Sunday, February 27, 2011

The ultrasound

At eight weeks pregnant I went in for an ultrasound. I remember the tech doing the measurements. She measured the sac and said it was measuring at six weeks. I knew she was wrong. I was 8 weeks along, no question. That's all she said and sent me down to talk to the doctor. Aaron was with me and I don't know if he was feeling the same way as I was, but I could tell things weren't right. The measurement was off and she said nothing about the baby.

With great apprehension we met with the doctor. She pulled out the ultrasound pictures and started talking about them. She said there was a yolk sac visible and the gestational sac measured at 6 weeks, but that it was empty. There was no baby. Feelings of sadness and confusion swept over me. She went on to explain that what happened was that I had been pregnant, conception had occurred. But that somewhere very early on in the pregnancy the fetus died and was absorbed into the gestational sac. However, my body had not yet clued in to this fact and continued on with this pregnancy, growing a gestational sac, etc. I was given the option to have a D&C, to go home with medication that would terminate the pregnancy, or to just let it go and have my body expel the pregnancy eventually.

I couldn't fathom taking an abortion medication, even though I knew there wasn't a living baby there, and I didn't want to do a D&C. I think a part of me hoped that this was all some mistake and there truly was a baby in there, so I opted to just let things play out naturally. The doctor sent me home with some pain medication for when it happened. I waited for two weeks. Each day of those two weeks I wondered if there was a mistake, because I still wasn't miscarrying. I know now that I was delusional, but I wanted a baby so badly that I thought just maybe there was still one in there, after all, I was still pregnant.