Life is never fair. Yet God still loves me.

I know that you all are wondering why I seemed to vanish from the earth. There is no simple answer to that, in fact it is down right painful.

On Saturday, May 16, I was at home cooking lunch visiting with my family who was visiting. All was going well. There were still so many fears that I was experiencing with my pregnancy, but I was determined to dispel fear and fully rely on trust in my all - loving God to see me through all the questions and fears. I allowed myself to feel joy and anticipation. Finally. I was now seven weeks pregnant. Halfway through the first trmester. I saw my doctor the day before who was still hesitant to be hopeful. He had a gut feeling that something was not right with the development of our baby, but I kept telling him that we were going to pray our way to this baby's birth. Well, back to Saturday. As soon as I started cooking, I got this terrible (most horrible feeling ever) in my belly. It just felt like a huge beach ball was blown up in my belly. I tried to go to the bathroom, but nothing came, then my husband started cooking the meal I started and once I smelled it cooking, I started vomiting. Really painful vomiting. I was thinking, wow, this morning sickness can be tough, but I was so thankful to be having it. I told my husband that I needed to lay down, so I immmediately laid down thinking I would be better soon. I never got better. Ever. I started to feel sick again, so I made it back to the bathroom a second time and tried to poo, thinking I was just consipated. No go. Sorry for tmi. Brace yourself, though, it does get worse. I vomited again and then J came in to check on me and I was so weak, I could barely move. I made it back to bed and wondered why I could not poo or pee. Nothing, something was wrong. I asked J to call either my mom or his mom. I was cold and clammy and knew I needed to go to the hospital. Then I immediately realized that there was no way I would be able to walk out of my house. I was so weak and cold, clammy, hurting, and scared. I told J that I did need to go to the bathroom and he is helpimg me and I collapse out of our bed and onto the floor. I could hear J panicking and telling me to wake up, he is scared out of his mind and I cannot respond only listen to his scared voice. He tried to call our neighbors who are emts and they are not home, so he calls some other neighbors and his parents. He had already called my mom before I collapsed and she thought I was just weak from the morning sickness. Our neighbors came over and the wife, Jerri, fully took care of me while here husband, Rocky, helped my husband call 911 and explain that I just collapsed and eliminated on myself bc I could not control my bodily functions anymore. Jerri kept holding my hand, rubbing a cool rag on my face and talking me through it all and prayed for me and my baby. Then J's parent's arrived and still the ambulance was not here. They passed up our road and my fil had to chase them down to show them to our home. When they finally arrive, they were pompous and kept hurting me worse. Finally they get me into the ambulance with J and brought me to the local hospital (about 35 min. away). When I get there they realize that my blood pressure has bottomed out, I am dry (meaning they cannot get any blood from me), I am dehydrated (although I kept drinking lots of water), and my heartrate is beating so fast. Time passed, they hook me to iv's and I keep thinking, please take care of me so that I can keep my baby alive in me. Finally, they do an ultrasound and they keep looking to make sure I am not having an ectopic pregnancy. Well, they finally figure out that I am having an experiencing an eptopic pregnancy and I bleeding internally which is what caused the all of the above problems. What I learned about ectopic pregnancy during that time is that in between 6-8 weeks of the pregnancy the baby will eventaully grow to big to be where they implanted (ovary, fallopian tube, etc) and it ruptures the area it is in. They quickly thought that our baby implanted right outside of my left ovary, so they called my doctor and he immediately arranged for me to have emergency surgery. It was a life or death surgery. It was already too late to prolong the life of our baby, but no one really knew if I would be able to live through the surgery because it had already taken them so long to figure out what was going with my body. They then put me into another ambulance to transport me to another local Women's Hospital where my doctor was getting ready to do my surgery. J could not ride with me in the ambulance the second time, but the EMT who was with me was so life-giving in his encouragement. It is amazing how much you share with complete strangers when you are in the depths of intense sorrow and grief.
When I arrived at the next hospital, I immmediatley saw my mom and stepdad and then J and Dr. Darbonne together. I just looked at my doctor and said I was not ready to see him again soon and that he was right, sometimes things do not work out. I mean you are talking to a woman who has experienced a previous miscarriage and 8 1/2 years of IF. I know that sometimes things do not work out, but this was my time for it to work out. That is not asking too much. The doctor quickly explained that what he was going to do. He was going to do the removal of our baby and the blood laprascopically ( i don't know if this is spelled right) and once he figured out where the baby had been, he would figure out if he needed to remove my left ovary or not. I then asked him to pray with me and J and for us and he did and his prayer comforted my soul and immediately I trusted that God would use him to restore my health. I mean this doctor went to the author of life for me and I knew that God would guide his hands and bring me healing. He had me sign all of the forms and then the anesthiologist came in and explained what he would be doing and had me sign tons of forms too. I could not write, so they basically got chicken scratch. In the end, it really did not matter. I just knew I wanted to live.
My whole family was at the hospital, along with my in-laws and best friend praying for me throughout the surgery and they did not know if I would live or die. It was not looking good.
After the surgery, in the recovery room with the two nurses, I woke up to hear them giggling nervously bc I was still bleeding through one of the holes the doctor used to remove the baby and my left tube. They could not stop the bleeding and had to use extrordinary measures to stop the bleeding. I remember telling them that there was nothing funny about this situation and they immediately stopped laughing. I told them to get the doctor and they said he already left. They had to apply so much pressure to get all of the blood out, that I am so bruised it will take six weeks to heal. The doctor had already told me it would take 4-6 wks to just recover physically from the surgery, not including the emotional healing that would have to happen at some point. In the end, they removed my left tube, but both ovaries were spared. I got to see picutres of all of reproductive organs and they looked so good. While I did not want to see them, I was amazed at how good they looked after so much traume. Apparently, the doctor is so pleased with results of the surgery, he is very hopeful that our future will be bright. Let's hope he is right about this too!~
Once they put me in a room (a labor and delivery room-suite, what irony)I began to see my family come to see me one by one to give me their love. I was not really able to keep my eyes open, but just hearing their voices, brought me such peace. They would take turns feeding me ice chips. I was still dying of thirst. I can only imagine the thirst of Jesus on the cross. For two more days, I remained on iv's and had an oxygen mask. I lost so much blood (over a liter was removed from my belly), my blood count was so low and I had very little iron to bring my heart oxygen. They starting giving me pain meds, but I had an empty stomach, so I started to vomit terribly. It was miserable. I was finally released to come home on Tuesday night, and my follow-up appt with the doctor is June 1, 2009. There is so much sorrow in my heart right now. Yet there is gratitude that God spared my life and has allowed me more time with my dear husband and my family. My family and husband are still so traumatized that it will take them a long time to recover.
At one time, I woke up and told J that I was talking to dead people. I don't ever talk like this, but I know that I was talking with my Grandma Elaine and some others that I could not name. That is how close to death I think I was.
The grace through all of this is that I realized that although I would love nothing more to mother a child here on earth, I need to love and appreciate my husband more than my desire to be a mother. I don't need to spend my days toiling for a baby, I need to be thankful for life in all of its giftedness. I still want to have a baby to love one day, but at this time, I want to love the one I just lost. Our baby is with Jesus. They may very well, be in the arms of our holy mother. We did name our baby Nicky. We had always thought of the name of Nicholas for a boy after St. Nicholas, but realized that Nicole is such a beautiful name for a girl and since we did not know the gender of our baby, we thought Nicky was the perfect choice.
Every night when I was pregnant, I would place my blessed St. Gianna medal on my left side as I prayed for the life of our little one. It felt very ironic that while St. Gianna died to spare the life of her child, my life was spared at the cost of our baby's life.
I almost did not want to share this with any of you, because ttc is already so hard and knowing things that could go wrong when you will finally get pregnant is so hard on our hearts. I thought of all of you in my suffering and prayers at the hospital and even now. Apparenently, with an ectopic pregnancy you will still have a chance to conceive again, but while my heart is hopeful it is very cautious. My aunt suffered an ectopic pregnancy and went onto have my cousin, Dillon. My best friend's mom also had an ectopic pregnancy and went onto have two children. I have no idea what God's plans are for me and J, but I am assured that they are great plans. He would not have spared my life otherwise.
I don't know how much I will be blogging as I heal, but know that you all remain in my prayers and will lift up my suffering for healing in prayers for you all.