Part 1 - Trying to Conceive
Part 2 - Pregnancy
Part 3 - The Decision- Natural or D&C
Part 4 - Limbo
Part 5 - The Process
Part 6 - The Burial and After (contains pictures of miscarried baby)
Part 1 Trying to Conceive
You can read about my struggles with fertility here. After Sierra was born, once again, I thought I was done having babies. Then something changed in my heart around January 2014. Sierra was potty trained and weaned and I started to feel that deep yearning. Up until that point we had been using natural family planning... and the occasional condom if we really weren't sure. It's kind of hard when your cycles are as sporadic as mine. You just learn to pay attention to your body. Not really reliable as form of birth control... but we were always open to an "oops".
Unfortunately when you have fertility issues what seemed to work for not getting pregnant... doesn't necessarily work for getting pregnant. Over a year went by and the next March my 38th birthday rolled around and I started to feel desperate. One element of NFP that I hadn't used before was charting my temperatures. I had thought about doing it when I was trying to conceive Ronan, but ended up getting pregnant before the start of my next cycle. I already had an account set up on http://www.fertilityfriend.com/. My next cycle this time started on April 17th. I also bought some ovulation predictor tests. Your body gives you some signs due do increased estrogen, so I could tell when to start taking the tests even-though I'm irregular. The tests will confirm that your body is gearing up by looking for a surge in hormones(LH), and when your window has passed, but can't confirm that you ovulated. That is where your temperature comes in. When using a sensitive thermometer, there is an obvious rise in your basal body temperature after ovulation from an increase in progesterone from the corpus luteum(the ruptured cyst that the egg was released from). Combining these things helps to get your timing right, but even then... you may not get pregnant. That cycle was 48 days and the next 80 long days. It was so frustrating because I knew that I was ovulating and timing it right. I had really gotten my hopes up because 10 days after I had ovulated I had some slight spotting and thought maybe it was a sign of implantation, but 3 days later I started.
It had been 4 months I decided I needed to take a break from all the charting. I couldn't keep myself from paying attention to the signals my body was giving me though. Again, about 10 days after I thought I had ovulated I had some spotting. I thought maybe this was just a new pattern for me, but by the 4th day with no period, I decided to take a pregnancy test.... it was positive!
I showed Summer the positive test first, then Scott, then the rest of the kids. I couldn't contain the good news. I messaged and called our family and closest friends. Then took an adorable picture to announce on facebook all on the 1st day we found out.
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