Expecting the Unexpected

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Somewhere over the rainbow

I didn’t mention this in my previous post, but this baby is actually a rainbow. What was most likely my first miscarriage took place the day before my husband’s grandmother died, which resulted in a far more melodramatic reaction to her death than people were expecting from an in-law who married in just 4 years earlier, as close as we were. By the time I was sure it was a miscarriage, we had just found out that Grandma Hutz was unresponsive and my father-in-law had run over to help Grandpa sort everything out. The last thing I wanted to do was drop another bomb and make it all about me, so I didn’t tell anyone for over 6 months, carrying my grief privately and acting like a total hot mess. It didn’t help that the day before she’d died, before I knew what was going on, I asked her if she was okay if I named our baby after her. She said, “I’ll be dead, what do I care? The dead don’t care.” 24 hours later, she was gone. In her culture, it is customary to name children after living relatives, so I thought nothing of it. However, in my culture, it is taboo. I struggled with the guilt of feeling like I’d caused her death by even considering naming my baby after a living relative, which only compounded my grief.

A year later, in July of this year, I got pregnant again. My husband was away on a business trip so I felt giddy planning a clever announcement. My husband, despite being as American as apple pie (a weird saying, because I’m pretty sure apple pie is Dutch, but I digress), is not a big fan of pageantry, pompe, and circumstance of any kind. He doesn’t like surprises very much unless they’re relatively inconsequential (for example, he’s okay if I surprise him with a birthday present, because he anticipates I would get him something for his birthday, but he would not be happy if that surprise were plane tickets to a whirlwind European vacation.) I still thought it would be super cute to welcome him home from his business trip with this pizza, despite him telling me that he really actually wants a hoagie, not pizza. I somehow let it slip than I can’t have hoagies, so he has to settle for pizza. That, according to him, revealed my secret before the pizza did.

The reveal was anticlimactic. Not only had he suspected it because I was acting strange, he was too tired from an entire day’s worth of flying across the country, he just wanted to have his hoagie, go to bed, and hear the news the following morning when he had the energy to be excited. I also bungled how I told a few other family members.

I was so full of optimism that when I miscarried 2 days later, I couldn’t believe it. I was a devastated, hormonal, emotional wreck. I was already in my mid-30s, half my eggs aren’t even viable by now! (Lesson learned: stay away from the scary fertility and pregnancy studies) I had no surviving children, so there was no evidence I was even capable of carrying a pregnancy to term. My husband’s cousin was expecting a little boy just a few months from then, and I wanted my baby to have a built-in friend super close in age. What if the D&C I had after my last miscarriage created too much scar tissue for a baby to properly implant? I was in hysterics, even though I was barely 4 weeks along when I miscarried on July 20. I was grieving not only what could have been, but the possibility that I might never get another chance.

The miscarriage was confirmed the following day, a Monday, when I got my hcg and progesterone tested. The following day, I found out my hcg was 7, which was smack in the middle of the gap between the nonpregnant and newly pregnant ranges. It was concrete proof that I had just been pregnant but no longer was. My progesterone was even more shocking: 0.32. That was towards the lower end of the nonpregnant range, only the tiniest trace. Progesterone is the hormone that sustains a pregnancy, so I knew this result did not bode well for its viability. It was bad news. I wondered if my body was even capable of producing enough progesterone to maintain a pregnancy? Maybe I was defective, somehow. Not fully a woman. I couldn’t even pretend to put on a happy face the next day, a Wednesday, when I passed my U.S. citizenship interview and most of my husband’s family treated us to a delicious lunch at a really nice restaurant. One of my in-laws – I forgot if it was my mother-in-law or sister-in-law, was passing around a picture of my sister-in-law’s new niece (my husband’s brother’s wife’s brother’s baby daughter) who had just turned one. She was absolutely adorable. It was at that moment when I totally lost it. All the pain I had been holding in all day instantly bubbled up to the surface, and tears welled up in my eyes like a dam that was about to burst. Before I could give any indication of what was going on, I power-walked to the bathroom and bawled my eyes out. That’s when I knew I needed time to process my grief.

We took a break from tracking ovulation for me to get my emotions under control. I found out I was pregnant again in early October, but it felt very different. The previous pregnancy, I had no nausea or fatigue, my acne had cleared up completely, and I was 100% pure optimism. This time around, my acne was back with a vengeance, and my nausea started up just 9 days after a positive ovulation test. I vividly remember hanging out with my best friend, Lili, who was visiting from Montreal, only to start dozing off at about 7pm. It must have been because we’d just spent an entire day walking around downtown Philly, checking out local museums and coffee shops. Of course I was tired! But then, the nausea kicked in. Was it that Korean corn dog I had at the bubble tea place?

The next morning, I tried to go for a 5k run, something I can usually do without breaking a sweat. I noticed myself getting winded after my warm-up run around the block. I immediately went home and took a pregnancy test. My husband was barely awake. I took a sensitive pregnancy test and it was faintly, but clearly positive.

I had to get real confirmation, as my mind might be playing tricks on me. So, I took a digital pregnancy test, and, to my shock, despite being 6 days before what would be my missed period, it was positive too!

October 7, 2024

I was in shock – this was quite a bit earlier than the previous pregnancy to show a positive! I crawled into bed and tapped my husband on the shoulder. “Hey Andrew,” I whispered, because Lili was still sleeping on our couch downstairs, “I’m pregnant!”

I made it a point not to say something like, “you’re gonna be a dad!” because I didn’t want to jinx it. Every time I act too certain, life throws me a curveball. I had to be just cautiously optimistic. Instead of feeling blissfully happy, I was nervous. What if there was something wrong with me, and the same thing that happened last time will happen again?

My worst fears stared me down that Friday. I was just as far along as I had been when I miscarried last time, and there was blood when I wiped. It was a little less red than the blood from last time, but it felt similar. It was happening again! Maybe I really can’t sustain a pregnancy?

Unlike my miscarriage in mid-July, the bleeding slowed down, stopping completely by mid-day. I called my obstetrician anyway, and she put me on “pelvic rest”, which means no strenuous or moderate-to-high intensity exercise. She scheduled me to get my hcg tested the following Monday, at 4 weeks 5 days, and it was surprisingly higher than what I anticipated:

I immediately contacted my obstetrician, who scheduled me for a “reassurance ultrasound” the following Tuesday, the earliest she was able to pencil me in. The most unexpected shock of my life was when she instantly found a heartbeat, which belonged to a rather robust, surprisingly human-like, 7 week 5 day old baby, showing no signs of issues:

But of course, one hcg result on its own is not very indicative of how a pregnancy is progressing. just shy of 48 hours later, I got my blood drawn again. If a pregnancy is progressing well, hcg is expected to roughly double every 48 hours during the first 8-10 weeks or so of pregnancy, around which it slows down.

The next day, to my surprise, I found out that it was not only doing what it was suppos to, but it had more than doubled!

Pregnancy after loss – especially when all you’d ever experienced was loss – is heartwrenching. You’re always concocting worse case scenarios in your head, and always waiting for the other shoe to inevitably drop. Surely this can’t be too good to be true, right?

As it turns out, I’m still pregnant (knock on wood!) and out of the first trimester worry zone. But that wasn’t without another scare that drove the point home for me that digging too deep into the scientific literature can do more harm than good.

Pregnancy is weird

The good news: I’m finally out of my first trimester and my head is clear enough to put my thoughts into words.

The unexpected news? I don’t feel like I’m out of the first trimester at all. Everyone from family to friends to my doctors – from my obstetrician to my dermatologist – told me to look forward to this time, when the worst of my symptoms magically disappear and I suddenly feel well enough to get started on my baby registry and the nursery (after catching up on the giant pile of chores I haven’t been able to do for the last few months, major props to my husband for having to hold the fort, run all of our errands, pick up my slack, and still kick butt at his full time job).

Instead, one of the first things I did when I woke up this morning was throw up the water I drank first thing in the morning to alleviate my cotton mouth, then dry heave about 11 more times after the fact even though there was clearly nothing left. This episode took place less than 12 hours after I threw up the entirety of my dinner. Such has been, more or less, my first trimester morning and evening routine, with seemingly no end in sight.

I need to stop telling people I’m feeling better, because whenever I do – typically it’s after that rare unicorn of a day when I managed to get a decent amount of work done and miraculously avoided throwing up – I either throw up later that evening or first thing the next morning, and proceed to feel utterly spent and exhausted for the next several days. It’s even worse when I wake up all optimistic, delusional enough to believe I could actually go out and do something remotely social.

I should have learned my lesson months ago, but nope.

Nobody ever tells you how intense pregnancy actually is. Whether it’s the laughing gas, the epidural, or the flood of oxytocin from seeing their babies for the first time, it seems most people forget all about it the moment the baby is out, or even when they hit the glorious second trimester (or maybe I just have it particularly bad? I have no idea). Joking aside, I figured it would be helpful – not just for others but for myself as well – to journal my pregnancy as it comes, in hopes that other women who choose this path won’t be as blindsided as I was.

I never had motion sickness before pregnancy except for maybe a second on some of the crazier rollercoasters right after eating. Now I feel motion sick all the time, even when I’m perfectly still.
I throw up some of the most benign foods like toast and cereal, but spicy Indian food seems to go down just fine.
I have a food aversion to pickles, saltines, and ginger chews. Also eggs and even chicken tenders, the blandest, most benign foods around. When my husband eats Jamaican jerk chicken downstairs in the basement two floors down, it smells like he’s eating it right next to me upstairs in the bedroom with the door closed, the window open, and the air purifier on full-blast, and it’s worse than fingernails on a chalkboard. I have developed a newfound empathy for people living with sensory issues. And of course, all roads lead to nausea, but all the anti-nausea meds I tried make me sleepy for 24 hours straight. Clearly my baby wants me to stay nauseous forever.
Oddly enough, there is some comfort in my nausea, almost like a warm blanket, the baby reassuring me, “Mom, I’m still there, doing just fine!” As someone who needs far more reassurance than I’d like to admit, it’s kind of sweet, in a way. I repeat the mantra that my obstetrician and one friend with kids taught me: Sick mama, healthy baby. If her being healthy means me being sick, I’ll take it. All of it. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop complaining until it’s over (I think I’ve earned that right).
Before pregnancy, I’d feel better after throwing up, even if it was temporary. Now, I feel worse, like there’s a frog in my throat that is about to jump out at any time but is somehow stuck? And somehow that frog is also my racing heart? It only makes sense to me and maybe other pregnant people, I get it.
I have worse acne than I did in my entire life and look like I’m on the Walking Dead, but I’ve never cared so little about my appearance. That takes energy and bandwidth that I simply don’t have.
I went from hardcore foodie to hating the idea of food and forcing myself to eat for sustenance the second I got pregnant.
It’s not morning sickness. It’s all day sickness. Throw in headaches and exhaustion and it’s the worst hangover of my entire life still going strong 3 months later. And here I was thinking the 2nd trimester would be better?
When people compliment me on not putting on any weight I want to punch them in the face. I would trade a little baby weight for being able to keep food down in a heartbeat. And yes, as a matter of fact, I’ve actually LOST a few pounds since getting pregnant despite my baby being the size of an orange (which is odd, because last week she was the size of a lemon, and I’m pretty sure lemons are around the same size as oranges, if not bigger?)
Speaking of heartbeat, nobody told me about the racing heartbeat, and the fact that I went from being able to run 5k without breaking a sweat to getting completely winded and having to lie down from carrying a small basket of laundry up a flight of stairs or even just changing the sheets on our bed, within the span of a week. The only difference? An embryo implanted.
I’m hearing all these old wives tales about girl vs boy pregnancies and now they make perfect sense to me because this is the most stereotypical girl pregnancy ever. If it was up to Baby, I’d have given myself diabetes already from all the sugar cravings.
There are few things that make me more nauseous than water. Yes, plain water.
Nobody ever tells you about the weirder symptoms. The constipation. The feeling that your vagina is randomly getting struck by lightning or on fire. The fact that my cat stepping on my boobs like I’m her human jungle gym while walking across our bed hurts more than any surgery I’ve ever had. Yes, even the one where the anesthetic didn’t kick in properly.
I have no idea how pregnant women, especially those in the first and early second trimesters, manage to get in the car or take public transportation to commute to an office – or crazier yet, a worksite or a hospital – and work a full shift every single day. I’m a freelancer with the cushiest most flexible job in existence and I still feel like I’m falling behind and can’t get enough done because of the exhaustion, the headaches, and the nausea being literally constant. It doesn’t help that I probably take more naps than a six month old out of pure necessity after hating naps my entire life.
That weird feeling of wanting to scream from the rooftops about how excited I am to bring this new life into the world despite all of the above coupled with the sad feeling – one may call it survivor’s guilt – for all my close friends and family still struggling with fertility problems for years. Seeing their suffering, their feelings that their bodies are failing them while mine is working exactly like the textbook says it should, makes my heart heavy and makes me feel like an ingrate. Here I am, complaining about symptoms they would give anything to experience. This awareness quells that urge to scream it from the rooftops and almost makes me feel like hiding my pregnancy, knowing that, before long, I’ll have a baby bump that constantly reminds them of the immense pain they experience every day. Some of these women are far better suited to be mothers than I am, making all of this feel so incredibly unfair. My husband wisely reminds me that feeling bad for them is not a good reason to deny ourselves the family we always wanted. And so, I remain forever grateful, perhaps more so with the awareness that not every woman can experience this incredible gift.
The strangest thing of all is that I’ve never been more miserable, excited, happy, and overwhelmed at the same time. And that I love my baby so much and choke up every time I see her on the ultrasound as if I’ve known her my entire life, even though I can’t even feel her yet and only see her grainy black-and-white likeness on an ultrasound once a month. I get so emotional at the very thought of her and want to do everything in my power to give her all the love and protection she could ever want, to be her soft landing she not only can, but wants to turn to when life gets tough.

This is the wildest ride ever but it’s so totally worth it.

September 10, 2024: 3 days before the pregnancy “officially” started (even though it would be about 2 weeks before any baby would enter the picture)

December 10, 2024: 4 days after that positive pregnancy test. A little nausea and fatigue (which was what prompted me to test in the first place) and early pregnancy bloat. Symptoms – Nausea: 3, fatigue: 4, Constantly having to pee: 6.