A post in which I think too much....

My first pregnancies, I could always tell I was pregnant long before I could get a positive test. The changes I felt physically were pretty clear and it was only a matter of waiting a few weeks before we got that positive. Unfortunately, for those first few times, miscarriage was waiting for us, once on the same day we got our positive and the others within a few days. By the time I was pregnant with S, I refused to acknowledge the tell-tale signs. I was insistent that it was coincidence, that my husband was wrong about the fact that we were, indeed, pregnant again. But things kept on. We tested and still they kept on. We waited and still they kept on. We passed the point of our longest pregnancy and still they kept on. We had a baby :)

Three years later and the familiar symptoms sent us to get a test and like before, things kept keeping on. We had a baby :)

Almost two years later, I had a strange burning pain in my right thigh. The only time I had ever felt that pain was in my second trimester with B. But I always knew early on when I was pregnant so it couldn't be, could it? A positive test said it could. I went to my doctor to confirm and when I got home from the office, bleeding. This pregnancy was surprising--I never got a period back because I was breastfeeding--and here it was, leaving almost as soon as I suspected it. My doctor asked me to come back in in a few days and have another blood draw, just to check. Despite the bleeding, my numbers were still going up. Things kept on. The bleeding stopped. I saw the OB and we found out that we were not a few weeks along, we were several months along....good thing I take a prenatal every day, pregnant or not, eh? We had a baby :)

Several doctors have told me that the most common reason for miscarriage is because the baby isn't developing correctly. That the children I will never hold in my arms most likely couldn't have made it and that is why they miscarried. Sometimes I think about that dark week after we found out about Iz, the week of bleeding and cramping and sadness and tears and pain. The week where we rejoiced at the thought of a new baby and mourned that baby, thinking that we had to say good-bye once again. I look at her now and I wonder if it was connected to her heart and the fact that it didn't completely form? I can't imagine not having her here with us. I can't imagine not loving her and holding her and crying over her and worrying about her and rejoicing over her. I can't imagine saying good-bye to her before I even met her. I think, too, about the little ones who were not meant to be. I wonder if their little hearts didn't fully form and if that is why we lost them right around the time those little hearts should have started to beat.

I think perhaps I think too much. But the thoughts rattling around in my head often quiet down after I write them out so perhaps I can now stop thinking about that week where we, for the first time of many, worried that our little Iz wouldn't make it....