Schrödinger’s Baby

We’ve not had a lot of luck on the baby front recently, as you may have read if you follow my posts. Our desire to grow our family has been met with obstacle after obstacle, which seems to serve only to intensify our need to add a third child to our brood. The situation has been made even more difficult by the wave of pregnancies that seem to be crashing through both our personal and work lives, and I really wish I could be jumping up and down with people, sharing their excitement. I have been longing to add our own special announcement to the mix, but nerves always prevent feeling any level of joy after the multiple losses we have faced.
 

I wish my next words could be the happy announcement we were hoping for, but it seems that, once again, we have picked the short straw… We are pregnant again, but it looks like it may end in another miscarriage.

After the last miscarriage, we charged full speed ahead with more baby making, eager to rid ourselves of the intense feeling of loss we were both suffering. After miserably welcoming one period, we were delighted when another one didn’t show up and a test confirmed what we were hoping for. I saw it as an early birthday present and convinced myself that this time would be the charm – after all, the odds of experiencing recurrent miscarriage (three or more miscarriages in a row) drops to 1%, so surely that wouldn’t happen to me!

 

Despite initial hopeful feelings, I couldn’t help but keep running to the toilet and ‘knicker checking’ at every opportunity. With this being my seventh pregnancy overall, I knew that I would never truly settle until we’d reached the 12 week scan mark. In order to try and relieve stress levels, we thought it best to pretend that we weren’t expecting and carry on life as normal until we had visual confirmation of a healthy heartbeat, but it still came as quite a shock when the spotting started again, just like last time…

 

Again, like the last time, it happened at about the 6 week mark and I immediately flew into a panic, expecting the worse. I phoned Paul up at work and begged him to come and get me, while I rushed along to the bus station, frantically phoning NHS 24. By the time we got back to the house, I had an appointment at the early pregnancy unit to get my blood checked in the hope that it could shed some light on the situation.

 

I wasn’t expecting a scan, but we were surprised to find a slot available when we arrived at the hospital. The nurse was eventually able to find a suitable vein to draw blood, then she sent us down to ultrasound to learn the fate of our most recent wee blob.

 

The wait seemed to last forever, but we were eventually called in to the wee room where, two and a half months earlier, our worst fears had been confirmed. The sonographer was a lovely woman who tried to put us at ease with pleasant small talk. After pressing really hard on my abdomen, due to my empty bladder, she surprised us with the words: ‘Congratulations, you’re pregnant, there’s the heartbeat.’

 

We were overjoyed, although it was dampened slightly when we remembered that this was exactly what had happened the last time, so we couldn’t quite relax. I was informed that I should come back for repeat blood tests 48 hours later, in the hope that my hCG levels had doubled, but that there was no evidence to suggest that things would go wrong again.

 

I returned to have blood drawn, but this then fell on the weekend, when the early pregnancy unit was closed. This meant that the usual team couldn’t discuss my results and I had to be in contact with a doctor instead. This didn’t seem like such a bad idea, and the team gave me perfect confidence in their ability to assess me. I was contacted with my results the same evening and was informed that, although the hormone levels hadn’t exactly risen, the doctor was confident that this could still go on to be a successful pregnancy – imagine my despair when the early pregnancy unit phoned me up again on the Monday morning to say that the doctor had no right to tell me what he had and that my pregnancy was likely to fail!

 

I was called in for one more repeat blood test, but the nurse basically said that she didn’t expect it to be good news and we were going to lose our baby again. After failing to find a good vein, and feeling like no more than a human pin cushion, I was sent away for another tense wait on the blood results.

 

Eventually, I received a phone call confirming what we had been expecting from the start – the numbers were not increasing quickly enough and I had to come in for a repeat scan at the end of the week so that they could confirm the death of our baby.

 

We were devastated and couldn’t quite believe this was happening to us again. I just kept thinking that we deserved everything we got because we were being far too greedy adding a third child to the family. We spent the rest of our miserable week in the house, waiting for the final scan to be over.

 

On the afternoon of the scan, I followed the instructions to the letter and filled my bladder almost to the point of bursting, which did have the added benefit of completely masking any nerves over the outcome. This time, a pair of sonographers were present in order to make confirmation of death easier… but that was not the news they delivered!

 

I was still pregnant!

 

The baby had grown as expected and still had a healthy heartbeat! The sonographers checked everywhere and said there was no evidence to suggest this was a failing pregnancy, but that I should come back again in another two weeks for close monitoring, due to my history.

 

We were ecstatic, but knew that things could still go wrong due to the early nature of the pregnancy. Despite this, it still came as a shock when I experienced a little more spotting at the weekend and the hospital confirmed that this was the miscarriage finally beginning.

 

Although the spotting only lasted for a couple of hours, the early pregnancy unit were still adamant that this was the bad news we were expecting and to stock up on pads and painkillers. They weren’t going to scan me again until the 9 week mark, but fully expected me to have lost the baby before then and not to call them again unless things got really bad.

 

As it stands, we have now just passed the 8 week mark and have another tense wait until next week, when we can learn the fate of our baby. I usually never experience any pregnancy symptoms other than sore boobs, so I feel like I’m constantly impersonating Karen Smith from Mean Girls, except I’m wondering if mine are predicting a 30% chance that I’m still pregnant.

 

In our minds, our baby is in a superimposed position of being both alive and dead – Schrödinger’s Baby if you will – and we only hope that when we eventually look, we get the happy news we are longing for…
 

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