Our First Pregnancy

My wife first became pregnant about a year ago. We took a home pregnancy test and were not sure if it was positive or negative. There was a very pale line on the test stick. So, we went to the doctor to have a blood test done. Sure enough, she was pregnant. We were both very excited. Without delay, we told friends, family, and co-workers the good news. Some family members gave us small gifts (baby clothing, etc.). I had bought a pregnancy journal for my wife to record her thoughts. Every time we were in the car together, we'd discuss baby names. Often, we'd jokingly pick the worst name imaginable just to see what reaction we'd get from each other.

There is a superstition that a pendulum can be used to divine the sex of the fetus. Regardless of whether this works, the pendulum told us that it was a boy.

She had just graduated from college. I had good insurance. Life was good. Until... 8 weeks after her last menstrual cycle things turned ugly. My wife had gone to the bathroom and had discovered light blood spotting on the toilet paper. We were very worried and called the doctor. They told us that this was normal and nothing to be alarmed of but to call back if it got worse. And, it did get worse. We were up most of the night. She was bleeding quite badly. We had the doctor paged. Her doctor was not in but there was another doctor on call.

The doctor on call told us that there was nothing that they could do and that if it was a miscarriage that it'd run its course regardless. We were told that we could go to the emergency room but that it'd probably be better to just wait until morning and go into his office. We couldn't stand waiting, not knowing if something could be done, so we opted to go to the emergency room anyway. It was a long, surreal night. To my surprise, the doctor on call had made a special trip to the emergency room to meet with us. There, we had a sonogram and other tests run. We had taken a sample of her discharged flesh in a baggy and gave it to the nurses to run tests on. I'm glad that we did because it meant my wife didn't need to be "scraped out". The night was excruciating. The hardest part was not knowing what was happening or why. Needless to say, we lost the baby. And, the experience hurt tremendously.

We were told that 1 in 6 pregnancies ends in miscarriage. They said that up until recently, most women would not have even known that they were pregnant. They'd have thought that their period was late and unusually heavy. We were told that they usually do not recommend testing for causes until after the third miscarriage. The reason for miscarriages, they said, was usually a chromosomal problem and that it was the body's natural way of eliminating fetuses that would be born with defects. I suppose this was supposed to make us feel better? It is somewhat like saying "your lucky your baby died because it might have been handicapped." Regardless, the doctor was actually very helpful and seemed to care a great deal about us and our situation.

Both she and I suffered as if we had lost a close family member... Which is exactly what had happened. A few days later, we decided that our baby needed a name. We named it Brendon Jacob. The gifts we had been given were boxed up along with my wife's pregnancy journal.

More to come....