A Gift Wrapped in Terror

I pushed through for months, but it was a stressful, extremely sweaty struggle. I was also helping Rayne with his 5th-grade school, which meant a lot of Zoom meeting timing, checking on him, and helping with his work during every break and lunch period I had off. Sitting for hours on end became very hard. I had to make very elaborate pillow and blanket setups to support and position my body just perfectly to be able to sit at the desk. I couldn't start work each morning until the area was perfectly clean; I would wipe down and sanitize every surface and sweep the floor before every shift. Feeling the slightest crumb under my foot might make it harder for me to work. I would spray room freshener and make sure everything was exactly in its place before every shift.

Organization is not something that comes naturally to me, but it is something my brain craves greatly. Routine, routine, routine. Everything became mundane and routine. Day after day, the exact same thing, and now, I never left the house. It didn't feel like we could buy a house while I had no job, then we were both working and had zero time to put into the immense effort of starting house shopping. It felt like the whole world was crumbling down around us anyway. After that year, things were just barely beginning to change. Rayne wanted to be in Band, and that would require in-person schooling. He would be in 6th grade and really did not need to miss out on more social time with friends, or more accurately, miss out on the chance to make more friends!

During his back-to-school night before the first day, we walked the halls together and visited all his new classrooms and teachers. The halls were so packed, and I had not been around people much since COVID, much less in an enclosed area with wall-to-wall people in a very long time. I had the worst anxiety the whole time and was sweating buckets. It was hot, and I was definitely a gross and shaky mess by the time we got back to the car. I felt like I had just walked through 100 heart attacks from all the panic of so many people in a confined space with us being the ONLY ones still wearing masks…

The next day Rayne went to his first day of 6th Grade and I had a full shift at work while my husband was off and hanging with me while I worked. I started my shift feeling kind of painful and crampy, but I fought through it. The pain became more and more unbearable, and I was able to get them to switch me to chats, as I was newly trained on handling emails and online live chats. I was dying in pain, but at least I didn’t have to speak to anyone. I had some sick leave so I left an hour early and lay there in horrible pain. About an hour later, I got my period and assumed a cyst had ruptured, causing all that pain, and thus I was just now on deck for a super painful period. My husband was worried, but I chose to ignore it. It was awful, but I had a short cycle of 2-3 days and thought not much of it then.

Two days later, mid-shift, I stood up and the lower half of me was covered in blood. I definitely freaked out, and my husband, who was sure I needed to go to the doctor many days prior, was now taking me to the minor emergency right then! They ran a few tests and did an exam, worried it was something random that I don't even remember, and had me waiting around 15mins for an X-ray. A tech took me back for the X-ray and had me filling out some forms when a nurse ran in and said my X-ray was absolutely canceled and that I should go wait back in the room.

I went back and told my husband, "I think I’m pregnant because they yanked me out of that X-ray room soooooo fast." After 15 more minutes, they finally came in and said the urine test showed I was pregnant and that they feared I was having an ectopic pregnancy and needed to go to the ER right away. How crazy is it to hear that you're pregnant and probably losing the baby in the same statement? We went home, had my mom come stay with Rayne while we went to the hospital… where I continued to bleed heavily for the THREE-HOUR wait to even get into a room. I was in so much pain while waiting and by then my one single pad was completely soaked. I wanted to start screaming at everyone so badly, but I knew it wouldn't help. They kept coming out saying all their beds were full and they were redirecting ambulances to other ERs. When they finally took us back, they fully treated me like I was miscarrying until they did an ultrasound.

Then they told me the opposite: that in fact, everything looked perfectly normal inside me and that the baby was alive and well at about 4-5 weeks developed. The whiplash from that statement sent me fully into shock. After the doctor rushed away, I was then seen by a discharge nurse who gave me a pile of paperwork on miscarrying and said, "With this much blood, you’ll probably miscarry anyway, and you will need to get your hormones tested ASAP to actually know if the baby is even still viable."  I was so confused by all this conflicting info, plus I didn’t even have insurance! We went home, filed for Medicare, and I was given a very basic pregnant women's care insurance coverage only, as we made just sliiiightly too much for full medical health coverage.

However, because of the state covered insurance, no one could take me in… No one said they accepted this insurance. The sliding scale walk-in clinic said they had next-day appointments with their OBGYN, so I went to see her. At this point, I was still bleeding and in pain and now no longer able to eat, getting down about one bite of food a day and a few sips of water ONLY. She told me my bloodwork was only half the amount of hormones they expected to see based on my last count at the hospital and that I was probably going to miscarry. At this point, it had been two weeks of assuming I was miscarrying. The doctor let me know she could hand me over to a more specialized OBGYN, and I jumped at the chance.

The new doctor was actually linked to a local major medical system, and she had amazing reviews! I had to wait two more weeks to get in, still bleeding but a little less now. I was still only eating a bite of food a day, even with the Rx nausea medication I was prescribed. I felt half dead and was still not allowing a single ounce of hope to wedge its way in for fear of the emotional toll when it all came crashing down, just like they kept saying it would. But I walked into that appointment hopeless, and within the first second of being checked with the ultrasound, there she was! A tiny little peanut shape with two arms waving around like mad with the smallest hand ever right at us for all to see. Well, “Hello” to you too!!

It took my breath away. I was completely speechless and did not believe what I was seeing until the doctor started speaking so very positively! Baby was super healthy, and I just had some weird bruising under the baby’s sac. It seemed the egg had attempted to rip away and that tear hadn’t healed and just kept pooling blood, causing me to bleed so very much. When we left that appointment I just cried and cried. I was so happy and so in shock yet again. Plus so very worried even still. We were only at the 8-week mark and would not be more out of the woods until the 12-week mark when miscarriage in general becomes much less likely. 

Only my mom knew for the longest time. We didn’t want to deal with the disappointment of telling people I was pregnant only to have to deal with the burden of telling them we miscarried. Especially when I had been told I was going to miscarry so very many times. The next few weeks were horrible. I got a new medication from the better new doctor; however, it completely knocked me out and I was totally drunk from it.

The whole time I was on a leave of absence from work and had to jump through a billion hoops. My employer's third-party LOA team was critical when I was just trying to save my job because they only offered a few hours of sick leave total a year. You have to get a LOA for anything longer than three days. Since it was the highest-paying job I had ever had, and I could do it from home too, I really wanted to keep it. My boss was very sweet but extremely unhelpful. At Petco, I had just been told by the General Manager that I was on leave and never filled out a single piece of paper. REI? A hundred and one steps plus hoops to go through. It was a horrible added stress on top of just trying to live and survive day-to-day. After that 8-week appointment, I finally slowed down with the bleeding, and by 10 weeks, it had finally stopped. I got genetic blood testing done and was able to find out the gender at 10 weeks: it’s a girl!

At 11 weeks, it was all actually starting to feel real. For real for real! We told Rayne that he was going to be a big brother before anyone else. The next week, we slowly started telling everyone we saw during my son and I’s many birthday celebrations. We called and let our Florida family know as well. They had been hearing how sick I had been for months, and it was a relief for them to finally know why. I started eating again slowly and was able to even start back at work for the super busy fall and holiday season. Then the migraines started…