Miscarriage Stories, Milestones (again!) and Pregnancy Loss Blog Carnival

I only have a few minutes to check in, but I had some things I want to share today. I’ve noticed that my attention is turning away from writing this blog to writing in my birth blog more often. I think this means I’m finally started to separate the intertwined experiences of my past losses, with my current pregnancy. I also have trouble figuring out where to write about my current pregnancy—if I write about it here, it is a “trigger” for those who are in the midst of loss and I feel like I should put “warnings” on my posts if I talk about my new pregnancy (for example, I’m going to include a picture in this post and feel like I should notify readers to expect that). However, if I write about it on my birth blog and include too many musings about miscarriage intermixed with my pregnancy feelings, then that may be “too much” for the average pregnant woman who comes to that blog looking for birth information. Of course, logically, these are my blogs and I can write about what I want, where I want, right? I’ve always been pretty sensitive to other people’s feelings though and I am having trouble finding the right “home” for my current feelings—maybe I need to start a pregnancy after loss blog?! The last thing I need is to try to maintain another blog though!

I wanted to share a link to a lengthy, detailed miscarriage story at Full Moon’s Daughter. I’ve shared several times about my frustration in not being able to find many nitty-gritty miscarriage stories. Hers was a very long process and she wrote about it in depth. I’m amazed by the wide variety of possible miscarriage experiences–-just like birth experiences are all unique, so are these little births.

Fertility Flower is having a pregnancy loss blog carnival in acknowledgment of Pregnancy Loss Week (August 23-27). I have lots of ideas to participate and hope to gather my thoughts/content from past posts together soon.

I’m 14w5d pregnant again today–-the same gestational length as when I gave birth to my Noah in Nov. After I move through today, I will be more pregnant than I’ve been since 2006 and I’m ready! Yesterday also marked the day that I entered into my weird-feeling time of having been pregnant at this time last year. There is a healthy baby fair in Sept. where I like to have an LLL booth presence. And, I am keenly aware that last year I sat there at that booth at 7 weeks pregnant. And, now, I’ll be there again and I’ll still be pregnant. It is strange and mentally/emotionally confusing. Something else very weird that happened is that while in North Carolina for the CAPPA conference this past week (during which I hit the 14 week mark), I had a UTI. It is only the second of my entire life—the first being when I was 14 weeks pregnant with Noah. When I had a follow-up appointment with my family practice doctor, she thought the UTI was the result of his death rather than the cause though, but I’ve always wondered. I found the timing to be extremely odd and also scary and I wondered if I had some sort of body memory/trauma that came back to visit me as I entered the same point in pregnancy that was so life-altering for me.

I know that PLENTY of people have UTI’s during pregnancy and their babies were fine and everything you read says they can cause premature labor if left untreated, but say nothing about miscarriage (or say they don’t cause m/c). However, based on my past experience I seriously felt like I was saving my baby’s life by calling the doctor’s office from afar and following my gut that I needed to get antibiotics (I kept going back and forth about whether it was my imagination or not that I had a UTI—but had this persistent feeling that I was racing against the clock and I had to do SOMETHING if I was going to save my baby, and so I went with my gut and called the doctor). My real doctor moved several months ago and I almost never need medical care, so I don’t really have a doctor anymore. However, I called the former office and they were extremely helpful and “priority” called in a prescription to the Spruce Pine, NC  Wal-Mart for me. I have been feeling annoyed with this office for a while and like I needed to find a new place to seek care, but this above-and-beyond help made me reconsider and have very positive feelings towards them!

Here is my 14 week belly picture. I’m doing this!