During that time, I will spot a dark brown color for about 5-7 days prior to my actual period. I was nervous about this spotting as it wasn't unfamiliar to me.

I called my doctor to ask about it, and they said that they didn't need to see me or check anything out unless I was having severe cramps, bleeding through more than one pad an hour, or passing tissue. I was told that since the color was dark that it was old blood. That didn't totally make sense to me since in my experience with menstruation, it was a lead up to a bigger flow. At any rate, they wouldn't see me.

I continued to have this spotting for several days. This culminated on Sunday, May 23rd when it became full bleeding (one week after Mother's Day).

I noticed that during that week of spotting, one of the roses that Carol gave me was wilting and dying. Just one. I pondered the significance.

Mother's Day, 2004

Today we celebrated Mother's Day with Aaron's Mom and family in our University apartment. There was a lot of exciting baby talk, and Carol (Aaron's mom) brought us some roses out of her yard. She brought three, one for Aaron, one for me, and one for the new baby. They were gorgeous and I put them on the table.

What to do next? Early May 2004

As any first time pregnant woman would do, I spent hours thinking of baby names. Aaron and I had already decided that if it was a girl, we would name her Kensington. We were thinking of Ashton for a boy. Now that our families knew the news, everyone was offering advice. My sister, Stephanie, made sure that I knew to call an OB to get an appointment set up. I found one close by who was a woman, Dr. Brown. I called for an appt. and was surprised to find out that they didn't want to see me until my 12th week. That was standard procedure they said, doctors just don't see pregnant women prior to 12 weeks. I thought that was weird, but hey, I was new at this and if that's what they said then I guess that's the norm!

Aaron had just secured a job in Orange County, CA, with Deloitte, upon graduation in December. He would actually start the first week in January. Hmmmm, how would we do that? The baby would be born January 3rd. We came up with plans that we would stay in SLC until the baby was born and then he would have to immediately move out to California. I would stay behind for a few weeks with our new baby until I was up to moving.

It was getting really hard to keep this secret from my friends, especially when people asked me where I was going to work or what I would do after graduation. My secret was that I wasn't going to work anywhere, I'd be at home with our new baby. There were a lot of plans to be made, but we were already making them. I was feeling sick all the time now and was very, very tired. Google let me know that these were all standard pregnancy symptoms. It wasn't very fun managing my work and school load feeling the way I felt. Oh well, the excitement of the pregnancy numbed the discomforts.

Pregnancy excitement

I was so tired that I could barely stay awake in my classes. I was nauseous all the time, but I wasn't throwing up much. I just had a "blah" feeling. I was finding it hard to keep the pregnancy secret because we were both really, really excited!

Aaron and I went to California at the first of May to take a vacation between semesters. We stayed with his brother and wife, Jason and Robin, in Orange County, CA. They had just had a baby girl, Hailey, the December before who was now six months old. Aaron and I had plans to go to Disneyland, and Robin and Hailey decided to join us. Hmmmm, our first road block in keeping our "secret." We had to explain to Robin that I couldn't go on the roller coasters. She asked why, and we hemmed and hawed about it until she finally looked right at me and asked excitedly if I was pregnant. We couldn't deny it at all, we were bursting with excitement. She was so excited and said that she knew how we should tell Jason when he got home from work.

We were eating out at a restaurant that night and we handed Jason a tiny little diaper where we had written on it that Baby Groff would be joining the family on January 3, 2003. He was surprised and excited, and of course we were too.

Disneyland ended up being an adventure. It actually worked out really well because there were so many rides that I couldn't go on and I just stayed back and tended Hailey while Robin and Aaron were able to enjoy the rides. We all had a good time.

Robin was so excited to pass some things on to me and sent me home with a bassinet and a breast pump, as well as a bunch of diapers that were too small for Hailey, maternity clothes, and baby clothes. I went to the store and bought two little Disney baby outfits to commemorate our Disneyland trip, since our baby was technically with us the whole time.

On our drive back to SLC, we stopped in St. George to visit my parents. We decided that since the cat was out of the bag, that we would go ahead and tell our families, but no one else! So we did the little diaper thing for my parents as well, and they were of course so thrilled. We were growing more and more excited by the minute.

When we got home, all I wanted to do was set up the bassinet in our second bedroom and get started on the nursery right away. I held off on this though because we still weren't spreading the news to everyone just yet and I didn't want all of my friends/neighbors to see the nursery since we weren't telling yet. It was very difficult to suppress that, I wanted so badly to decorate!

April 2004, good news!

The test was positive! I had taken many of these before, but this was the first time that I had the little plus sign. I was elated. I told my husband right away, who was also elated. We were very new at this, and didn't know quite what to do next. We'd heard that you aren't really supposed to say anything to anyone until the first trimester is over. I didn't really know why, but that's what we decided to do. It was our little secret. I Googled a due date calculator, and my due date was January 3, 2005. Perfect timing. We would both definitely be finished with college. So I'd walk down the graduation aisle nine months pregnant........ who cared?! I was pregnant!

Nov. 2003: The decision to start our family

Aaron, my husband, and I had been married for a couple of years. It was November 2003, and we each had one year of college left. We knew that we definitely wanted to start a family, but we had wanted to wait until we finished college. With the end in sight, we figured it was time to start talking about trying to get pregnant, since these things don't usually happen over night. So, in December 2003, I went off of my birth control pills as the first step in the direction of having a child. We figured that it would take us a few months to actually get pregnant, so by the time the baby arrived, we would be finished with school.

Month after month went by, and the pregnancy test was always negative. I even invested in those ovulation predictor kits, but it didn't seem to help. Hmmmm, maybe we will have more trouble with this than we originally thought! My sister and Aaron's brother each had experiences with their respective spouses where conception happened practically overnight, so that's the outcome we had hoped for, but it seemed that it would no longer be that simple!