infertility, miscarriage and ectopic is this topic..

Since I am going through our past 10 or so years with adoption this subject is one that is always comes up. And today I tell you fine readers that yes, I had an ectopic pregnancy.

Why I wonder, is this subject so taboo?? many (almost all) of my friends have had a miscarriage. It is something that happens, it is nothing we do, it is nothing we ate. It is a shitty fact of life, like acne or bad hair days.

Why do we hide it? Why is there this feeling of failure surrounding it? Why do we make ourselves do it alone?

Hell, I don't know.

I wish I did. Then somehow maybe we could all band together and make the emptiness go away. Make the feeling that our bodies had betrayed us fade and that shadow that can follow us to move it's shadowy ass on down the road.

Here is my story, it is like many of you and like none of you. We heal differently, we process in our own ways and we go on...

When we were living at the apartment in Ann Arbor, we were building our house in Kzoo and I became pregnant. I was scared. No, I was terrified. When you deal with infertility for so many years you really don't think it is going to happen, it becomes a unicorn or the perfect pair of jeans...always out of reach. It did happen and for the first time I saw all the lines and crosses on that white plastic thingie...it was positive.

I called the nurse at the dr. office and she had me come in for a blood test to make sure. She predicted that I was about 6 weeks along. CRAP!! I went in and had my blood taken and waited until the next day for her to call. The test looked great. Everything seemed to be going along fine.

Then...

About two weeks later we were at a birthday party for a friends kid and I started to spot...shit. I didn't tell KPK, I stayed there at the party, wishing it away. I told KPK on the way home, it was Saturday, I had no one to call, there was nothing I could do...

On Monday I went in for another blood test. The numbers were not going up as fast as they should...she told me to come in Thursday for another test...Friday I was told that the numbers were low...really low...I was going to miscarry.

Then the side pain, like being poked no stabbed/cut with a pointy stick. I called the dr and had another blood test (I think that doctors are really just freaky vampires that save our blood in little jars...but I will save that for another post). My numbers we steady, this meant that it was an ectopic pregnancy, that there at this point in time my body was holding onto a mass of cells and they were stuck in my tube, of the fallopian nature.

FUCK!

Personally, I just wanted this shit done. The pain was mind numbing, I had two toddlers at home and a very worried nervous husband that wanted to get a vasectomy NOW.

I drove myself to the hospital, my doctor told me to go to the ER and get the two "shots", this is when I found out it was chemo drugs, to shrink the mass. And yes I am calling it a mass, there was no blood supply so my body was multiplying cells and sooner than later it would get big enough to explode my tube and I would bleed internally...good times.

Following is the high points of the hospital.

-I sat there for 6 hours

-I tried to leave, they told me I could die, I said I could die in the waiting room, they fit me right in.

-Kevin finally found someone to watch the kids for an hour.

-The fuck nut doctor told me I was going to kill the fetus, there was no fetus and I told him so (before you guys get too pissed, this man was written up, put on doctor probation and then asked to leave the hospital).

-I had an internal ultrasound and felt like I was in a woman's prison movie.

-I received two giant shots of the chemo drug in my right hip by a wonderful nurse in complete radioactive gear, her gloves were lime green and looked to be from IKEA.

-I drove myself home.

-I cried.

-I cried.

-I cried.

-It took 12 weeks for the mass to go away...don't put anything in your vagina!

This all happen six years ago. It feels like yesterday, it feels like a dream. Slash that. It feel like it happen to someone else. Someone who was stronger. Someone who doesn't take doctors shit. Someone who can talk about it and not feel like I failed. Someone who holds her children and smiles.

And I am proud to be her.

We called him Aiden...

I think the reason that I haven't written in a while is because of this story. This situation took a little piece of my heart which I freely gave up and I hope it is being taken care of.

When R was around 2yrs old and we were building our house in Kzoo and living in this little apartment in Ann Arbor. We had put our names in to adopt again, we honestly didn't think anything would happen, we just wanted to make sure all of our information was in to the agency and available for birth mothers to see.

So, you can imagine my shock when I received a call from our social worker while shopping at Target with Poots and Cheryl. There was a woman who had see our letter and album...she wanted us to adopt her baby...she was seven months pregnant...she wanted to write us a letter could she have our address...she was sure this is what she wanted to do...she had been speaking to her social worker for a week or so...about US! Holy shit. I stood there in the lamp aisle (no one ever goes there) and listened....I asked her name (I'll call her Grace), if she had other children (she does, not with her, with her mother).

I was told she was in the Robert Scott Correctional Facility. She was going to be there until 2018 or so and did not want the baby in foster care, she wanted him to have a home.

HIM?!?

That was when I found out it was a boy!!! A boy...a boy...another beautiful boy. I tried not to get too excited, I called KPK at work and he was thrilled and shocked and excited. We laughed in the lamp aisle...I cried a tear or two. We were going to have another son...

Over the next few weeks we wrote letters back and forth. She told me about her life that led her to prison, about her pregnancy about her other children. She asked me to send her a photo of the nursery, of clothing for him. She asked if I would bring him to visit her, I said of course...I contacted the prison and our social worker to find out how we could do that. She asked what we wanted to name him.

We wanted to name him Aiden Patrick.

She loved the name. She said she was calling him Aiden to all the other woman. She was making him a little book for us to give him when he was older, she was writing him letters.

During this time we were granted permission to send her $10.00 a week for paper, stamps and such from the prison commissary. We did, keeping it all above board, the social workers all knew about it as did the prison system.

Then one day I received a letter telling me she needed $20.00, that she had not received any thing from me...that she had to borrow the stamp on the letter. I couldn't believe it! Where was the money??? Did it get stuck in the scanning process??? (The prison takes the money and puts it on account for the inmates.)

I called our social worker, she recommend we call the prison to see if it was just taking longer. At the same time as I was trying to get money into Grace's account. We get a call from our social worker.

The prison social worker Grace had been seeing had discovered she had 4 other families she was talking to, telling them that she had chosen them, that's 5 families from 5 different agencies.

I couldn't process the information. Honestly, 5 years later I still have a hard time processing it, fully understanding...what do you mean 5 families?? She had talked to the social worker for a week about us. We had written letters. We had named him. She asked us to name him. What the fuck is going on????

We never heard from her again.

We will never have closure.

But, for that month and a half, in our hearts, we were the parents of a sweet baby boy.

And we called him Aiden.