B Positive

It’s all over, finally, officially, really. It feels so empty and complete now. No chance at all that things will ever turn around, miraculously be right again, that there was some mistake. It’s over, done, our baby is gone for sure.

The last time I blogged, Monday, I had tried taking Misoprostol to medically induce a miscarriage at home. I put the pills in and took some Vicodin in anticipation of the pain and I lay down with a heating pad and waited for the horrendous cramping and bleeding to start. Nothing happened. I bled a bit but didn’t cramp at all. I attributed this to the Vicodin, felt grateful that it was so easy, and went to see Dr. Fine the next morning to make sure it all passed.

Of course that was too easy. As Dr. Fine quickly found, it was all still in there. Nothing had happened. She sent me home with another round of Misoprostol and I tried again. The same thing happened with even less bleeding. I didn’t even take a drop of any pain medication because I didn’t need it. I was extremely frustrated and angry. Now I would have to have surgery, or continue to wait. I didn’t understand why my body couldn’t just do what it was supposed to. It was like it couldn’t let go to this baby, no matter how surely gone it was, I couldn’t let it go and it just remained stubbornly.

The next day I talked to Dr. Fine and she told me what I feared. I would have to do a D&C. We scheduled it for Friday so I was left with another few days of waiting. I am not scared of surgery per se. I don’t mind needles, I can handle the little prick of the IV going in, and to me, that is the worst part. I don’t react badly to anesthesia and I always think surgery is the easiest thing, as it’s all up to the doctors to do everything for you. My only worry was the slight risk of complication. I spent that night sobbing to myself, alone locked in the bathroom. I didn’t want MS to see. I just felt so bad for my baby. I felt that I had failed. I said I was sorry to my little one, sorry I had failed to carry it, sorry I hadn’t given it the right genes so that it could live and be healthy. I apologized to my little baby and clutched my stomach for the last time, knowing it was the last night my baby would physically be with me.

Friday morning we arrived at the surgical hospital early. This is the same place where I left my tonsils back in 2006. It is a gorgeous, amazing hospital, a fabulous place to be unconscious in. I went in and was pampered and babied, given a warm blanket and coddled as the nurse attempted to get an IV in me. My veins always give them difficulty. She put one in my left arm, hit a valve, which hurt badly and left me with a horrendous bruise, and had to go in a vein on my right hand. That was by far the worst part. That and I was dying of thirst from not eating or drinking for the now 7 hours prior. The IV started dripping in fluid and I immediately felt better. They brought MS in to sit with me, and I was in good spirits, laughing, joking, spending time with him and trying to enjoy it, in case I actually did die in there, there was nothing else I would have rather done with my final moments than just to be with him.

Dr. Fine and her father came in and reviewed my paperwork and the bloodwork the hospital had done days earlier. Everything looked fine, except of course that it was “very rare” that someone would not react to 2 rounds of Misoprostol. I asked the nurse what my blood type was, as in my life I’d never needed to know this, and she said “B positive.” I decided that would be my mantra going in and laughed at the thought. I will be positive, and I was.

Finally they led me into the OR, I situated myself on a nice warm bed, with nurses and doctors hovering around me, patting my arms, adjusting this and that. My anesthesiologist was a fellow redhead, and I was glad, as I knew she would believe the semi-proven theory that redheads require more anesthesia. I always need several rounds of Novocain to get numb at the dentist, and though studies have shown this to be the result of a mutation of the same gene that causes red hair, there are always skeptics out there. But a fellow redhead would know and believe. They put a mask on my face and after a few breaths I was out.

I woke up later in a recovery room. A nurse assured me Dr. Fine had spoken to me but I had no recollection of it whatsoever. They brought MS in and he told me that, true to form, I had required a lot more anesthesia, and I had similarly proved another old wives, (or I guess old doctor’s) tale, that redheads bleed more. I had hemorrhaged and lost a lot of blood. MS said Dr. Fine had seemed shaken and nervous when she had spoken to him, but assured him I was fine. As she explained to me later, it was a good thing the Misoprostol didn’t work at home, I was better off in the hospital if I was going to bleed that much. With my new “B Positive” attitude, I took that as a blessing in disguise, and decided that, as much as I had resisted, surgery was the best solution for me. The recovery has been perfectly fine. Other than feeling weak and tired from the blood loss, I’ve felt great, no pain, no cramping, no ill effects. I am so sad that our baby is really gone. Even though I know it died so long ago, there was something a little comforting about carrying it with me all that time. I felt like we were still together, it was still there. Now it’s gone, physically, officially, completely.