Worst Week Ever

This is probably going to be a long, very detailed, kinda graphic post, so you have been warned.

I have to say that this has been the worst week of my entire life. I honestly don't think anything else tops this. Nope, nothing. Like I said, I woke up Tuesday afternoon bleeding. That night at work I was kinda freaking out, I just felt like something was wrong, couldn't explain why, but I just felt like something wasn't right. So we went to ER after the bleeding, empty sac, no baby, negative urine pregnancy test, call office on Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon, my OB calls me, asking how things were going, if I was cramping, bleeding, etc. She read the reports from the sono and asked me if I wanted to go ahead with a D&C or wait. She said she'd give me until Monday, but that the sono showed that the baby stopped developing around 8 weeks, and that it had been almost 3 weeks already and I was only bleeding a little, with very little cramping. I opted to schedule a D&C. Hearing that it had been about 3 weeks hurt. For 3 weeks, my baby was dead and I didn't know. We scheduled it for 11:30 on Thursday. My SIL and sister both came down to help with the kids and my sister was going to come to the hospital and sit with Husband, and to help calm my nerves. I had a phobia about general anesthesia. Anyway, doc said that if things did start on their own, the cramping would be pretty severe and I'd bleed heavily. But, I didn't think that would happen. 3:15 am, I wake up with horrible cramps. They progressively get worse until they started coming like labor contractions. I had no idea it would be like that. I started passing small bits of tissue. It was horrible pain, and horrible thinking that this "tissue" would have been my child. At 7AM, I can no longer talk through the contractions, so I call the office and they said I could go ahead and go in as scheduled, or I could cancel the D&C and let nature continue on. But they said it could last for days and I still might need a D&C to get all of the tissue. I opted to go ahead with the surgery, I couldn't stand the thought of days of that. It was horrible pain. I didn't hurt that bad laboring with Jacob. We get to the hospital and the pain suddenly went from every 2-4 minutes to constant pain with worsening cramping every couple minutes. I freaked the pre-op nurse a bit I think, because typically patients aren't cramping like I was right before their D&C. I went into the bathroom to change, and while I was in there, I noticed that I had passed more tissue, and that the pad I was wearing was wet with yellow fluid. I sat down, felt more tissue fall, but when I looked into the toilet, I was staring at my baby. The fluid was probably the small amount of amniotic fluid. The ER doc told me there wasn't a baby in there, it had been absorbed. They were wrong. So wrong. It looked like a 8-9 week fetus/embryo, whatever the technical term is. My baby. I wasn't sure what to do, and I was still hurting like I had been. I considered my options: I could call for the nurse and she may or may not fish it out and it could be sent for genetic testing, or I could say goodbye and flush. I chose number 2. It doesn't really matter the reason for it, my baby died at 8-9 weeks gestation and that's that. So I got back to the cart, they loaded me with fentanyl, which helped with the pain, although it was still uncomfortable, and Doc came in to see me. I told her about passing the baby, but she said there was probably still tissue there since I was that far along, and I was still having contractions. They gave me some versed, per my request because I had this huge fear over the general anesthesia. I think just seeing people going under and waking up freaked me out, but they reassured me, and said the versed would help. It didn't. They took me back ahead of schedule, I was still anxious, but before I knew it, I was waking up. I shouldn't have been so worked up, but I'd never been put under before. There was still quite a bit of tissue in the uterus and a good amount in the cervical os. Turns out I bled pretty heavily, and had to have methergine and hemabate to stop the bleeding. I'm also taking it three times a day for the next 3 days. Maybe that's typical, but I really don't know much about losses this early. Working L&D, we don't see people until they are 20 weeks, the earliest fetal demise I've seen is 17 weeks. Anyway, in recovery, it finally hit me what had happened, emotionally speaking. Got more drugs in recovery,the cramping was god-awful but nothing compared to what I had before, couldn't have the normally scheduled toradol because I bled too much so I had more fentanyl, which made me itch, given Benadryl for the itching, had to stay for an extra bag of pitocin, and shed a couple tears when they handed me a grief packet that I have handed out to patients numerous times. I never wanted to be on the receiving end, and I was quite naive, thinking I probably never would be. I'm okay most of the time, but then out of nowhere something gets to me, and I know I'll have that, probably forever. I feel that not only did I have to suffer this loss, and have surgery to remove all the tissue, but I had to labor for 7 hours before that, in pain worse than the pain I felt while laboring with Jacob. On top of the guilt I have for initially not wanting the pregnancy and all that I confessed to when we found out. I hate that I will always have that memory seeing my 8-9 week gestation baby in the toilet, but I feel somewhat better knowing its body passed out on it's own, that it wasn't removed during the D&C, as morbid as that sounds. I'm not quite as angry with God, but I'm still struggling with understanding why. I know I'm not supposed to know, and that He knows what He's doing, it's just hard to be on this end, hurting and not seeing the big picture. I feel a bit empty. I had thought I was pregnant with a live baby Monday morning, and now my uterus is empty, cramping. But, I knew deep down something wasn't right, I just hoped it was my paranoia over nothing, like my fear of general anesthesia. Women are smart when it comes to their bodies. There will be no baby this March. And Monday night, I return to work where there are 4 other nurses pregnant, due in Feb/March. I'll be okay taking care of pregnant, laboring moms. It will be watching my co-workers abdomens swell with baby, when mine is now empty. That will be the hardest part. I'm glad for them, but sorry for myself and the child I'll never hold. We've decided at some point, probably sooner that later, we'll try again for another baby. We had our hearts ready for 4 children running around the house. We wanted this child that God took home with Him. But right now, we are healing. And life goes on in our house, Jacob has football games, Clara has songs to sing, and Isaiah has hugs to give. We are blessed with 3 healthy, beautiful children here with us, and as my SIL(who lost her baby at 39 weeks) said "now Mirabel has a cousin to play with, and you guys have your own child angel in Heaven, watching over you".