Wow. A whole week has gone by without a post. And what a week it has been. I kept meaning to get on the computer and type away but just never quite got around to it.
Firstly, I was going to tell you about how I'd been feeling slightly more energetic than I had been since the previous Wednesday when I ended up chopping the vegetables on the settee in front of the telly because I didn't have the energy to stand. For the next week I still felt tired but didn't seem to be quite as tired as I had been for the previous two weeks. Then on Wednesday night I woke up to go to the toilet, as is quite usual for me, and just couldn't get back to sleep again. I had a very disrupted sleep and was exhausted on Thursday morning. I dragged myself out of bed and to the computer but found I couldn't sit there for more than ten minutes without feeling tired and sick. No way could I go to work. I spent the morning eating Special K with milk, reading for a short while then going back to bed. Eventually in the afternoon I found the energy to do some baking and watch a film.
On Friday I went back to work but still felt pretty average, especially in the morning when I felt nauseous and fuzzy. I'd had a bit of a sore throat on Thursday and it was much worse on Friday. The next day we drove down to the Gold Coast to see some friends. The journey down was horrid. We were in Toby's car with no air-conditioning and I wasn't feeling my best. Shortly after we got there I perked up a bit but was still feeling a bit quiet. Friends were trying to persuade us to go to the QuikSilver Pro Show music gig with them but there was no way I could survive that. I just wanted to go home. We went back to the home of some other friends who have a 17 month old baby and ended up telling them our news. They were so excited. The girls nattered about what it's like to be pregnant and the boys talked about the birth.
By the time we got home I felt terrible. My glands felt all swollen up, my mouth was dry, my throat raw and the back of my nose and mouth all scratchy. I felt like I was about to get the mother of all colds.
After a good night's sleep I didn't feel as bad but my throat was still sore so after lazing around all morning, sleeping, reading and eating toast, I managed to walk to the shops and get some cough sweets. Thankfully Toby had done the grocery shopping the previous day and was making sure I ate regular meals because I was in no state to be cooking myself. That night I discovered the joys of water-crackers for keeping nausea at bay.
The next morning I was feeling a bit better but I called in sick anyway as we had the obstetrician appointment. This was the make or break appointment; the moment when we finally find out if I'm actually pregnant and everything is going okay and we can start telling people, or whether I've imagined it all.
After a bit of a wait we finally got to see the doctor and, after asking a few questions and being weighed three times (and I was three different weights too, even though there were only two sets of scales), the doctor performed an internal scan. Finally he said, "your pregnancy isn't progressing normally" to which all I could think to say was "oh". He apologised for having to tell us so early but said it was better that we found out when we did. I asked what it meant and he said basically everything was there and as it should be, and the size of the embryo was consistent with the dates I'd given, but there was no heartbeat and by 8 weeks there really should be. It seems that although the rest of the pregnancy was continuing, the embryo had stopped developing a few days before. I asked what happens next and the doctor said he would book me in for a curette, which is basically where they knock you out with a general anaesthetic and then suck the pregancy out through the vagina. It's a fairly straight-forward non-invasive procedure and the only recovery is really from the anaesthetic. I asked if he was sure that there was no chance this pregnancy could survive and produce a normal baby. He said if he'd had any doubt as to whether it was a dud (not his words, you understand) he wouldn't have mentioned it just yet.
Hard to take but you have to trust the experts, right?
So that's that.
Toby and I are now coming to terms with what this means. No October baby. The obstetrician says it's quite alright for me to get pregnant again straight after the procedure to remove this pregnancy. I imagine it will take one or two months for my cycle to settle down and it'd be nice to leave it at least a month so I have some dates to go on. That said, I think we will just do what we did last time and let nature take its course. We will continue to live our lives, planning for the possible arrival of a baby at some point and all that that means (sorting out the house, the business and our finances), enjoying our honeymoon and getting over our loss. We are relieved that we found out the way we did rather than miscarrying and wondering why, or finding out later in the pregnancy that there was something wrong. We spent the rest of yesterday telling everyone who knew about the pregnancy. We only have a couple of friends left to tell as we haven't been able to get in contact with them. Thankfully we hadn't told too many people, but I'm also glad that some friends and family understand what we're going through. At the same time it's nice to be around others and be able to pretend it's not happening.
I'm feeling pretty awful right now. As well as having the emotional side of things to deal with I'm still feeling a bit ill, still tired, nauseous, and have a sore throat. I should find out tomorrow when I am going in for surgery but I think it will be Friday. Meanwhile, I'm just plodding on. Toby is away today and the timing couldn't have been worse. When he gets back tomorrow we'll have friends staying with us which I really could do without. I'm looking forward to spending a quiet weekend just the two of us, chilling out and possibly starting some work on the house. I can't wait for our holiday in 2 weeks. It's so needed right now. The good news is I can eat and drink what I want, by then I'll probably be a lot better physically so I should have more energy to do things, plus, if I really decide I'd like to, I can go diving in the kelp forests, which were in a magazine article of the top ten dive sites in Australia. There are definitely positives in what has happened and it was meant to be this way. Toby and I are also enjoying the feeling of closeness this has brought us. Although it would have been nicer to have experienced that over the birth of our first baby, we still have that to look forward to one day.
Meanwhile, I need to go and buy some new luggage.
I imagine the entries in this diary will slow down a bit now but this is far from over. This is just the beginning of the story of the production of our family. Watch this space!
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