It was this cycle last year that ended in a chemical pregnancy. It is surreal to believe that I was so close to having a child of my own. That child would be about three months old today if that pregnancy had continued. I’ve had so many different emotions about the situation as time has gone on. Sometimes I mourn what could have been, yet other times I find it hard to believe it ever happened.
I have written two blogs previously about my chemical pregnancy. The first post read rather sterile. It was lacking emotion and feels empty. Reflective of how I felt at the time I wrote it. Still to this day it comes and goes. The second was more recently, not long after what should have been our Angel’s due date. The more time that passes, it is harder to truly conceptualise what happened. It is hard to accept that I was pregnant when my pregnancy has been labelled in such a clinical tone.
A chemical pregnancy has such a superficial notion to it, almost like it was a pretend pregnancy. That was definitely how I feel about the term, and as such, I’ve never been able to truly connect with the fact that I was actually pregnant.
I believe the term chemical pregnancy came about to diminish the emotional side effect of losing a pregnancy. It sounds fake. Like my body thought it was pregnant so it produces hCG. But it wasn’t really pregnant, just make-believe. This is how the term makes me feel. In actual fact, that is far from the truth.
A chemical pregnancy the name given to a miscarriage that occurred before 5 weeks of gestation. It is possible to experience a chemical pregnancy and never know. In my situation, that could have easily been the case. If this was not an IVF cycle, I never would have known I was pregnant.
I started bleeding quite heavily before my original test date (OTD). There was not an ounce of hope in my heart when I went in for my BETA. When the clinic nurse called through my result, I never expect to hear anything other than “It’s negative”. Instead, I was told that pregnancy hormone is present but I was neither pregnant or not pregnant.
My first blood test showed hCG at 8. To confirm a positive pregnancy my hCG had to be over 50. For it to be negative, hCG should be below 2. I was in limbo. There was still a chance that my levels could rise, but the odds were against me.
Two days later, my hCG results were in at 11. It hadn’t doubled, but it hadn’t gone down either. It was over a week later before my hCG went down low enough to stop progesterone. By this time I was over it all. I wanted it to be over, and to move forward with whatever was to come. It was such a relief when the nurse finally said,
‘You can stop now hun. It’s done.’
I had stopped pessaries a day earlier. The packet was empty and I didn’t want to go buy more. It seemed so ridiculous to waste money on a lost cause. Instead, I just kept up with the troches until they told me to stop.
It is difficult for me to identify my emotions. My mind does not comprehend the loss. Mostly because I was never told I had something to lose. The words ‘Congratulations! You’re pregnant!’ were never spoken to me. No one truly had faith that the pregnancy was viable.
I’ll never forget the tone the nurse had in her voice when she called with those initial BETA results. It oozed underlying sorrow, but also somewhat clinical. She said there was always a chance things could improve, that’s why they keep you on progesterone. But there was no hope. No sense that this should be something I should be excited about. The only person who had any hope for the situation was Rob.
Rob was so optimistic about the result. Even more so after it had gone up. Our little one was hanging in there. It was a fighter. He held his hand often to my stomach and even uttered words of encouragement to the little embryo. I think he knew the gravity of it all, but his hope never wavered.
That embryo was the little embryo that could. It had a rough start and was classified as a 1PN because, after fertilization, only one disc was present. No one really expected it to develop into a blastocyst. It didn’t even reach the blastocyst stage until day 6. The only way we were allowed to use it was if we had it genetically tested. We suspected it may have had a genetic abnormality, but alas it came back perfectly normal.
My progesterone levels did not make it over 30 until 5dp5dt. I began spotting not long after that. By the time my BETA rolled around, I was no longer spotting. The spotting had developed into a full bleed. We expected a negative. My body told me it was a negative, but yet that little embryo stuck in there. It fought a good fight.
Often I find myself reflecting on what life would be like if that embryo had stuck around. For one, I would have delivered that child by now. January 25th 2019 was the due date for our lost angel. If that pregnancy had gone to full term, there would be a baby in my arms right now.
I never would have had the endometriosis excision laparoscopy. We would have savings in our account, living a comfortable life. Instead, we are fighting to pull money out of our asses to accumulate enough money for the next cycle. I’d be tired from a baby keeping me awake rather than from the synthetic hormones I am pumping into my body regularly.
My heart would not have broken a million times over as pregnancy announcement after birth announcement flooded my life. Maybe I would be free from antidepressants. No one knows what life would be like if that baby had come to term. What I do know is that I wouldn’t have this blog, my Instagram account or this subsequent community.
I started my blog to help me process all I have been through. To make sense of what I’ve experienced and to help others come to terms with their reality. My aim was to change the way the world views infertility. Educating the ignorant, as well as being the voice of women everywhere who cannot speak for themselves.
Women who feel shame for their condition. Couples who have been dismissed by their family and friends when they’ve broached the topic. I wanted to be a reference point for those individuals and couples to refer their friends and family to. To help the ignorant become informed. Change the topic from a taboo one, to one as commonplace as the weather.
Yet, it still feels like a story I have read about someone else. It does not feel real to me. This was my reality and yet I have a blase attitude towards it. It wasn’t a ‘real’ pregnancy in my mind. This is my reality and I think it is because I never heard someone tell me I was pregnant.
It felt just like all those times my period was late. The times I knew there was no way I could have been pregnant, but maybe I was. I knew I wasn’t, it felt unnatural to think maybe I could be. That was how my chemical pregnancy felt to me.
There are days when I feel very strong emotions about it. Sometimes I get so angry, demanding the universe give me a reason as to why my baby did not get to live. On other occasions, I find myself completely lost for words but with an empty feeling throughout my entire being. Very rarely I grieve.
I grieve for the child I had. The child that was as close as I’ve ever been to a mother. I grieve for the life that could have been. A life that would have been full of love, and wonderful experiences. I mourn the loss of something I never believe I had, something I question if I will ever have. My baby never got the chance to take a breath. It did not even have a heart. It was a clump of tissue that I didn’t even notice leave my body. For that, I grieve.
It has been a year since that cycle began. Now I am in the midst of another assisted cycle. It is making me feel things that I cannot identify entirely. I am filled with wonder, questions that keep my mind occupied. How much longer? Will this be it? What will it take to bring my child to me? This cycle has been very thought-provoking in regards to my lost angel and what the future holds.
Everything should have been so different.
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