Thy will be done

I have felt like I needed to be willing to be more open about my experiences lately. I’ve ignored that for a while- because I already posted once about my struggle with anxiety, and I felt like there’s nothing I can say that someone else hasn’t already said more eloquently. But the feelings persisted. When I first found out about our miscarriage I had the same thoughts and feelings, “You need to be willing to share this”. I hesitated again for a few reasons; one being that I didn’t think I could organize my jumbled thoughts and feelings into something that would make sense or even be helpful. The second reason I’ve struggled with wanting to post is that the last thing I want to do is make it seem like I am using my pain for likes or comments, or pity. That is not my intention in the least. The evening after that first awful doctor’s appointment, I went home and did so much googling. I wanted to understand why this was happening. I came across a woman’s blog about her experience with miscarriage due to blighted ovum, and links to support pages and resources. It was such a tender mercy to have those life lines in the middle of the worst of it. My intentions in writing this post is to hopefully reach someone else who needs those lifelines, and to share the beautiful moments I’ve experienced as I’ve learned about the peace that only Christ can give despite any trial or circumstance we are in.

                “But loss isn’t something the young can accept with ease. To fight against it was healthy; to fight was life.”                    

-Susan Evans McCloud, For Love of Ivy

July 5th was a Sunday. I was a few days late- which never happens- so I took one of the cheap pregnancy tests that I had at home, not really expecting a positive, but taking it so I could tell my brain to stop getting my hopes up for the millionth time. Ten minutes later I went back to look, and saw two little pink lines staring up at me. We had been trying for a year and a half, and I truly didn’t know if I believed it. I guess I was starting to think it would never happen for us again, but there it was. Two little lines telling me Jaden would get a sibling, that I would become a mother for the second time, and telling Matt that there would be a happy- albeit stressful- arrival right in the middle of his most intense semester of graduate school. He wasn’t upset, but he wasn’t thrilled either. He was amazing to tell me frequently that even though he wasn’t squealing about it yet, he wanted me to be happy and excited. We’ve waited for this for a long time. 

Weeks came and went, and I felt too good to be pregnant. I wasn’t sick- at all- and the only complaint I had was that I was falling asleep during Jaden’s afternoon nap rather than getting my to-do list done. I worried that I wasn’t feeling sick enough, but tried to brush those thoughts off. 

One day I started spotting, and I was so scared. I asked Matt to give me a blessing, and then tried my best to shove my fears aside. July 21st I went to the doctor for something unrelated, but in the process of visiting about things they decided to try doing an ultrasound just to make sure things were ok since I had been spotting a week before. The midwife took me back, and Jaden climbed all over my head and spit in my hair and made messes while she looked at the screen with a concerned look and kept telling me not to worry yet, she might just be bad at this particular ultrasound machine. She called and got me an appointment right away in their American Fork office, and I drove away praying my heart out. Please let them find this baby. Please let everything be ok.

The ultrasound tech couldn’t find anything either, and the doctor came in to tell me he was 90% sure this was a miscarriage. A blighted ovum. There is no fetal pole in there, and so your options are to wait for your body to miscarry, take some medicine to help it start miscarrying, or schedule a d&c. He wanted to wait and do another ultrasound the following week in case I had my dates off and just wasn’t as far along as I thought. At 6 weeks you should see more than what we did. 

So I drove home, crying. Jaden copied me in the back seat the entire 20 minutes home, which made me laugh, but mostly I just cried. And prayed.

This is when I turned to research to try and understand what was happening. The doctor had used the term ‘blighted ovum’ and said that basically my body thought I was pregnant, and was growing the gestational and yolk sac, but there was no baby to grow. It was a confusing feeling wondering why this hurt so much if there had never been a baby to begin with; but I hadn’t known that for 6 weeks. I had been dreaming of another tiny piece of Matt and myself. I’d been dreaming of my first baby becoming a big brother and of nights spent in a rocking chair holding my second child. So maybe physically there was no baby, but there was a baby for me emotionally and mentally. It was every bit the same as mourning if there had been a baby and it had died. Pain doesn’t follow logic. 

I spent the next 5 days in a strange limbo of grief and hope, and when the next ultrasound showed growth but no definite fetal pole they ordered a quantitative HCG blood test. I did one blood draw that day and had another 48 hours of limbo to go back to. The numbers rose, but didn’t double, and as they rose over those two days so did my symptoms. I felt sick. I was so grateful to feel sick. And then what was a good sign became a cruel reminder, as I waited another week before I could get into an appointment with my previous OB in Cedar for a d&c consult. We opted to do a d&c partially for my emotional sanity- I didn’t think I could handle waiting to miscarry on my own and feel pregnant for weeks before that happened- and partially because with a blighted ovum there can be increased risk for hemorrhaging. I didn’t want to be home alone with Jaden if anything happened. 

Matt was in the thick of his first semester’s finals, and if I couldn’t have Matt, I wanted my mom. I was also so worried about Jaden- I hadn’t been very attentive for that week, and I worried about him feeling neglected. I wanted to be sure that he would be surrounded by familiar people, I wanted to be sure that he would feel loved and played with. I knew I probably wouldn’t be running for world’s greatest mom in the days before and following the surgery. I have been so grateful for my family’s willingness to be inconvenienced, for longer than we all expected, and to take such wonderful care of my Jaden boy. The surgery went well, the recovery was more painful and longer than I anticipated, but hasn’t had any complications either. Things are going to be ok. 

                                “...Eyes that had been filled with ever- flowing tears dried. The lips that had whispered prayers of distress and grief now filled the air with wondrous praise, for Jesus the Christ, the Son of the living God, stood before them as the  firstfruits of the Resurrection, the proof that death is merely the beginning of a new and wondrous existence.” 

–Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, Sunday Will Come, October 2006 General Conference

Through this I have prayed constantly for a miracle. I begged Heavenly Father if there was any way at all for this baby to fit into his plan for our little family, to please save it and make it grow. Please let it show up in the next ultrasound or the next test. Please give me my baby. I will be honest and admit that when those things didn’t happen I have felt moments of anger, and felt my faith waiver a little. I knew God has the ability to make that happen, so why didn’t He? What I have come to realize is that He did send me miracles. He sent me loving ward members who took Jaden for me so I could go to my consecutive appointments without him climbing all over me. God sent me beautiful friends who brought sweet reminders of God’s love- one ward friend brought me a beautiful necklace with perfect little Forget Me Not flowers, and a print out of President Uchtdorf’s talk Forget Me Not. Another friend took me on a girl’s day, and gifted me a bracelet with the words, “Everything happens for a reason”. I’ve had sweet women who have gone through the same thing take me under their wing and tell me honestly what to expect, and helped me navigate the waves of emotion. I had friends offer to drive for hours to be with me for appointments if Matt couldn’t make it. Maybe the most touching miracle of all was being able to physically feel the prayers of so many. I have been so humbled at the responses from those who have found out about our loss. I suppose grief always has a way of binding people, but it has touched my heart to feel so much love, and to literally feel so many prayers. One of Matt’s classmates emailed him and told Matt that he and his wife were praying for us. They aren’t LDS (which of course doesn’t matter, I don’t know why it surprised me that they would still pray for us. I guess I have some open heartedness to work on. ;) ) and they don’t really even know me, but I can guarantee they are part of the reason I’ve had so much peace. I have felt strengthened in times I was expecting to crumble, and I attribute that 100% to the power of prayers from countless friends and family members. I prayed for a miracle and I got one. Perhaps not the one I was begging for, but one just as tender. I have seen more love, felt more compassion, and been truly humbled through this experience. That’s obviously not to say that I’m handling this perfectly. I’ve had my share of anger. I’ve done plenty of shower crying, and asking “why me?” But I am learning, and I am growing.

"Grief is not a disorder a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity; the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve."

Like I mentioned before, my purpose in writing and posting this was to hopefully be able to provide resources and help to someone else who goes through this. I wanted to list a few of the blog posts that helped me, and some talks/scriptures that gave me hope. I also want to put it out there that I am more than willing to talk to anyone who needs to talk to someone who understands. I don't have all the answers, I'm still figuring it all out myself. But there is strength in being understood and mourning together. If you have questions or want to just talk, I am here. :)
My email is shannon.coffin22@yahoo.com

15 Lessons Learned From Miscarriage - Chelsea Lee Smith from Moments A Day 

"There's no baby in there", Experiencing a Blighted Ovum: Pregnancy and Infant loss Awareness - Savy Life

Sunday Will Come - Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin; October, 2006 General Conference

Accepting The Lord's Will and Timing - Elder David A. Bednar; August, 2016 Ensign

Angel Mamas via Blighted Ovum Facebook Group