We Named Her Catherine Grace

I would hear a little voice in my head tell me that I am pregnant. It would come when I looked in the mirror sometimes, "You are pregnant." I dismissed it because, well, us infertile girls can make up all kinds of things about feeling or thinking "pregnant." The mind reels. But then when P+14 and 15 came and went, when P+16 came without a sign of AF, I decided to POAS...for the heck of it. At 6:45AM on the first day of Advent, as I'm getting ready to run out of the door to serve as Sacristan and Mass Coordinator, my HPT showed the digital word "pregnant." My husband was still in bed when I told him. If I actually thought I was pregnant, I probably would have come up with a cleaver way to tell him, but I didn't think I really was pregnant - I mean really, being pregnant is just a dream and a prayer for me. This can't possibly be happening to us.

After Mass and fellowship and RCIA, we finally arrived home and he asked me to take another test. Willingly, I took another digital HPT. Positive. Then another...Positive. "How accurate are these digital tests?" I ran to the store and got a F.R. test. Positive. I did it again. Positive. I think I just liked seeing the positive result - this has never happened to us before - and I liked it. This afternoon, JBTC messaged me saying she had a real strong feeling that I was going to be the next IF blogger to get pregnant! Whoa...she must have some strong feelings! If M ever tells you this, go POAS because she is 2 for 2! I felt bad when she later sent another message saying she should not have sent that prediction and she felt bad - but she was right! Good grief!!! Later that night I went to Children and Family Adoration. I arrived early, before anyone else was even thinking of being there. I knelt in front of the tabernacle and tears of thanksgiving rolled down my face. He has answered my prayers with a "yes" and my heart exults! Please let us stay healthy, O Lord. I stayed there forever, until I smelled the strong, burning rubber smell that came from nowhere. I don't know what it was or where it came from, but I asked St. Michael for his protection because I sensed it wasn't good. Later, I sat in the pew in front of My Lord and My God exposed. I cried the entire time and had to go get extra tissue more than once! One of our teen-aged Altar Servers was sitting near me. I bet he thought I was nuts crying like I did! But I didn't care - I was finally pregnant.

The next day I called Omaha first thing. My favorite nurse called me and said that when I take HCG shots that the HPT will say + when it's not. I interrupted her: I didn't take HCG this cycle because I wasn't 100% sure of my peak day. She says, "Oh, then you are pregnant!" My bloodwork came back later that night: Beta HCG 101. Progesterone 18.7. It was official: we are pregnant! Not only that, but my body was working all by itself :) Never the less, I was to start PIO shots asap, twice a week for who knows when. Gladly :)

I cancelled my trip to DC so I could receive my meds in the mail and start my PIO treatment. By Divine Intervention, one of the ladies at donuts (fellowship) last Sunday mentioned that she was a nurse. We decided to ask her to help me with my shots. She was sworn to secrecy to not tell anyone. Despite our immense happiness, there was that lingering fear of miscarriage. We know the stats and they hovered above us at all times. Every time I went to the bathroom, I no longer was looking for mucus, I was looking for blood. And every day I didn't see any, I thanked God I was still pregnant.  I never thought I was going to miscarry. Only positive thoughts were floating around my head! This same week, a beautiful gal from our parish sent me a letter saying how she is praying for us and has asked the Poor Clare Nuns to pray for us too. She has struggled with secondary IF, and as her inlaws and I were in Jerusalem, she conceived! A month ago she came to me and told me she asked the Poor Clare's to pray for us - she just about brought me to tears. This week her mission was complete as I read her letter asking the nuns to pray for us. I wanted to tell her that the prayers worked, but it will have to wait. One more cool story: This first week after we found out, my DH spoke to a man that saw us the weekend we conceived. This man told us that he had a "feeling" that the Holy Spirit was with us that weekend. We laughed: Oh boy was the Holy Spirit with us! If only we could tell him! That too, will have to wait.

I was praying for morning sickness every day. I never got it, but my breasts were super-sore! Then one day, I woke up in the morning and they weren't sore anymore. I began to stress out, telling myself that I wasn't going to research it because it is going to tell me something bad is going to happen. But I couldn't live with my mind running wild, so I googled it. Normal. Whew! Tons of women lose the tenderness in their breasts so I shouldn't worry, and so I didn't.

But then "it" happened. On Saturday morning, I woke up to blood. Of course I panicked. I called nurse MO at 7:30am - she was amazing. She told me to call Dr. H. so I did...on Saturday morning before 8am...I paged him. He told me to go on bedrest for 24hrs and not to worry. If I was miscarrying there wouldn't be anything we can do to stop it since I was so early. I am freaking out, we were freaking out. I had to run into work to take care of something (which someone else could have done but I wasn't thinking right). My friend K was there and I told her what was happening. God Bless her heart! She was soo happy for me because we did it! But I was crying because I was soo afraid! She later called me and we discussed what was going on. She has gone through this once herself and she was soo kind to answer some of the "tough" questions I had. She was the calm voice that gave me hope, helped me relax, and walked me through what was going on. I know that was hard for her, and I could never thank her enough for being there for me. She will say that she was just doing what anyone would do, but no one else was there. No one else knew....but her. We never told our parents because this was our Christmas present to them. The same IF dream we all have - Merry Christmas Grandma and Grandpa! We were going through this almost alone. The only other people that knew were the doctors, my nurse friend, and our priest, and I couldn't call them. That is it. K's friendship was/is such a gift.

Later that night, we miscarried. I wasn't in a lot of pain. My cramping and bleeding was minimal. This caused me to think that maybe I didn't miscarry. I always thought a miscarriage was much worse than what it was for me. A lot of our info was coming from the internet and DH was reading things like how it is common for women to bleed and have healthy babies. Some women even appear to have a period and still have healthy babies. I knew right away I miscarried, but the mind reels. I thought that there was a chance that I was wrong. This hope inside both of us dominated our minds until we had our final blood test which showed HCG at 2.1 and progesterone was down to 10.4. This was a hard pill to swallow.

My heart is broken. We had to tell the few people we told that we miscarried, and then we had to tell our family. Of course everyone was supportive, but goodness this sucked. I feel like I have to minimize my feelings when talking about it. What I want to say is, "My baby is dead!" The one we tried to conceive for almost 5 years now. The one we have been praying for. We've loved her from the very beginning, before she was conceived, before I ovulated, before my surgery, before all the doctors and tests, before everything! We loved her before we knew about her, for years...and she was finally here, and now she's not. She really happened, and now she is gone.

We named her Catherine Grace.  As soon as we named her, her existence was more real. She was real. This really happened, and it happened to us, the good and the bad. I knew I was pregnant for 13 days and those days were amazing. We did it! We were given our blessing. At some point within those 13 days, as I was preparing for Sunday Mass, I was up in the Sanctuary (for my job). I heard that voice in my head again, "I'm going to take your baby." I remember pausing by the Ambo, looking at the Tabernacle and saying in my head, "Please don't take my baby, but if it is Your will, then let it be done." I didn't cry. I think I prayed to St. Michael again, convincing myself that "voice" was not of God, but of my imagination. THE MIND REELS!!! I know that some day the veil for this will be lifted and I will understand. In the meantime, baptized by intent or baptized by blood, however you want to look at it, our little Catherine Grace will receive her burial rite at the catholic cemetery. We believe she is in heaven, and now we ask my darling daughter to pray for her mommy and daddy, who love her very much. 

I'm still in that place where I cry every day. I think to myself, "I was pregnant 10 days ago." I want to be pregnant again. People tell me the "good news" is that we did get pregnant. I feel bad thinking that. I feel guilty thinking that. I understand that is true, but I don't want to think it or say it. I feel hopeful for the later months, but even that "hope" I want to stifle, layer it under my grief right now. I don't know why we miscarried. Sometimes it just happens, and it happens to a lot of first time pregnancies. I "understand" that, but do I have to accept it? I guess I do. I wonder if my pap that I had before I knew I was pg influenced anything. I wonder if my hives I keep breaking out with contributed to this. I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, but I really don't want to know the answers. I do feel that this was not my fault, and I love my husband for telling me that early on during this entire ordeal. He was the most amazing husband from the very beginning and I could not have had a better companion during this. I know that the pain I am feeling is the same that he is feeling. We talk about it, every day, and I am soo grateful that he is not keeping me out or bottling it all in. Somehow, we will get through this, and somehow we will be stronger for it. I am not sure how, but I trust in us and in the Lord that all things will be okay.

So with a few days left of our Advent Prayer Buddies, I ask my buddy to add to my intentions for our healing. Physical and emotional, and although I feel okay today, you can add spiritual (just in case I feel bad tomorrow). I have felt all the prayers from everyone, everywhere, and I know that it was with the help of your intercession that we conceived, and eventually will be healed. In the meantime, I offer up my sufferings for you, all of you, and especially for my prayer buddy.