Ashley & Bobby - My Loving Husband

Ashley & Bob September 2004

Lucky

Today, I just feel really lucky to have such a wonderful family, amazing dogs and a good support system. I am tired and sad today- but I am lucky.

Still at work as well... 6:00pm. Long, hard week.

Luna and Levi

My Pregnant Friends...

I can't help avoid my pregnant friends. I have two friends who are pregnant right now and I cannot even go near them, let alone call, write or even answer the phone when they call.

Selfish? Absolutely. But I can't help it. I honestly can't.

They are succeeding where I didn't. And normally this would be okay if they were succeeding at their golf game, or they had more money, fame, better job... you name it. I can deal with that. But I can't deal with the fact that their pregnancies are working and mine didn't.

Sounds so selfish- even writing this I can't believe how ugly it sounds- but it is 100% true. My babies died and theirs haven't and probably won't and that is good, for them. Watching it is painful. It is like I had something stolen and they got away with it.

I don't know what the psychology is behind this... "notwantingtocallmypregnantfriendsbecuaseiamtoosadandpissedilostmyownbabies" but I think it is normal- from what I "hear." It is part of the grieving process. I asked myself this morning if I would be upset if these friends were not very "available" for me if I did get pregnant and actually had success... and my answer was equally selfish- I didn't care.

Now I don't know what the psychology is behind that...

Who knows what is normal and what isn't. But I think I have the right to be angry- and it isn't their fault that they are able to successfully carry a pregnancy and I am not... but It sucks anyway.

I have been listening to Carly Simon a lot. It toom me 31 years to realize how awesome and healing she is. www.carlysimon.com She is an inspiration.

The other thing that has helped is "The Blue Day Book- A Lesson in Cheering Yourself Up" by Bradley Trevor grieve (notice his last name is Grieve) www.remixing.info/blueday It sits on my shelf and I love the little frog on the cover. It is a "simple" fix... but a nice one.

Sunflower  

Hope

I just hope. I hope for good timing. A round belly. A healthy pregnancy. A bouncing baby. I do hope. Though, I have moments, even days where hope is strained and pessimism sets in like a flu. I hope for a chance to be a Mom and to see my husband as a Dad. What two greater honors are there in this life?

I realize that life is not ALL about becoming pregnant or having a child. I also know that I have seen and done a lot and sure there is more to do... Always more... And I feel in my very being that having a child is not only a gift but it is something I would like to experience in this lifetime. It is something I would feel so blessed to say outloud one day "I am the mother of...." "This is my child."

I know that having a baby will not complete me. I know there is always more to "want" and "need" but I also know that wanting to have a baby after two miscarriages is a really deep want. It is more of a want then it was when I got pregnant and didn't know my babies were going to die. I really WANT to know what it is to be a mother and kiss my child.

So, I have hope today. I see hope. I feel hope. And I also know that sometimes HOPE is all we have.

Strollers and Pregnant Women

All I see some days are strollers. Pregnant women ready to POP. I turn the corner and I see one after the other after the other. They are everywhere!

I feel vacant. Like an old motel on a deserted road, late in the night, with a sign that reads "VACANT" in neon pink. The "T" on VACANT is half -lit, it needs a new bulb.

I am vacant of a child in my womb, my arms, my breast. I have room but nobody seems to want to slow down and shack up at my old motel on this deserted road. My sign blinks...

Must not be time.

But these strollers. These happy pregnant women everywhere! Where did they all come from?

It is as if they push their bellies out even further just to make a point.

I know, because when I was pregnant I did it and I wasn't even showing. It was the only time in my life that I let my tummy protrude without feeling disgusting- like I was "fat" or something. I was guilty of exactly what I cannot stand seeing in other pregnant women. And I know it is because I am VACANT.

DREAMS....

I dream....I dream in color...

When I was pregnant I dreamt of picnics and babies... nursing and names. I even felt my dreams- I could touch them and they had tactile feelings. I could feel the grass I sat on with my baby. I could touch the sky and pinch the clouds. I could hear in my dreams. The baby crying. My husband Bob saying to the baby it was going to be okay. I would cry in these dreams - they were so vivid. I would cry becuase I was happy and so full of life and so glad that I could see my baby wobble as she walked across the floor trying to hold herself up on anything in her pathway so she wouldn't tumble down.

I felt her in my body. I felt both babies in my body. One and Two. I felt one with so much hope. I felt two with so much faith. They are both little angels now. I wonder if they have wings.

My husband says I cry in my sleep. And talk. And that I appear afraid. What bothers me most is that I cannot keep my babies safe. I cannot touch them. I won't ever see them wobble. But they will always be my first babies. My first little ones... my angels.

Ashley 2004 

Therapy

I wonder if therapy is useful. It seems that I just go, verbally vomit all over the place as fast as I can because I am on the clock. It is the most expensive vomitting I have ever done except when I use to spend a ton of money when I went out drinking.

Tonight I had therapy and felt no relief. I feel more relief when I write out my soul even if it is into a computer screen. It just seems to come easier.

It has got to be time to go to bed....

I can't believe a woman had a 16.5 pound baby today...

I just hope she had the right drugs....

Bobby & Ashley 2004 

Doctor Doolittle

It has occurred to me while writing some of these posts how totally messed up my experiences have been with Doctors and Nurses over the course of my adult life. I look back through the window of my past and see many dismal visits to the Doctors office where I was told in many circumstances "they could do nothing for me." Pre-miscarriage I have been a walking, talking orb of endometriosis. What is endometriosis you ask?

http://www.ivf.com/endohtml.html

"Endometriosis, a cause of female infertility, is a condition in which endometrial tissue, the tissue that lines the inside of the uterus, grows outside the uterus and attaches to other organs in the abdominal cavity such as the ovaries and Fallopian tubes. Endometriosis is a progressive disease that tends to get worse over time and can reoccur after treatment. Symptoms include painful menstrual periods, abnormal menstrual bleeding and pain during or after sexual intercourse.
The endometrial tissue outside your uterus responds to your menstrual cycle hormones the same way the tissue inside your uterus responds - it swells and thickens, then sheds to mark the beginning of the next cycle. The blood that is shed from the endometrial tissue in your abdominal cavity has no place to go, resulting in pools of blood causing an inflammation that forms scar tissue. The scar tissue can block the Fallopian tubes or interfere with ovulation. Another result of endometriosis is the formation of ovarian cysts called endometriosis that may also interfere with ovulation.

The cause of endometriosis is unknown though there are a few theories that suggest possible causes. One theory suggests that during menstruation, some of the menstrual tissue backs up through the Fallopian tubes into the abdomen where it implants and grows. Another theory indicates that it is a genetic birth abnormality in which endometrial cells develop outside the uterus during fetal development.

A laparoscopy, an outpatient surgical procedure, is necessary to confirm a diagnosis of endometriosis after a medical history review and pelvic exam. After the initial diagnosis, your physician will classify your condition as stage 1 (minimal), stage 2 (mild), stage 3 (moderate) or stage 4 (extensive) based on the amount of scarring and diseased tissue found. Based on the stage of endometriosis, your physician will determine the best treatment plan for you which may include medication or surgery, or a combination of both. "

For years I walked around in so much pain that I couldn't walk or even move because I had such bad cramps. I would miss at least two days a month because of the pain. I would visit my Doctor and I would get repetitive prescriptions of vicadon (I don't recommend this) to stop the pain. I never took the pills, I just suffered through the pain, month after month for six or so years. I finally met a Doctor who recognized immediately that I needed to have a laparoscopy to remove some of the scar tissue that was causing the severe pain. In 2003 I went through the surgery and some of the pain eventually went away. But for so many years I was just handed a prescription and said "take these" and that was the medical communities way of "solving" my pain.

I track back to my first miscarriage and remember how soul's the Doctor's and Nurses seemed. They poked me with needles and prodded my vagina without tender care which a vagina indeed deserves. It gives life if you're lucky! I look through the scope of my emotional pain and then I see how careless and unmoved the Doctor's were when they were gearing me up for my 1st D&C. So cold. Intellectually I get that Doctors see this kind of loss every day, yet emotionally I do not understand how human beings can deaden themselves so much to skip over the tiny heart beat of life. They are not just tiny cells.

I look back to the second miscarriage (I don't have to look back too far- it was just under 1 1/2 months ago) and I see Dr. Martinez before I go under. He looks as though he is getting ready to bake a ham. Smile on his face. When I visit Dr. Martinez (notice I am naming names) two weeks after the D&C for a routine check up I am with Bob and I am stable. I am coping. Crushed and ruined but coping. I hoist myself up onto the examining table and begins to cry. Something about being in an OB office right after you have lost a baby brings tears, what can I say. Dr. Martinez looked me square in the face and said "You gotta stop being so sad!" Bob chimed in and made sure the Doctor knew that I had been doing "okay" that it was just difficult for me to visit the office. Now, what pisses me off the most about this is that I said nothing and I stopped crying. When I look back, in my minds eye, I slap him across the face and end the visit. Why didn't I do that then? This is the very same Doctor that called me two days before Christmas to let me know that my "chromosomal were normal, that of a baby girl!" How dare he.

I search back and realize that so many of my experiences within the medical world have been negative. Even when I have sworn I would demand attention and take control of my own health. It doesn't seem to matter. And I am not saying there aren't good Doctors out there. I am saying that I haven't met too many.

Miscarriage aside, mental health professionals are so eager to drug the masses and call it a day? Now what the hell is that all about? How can someone make a FULL accurate mental health diagnosis in one hour? Impossible and dangerous. Let's just say my health has been at risk a few times due to the lack of psychiatric professional responsibility and carelessness administered by each and every psych Doc I have seen in ten years. Be careful. (I warn this loudly)

And it echoes back to Dr. Martinez prescribing me ORTHO EVRA two weeks after my 2nd miscarriage... how irresponsible especially since I was adamant about the fact that I did not do well on hormones and that if the patch was anything like the pill then it would not be a good fit for me. He said it was "totally different" and wrote me a prescription.

Now... if you count the number of times I have said "prescription" in this blog... that in of itself, is scary.

Death Before Birth

Wow! What a surprise! I was feeling just down right strange! I asked my husband Bob if we could stop by the store and get a pregnancy test on the way home just in case! We had been shopping all day and I was feeling like I had never felt before.

I peed on the stick because that is what you do when you are taking a home pregnancy test. I was pretty relaxed about it. My husband and I had been married 7 months and knew we wanted children. We hadn't planned a pregnancy but we not against having a child.

Sure enough, the stick had two pink lines. For those who aren't pregnancy stick savvy, that means PREGNANT! I cried. Not from joy, let me be clear. I cried because I was unemployed and so was my husband after two bad lay offs. We were broke and completely unprepared financially. I cried and immediately knew that I would be a horrible Mom. Who gets pregnant without a job I thought? I made my husband go and get three more tests. I had to be sure, of course. I guess there really are no false positives are there?

That very same night, 4 tests later and all positive, Bob and I adopted and embraced the idea of becoming parents. The shock wore off and we became different over night.

I began writing letters to the baby. I told the baby all about his/her dad and I and how lucky we felt. I stayed up late reading all the pregnancy books. I called my OBGYN and made an appointment for our first visit. And all I could eat was bean and cheese burritos! I felt bad because I was not properly nourishing our baby but I just couldn't eat anything else! We told everyone! We were so excited and so was everyone else! My Mom was thrilled she was going to be a grandma - she has been pressing her nose to Baby Gap stores for years now! My father was equally ecstatic, and from New Zealand where he resides I put the phone to my tummy so he could say HELLO to his new grandpa's. Baby's first international call!

I lost 10 pounds very quick. I thought, how cruel! I get pregnant and lose weight? How does that work? But it was nice. I felt pretty good and was not sick at all. I had major food aversions but that was fine with me. I was just excited.

I bought every baby name book in the store and made lists. Each night I would share the new names out loud with Bob and we would pare the list down. We couldn't ever really agree on a name!

We went on a road trip to Durango, CO about six hours from Denver where we live to visit my brother and his wife. It was a nice trip, though I was terribly moody and tired. HEY, I am pregnant I thought. I am allowed to be this way. I don't think my brother was having any of my massive and bitch mood swings. Let's just say I hope he comes back as a woman in his next life.
While Bob and I walked the main street of Durango and talked I felt a sharp and horrible cramping in my uterus. I just thought the baby was getting big now. My uterus was stretching. We had just seen the ultrasound and the baby was doing great at 8 weeks! The pains subsided and I never thought twice about it.

Time went by and I developed insomnia and was unable to sleep. So I read more and more baby books, which was a mistake. I got anxious and scared about all the things that "could happen." I began to be timid with my pregnancy.

Weeks passed by so slowly. And then one night while reading a book I felt blood slip into my underwear. A woman knows. That slip is a dramatic drop, like a heavy tear falling from thick eyelashes. The blood just lay in my panties and I stared at it. I frantically called the Doctor on call and explained that I was bleeding and that I was 11 weeks pregnant. The Doctor on the other end of the phone might as well just hung up on me. She had nothing to say other than "come and see us in the morning and we will do an ultrasound!" I didn't understand. "What do you mean, you want me to wait 15 hours?" I asked her. "Yes, there is nothing we can do. Don't worry, just relax and come in first thing tomorrow." And with that she was gone.

I cried all night. I might have drifted in and out of sleep but who would know. My mind was numb. Bob and I waited over an hour in the waiting room, which was filled with happy, round, ready to burst pregnant women. We were so uncomfortable. Finally, a woman I had never even met performed an ultrasound. "How far along are you?” she asked? I reported that I was 11 weeks.

She stuck the wand inside my vagina and probed around my uterus. I looked away from the screen. Bob held my hand tightly. "Well, your baby does not have a heartbeat, I am sorry." With that she pulled the wand out and took off her gloves like she had just shoveled the sidewalk. She said she would be back in a minute. I died. Right there and then. I wailed so loudly that I couldn't gain control of myself. I didn't care. The bleeding became more persistent. I knew it was only a matter of time.

The women, whoever she was came back into the room and said she was going to move us to a more "private room." It was more like; she was going to move us to the back of the office because she didn't want anyone to hear me wailing.

We followed her to another room and on my way passed hundreds of baby pictures. New babies. Babies that were born when mine had just died.

They told me that my baby died at 8 weeks. So I was walking around with a dead baby inside of me for three weeks and I didn't even know it. I feel guilt about that. I feel like I should have known. Aren't mom's supposed to know? They said I could get a D&C or I could wait for the baby to abort naturally. I couldn't imagine living any longer with a dead baby inside of me. And who knew how long it was going to take for the baby to decide to go? I was to go into surgery that day, several hours later. In the mean time we were to go home and rest.

Bob and I died that day. We died. I don't remember driving home. I don't remember anything. But I do remember coming home and then going into labor shortly after our visit. It was the most painful thing I have ever experienced physically. I was trying to call my Mom who was in the jungles of Guatemala. In the midst of me telling her I was losing the baby I was having labor pains. She got on a plane that night to come and be with us.

My best friend Amy showed up to be with me. The pain subsided and I went in to go pee. And it was then that the clean slip happened. The baby exhumed itself right into my toilet. A tiny sac about the size of my fist was at the bottom of the toilet. What was I to do? I couldn't flush my baby? I couldn't touch my baby either. My baby was dead.

Since getting pregnant in May 2004 I have been pregnant once. I also lost that baby. That baby died at 9 1/2 weeks. I was on bed rest for 5 weeks with a tear in my placenta. Still, in finding out we were pregnant we were ready to take it on and be the best parents we knew how to be. And there were complications from the very beginning. I did my best to not "bond" with the second baby, as I was too afraid the baby would die at the bottom of my toilet. This time around, the baby didn't even die for me to know that I would need to terminate. The baby's heartbeat was slowing and failing and it was just a matter of time. Again, I opted for a D&C. I couldn't go through another toilet experience.

I lost the second baby November 30, 2004. So close to the first baby. After the second loss we asked the Doctor's to please test the chromosomal to see if there was anything genetically wrong. We knew it would take weeks.

Two days before Christmas the Doctor called and left me a voice mail telling me "Great news Ashley! We tested the chromosomal and everything was normal, that of a baby girl." Again... I died. What kind of heartless, terribly insensitive Ashley would tell a woman who has just lost two babies to miscarriages that her loss was a BABY GIRL...ON MY VOICE MAIL? I was shocked. I had been healing and coping. And then my baby was a she. A she I would never know or touch or feel. She was a she.

I am one of millions of women who suffer silently. Who are told to "bounce back," who are told "Don't worry, you can try again!" I am one of the women who people avoid now in the halls at work because they don't know how to acknowledge my losses and me. I am one of the women that have lost too much and yet I still have room in my heart to try again and I still have the guts to go for it and take the risk of losing someone I love for a chance at gaining someone I love.

I am not alone however feeling very alone. Isolated. Like miscarriage is a disease that nobody wants to talk about. You don't hear about it until you fall victim to a stranger telling you that your baby no longer has a heart beat. I am one of the women who lost two babies and those will always be my babies. They will always be my children. They will always be my first.

I am one of the women who are dedicated to turning the word miscarriage into something people talk about. Something people deal with rather than shovel it beneath the bed with all the other "uncomfortable" subjects out there.

I won't let my babies go unnoticed- I will fight for understanding, sensitivity and proper care when it comes to women who have lost babies and the Doctors who shuffle them through like cattle. I won't give in and I won't give up.

I am a woman who's voice you will hear... and that I promise you. The medical system needs a kick in the ass. Doctors need MANY lessons in what it means to have a heart. And people in general need to know that having a miscarriage is a LOSS. It is a huge, giant, enormous, awful, painful, terrible, lonely LOSS. It doesn't get better after a week, a month or a year. It just gets different. People need to talk about it. Learn about it. Know about it. And people need to honor it.

By writing this and connecting with other women and people in general I am starting my journey to help change how miscarriage is perceived and received in this society. I am also continuing the journey to heal and that will be life long.

Ashley E. Underell

So Don't Mess With MY Hormones....

Okay,

So two weeks after a miscarriage it would be in MY humble and non-doctor opinion to NOT take any form of birth control pills or patch. Not only are your hormones so totally messed up as it is, adding more hormones to the confused mix is the makings of a train wreck. Yes my friends- a train wreck.

After the D&C they put me on the patch (www.orthoevra) even though I specifically told them that I do NOT do well on Birth Control pills or hormone suppliments. After 4 weeks on the patch I was suicidal. (See earlier post) Yes, I have been sad and angry and in total shock at the loss of two pregnancies in six months but I went from coping to wanting to die in three weeks flat.

So, just a word of advice... if anyone is out there- please be careful. I think we all believe that Doctor's know all or have our best interest at heart, but really, they don't. This is just one experience among many that I can share where my best interest was actually of no interest at all.

I ripped the patch off on Sunday night and I feel so much better it is amazing! Totally baffles me how much chemicals can affect human beings. My moods are evened out and I am not crying non-stop, nor am I wishing I had my bags packed for the ole' pearly gates. I am calm and comfortable in my grief and happy to be moving on each day.

Sleep well,
Ashley E. Underell

Luscious Lemon

For anyone who has suffered a miscarriage or would like to support someone that has I highly recommend the book

'Luscious Lemon' by Heather Swain.

About

She's finally seeing the fruits of her labors. Chef Ellie “Lemon” Manelli's hip East Village bistro is suddenly all the rage; Lemon and her staff of wildly talented friends plucked from New York City's finest eateries can barely keep pace. Good thing she has her loyal, doting, bankrolling Georgia peach of a boyfriend, Eddie, to lean on—not to mention a gaggle of loving relations over the river in Brooklyn. In fact, Lemon's life is turning out exactly as she planned—except for the fact that she's late. As in late. Nobody said anything about, you know, labor . Having a baby right now would jeopardize everything Lemon has worked so hard to accomplish, so the pregnancy test results leave her feeling a little sour. Eddie, bless his heart, wants to just go ahead and get married, but Lemon's not sure the timing's right. She's about to learn a lesson or two about love and loss, though. And in the end she'll discover that there's a reason things work out the way they do—and that when life gives you lemons, you can make lemonade, or lemon tarts, or lemon meringue pie. Or, you can just be a plain ole Lemon, if that's what you were meant to be.

www.heatherswain.com Buy it at www.amazon.com

This book helped me so much. I am indebted to Heather Swain. She held the perfect mirror up to my soul and reflected back exactly what I was feeling and what I went through. I am so thankful.

Game Face

So. I have a game face. Yeah. I put it on every morning before I go to work. I pull it on with my turtle neck sweater and a pair of underwear that I haven't bled in. I threw all those out on Saturday. You know, the underwear that you are wearing when you realize you are bleeding while pregnant and you aren't supposed to be?

So my game face is ON! It resembles me but really isn't. See, I am much uglier at home. Is uglier a word? I have my face scrunched up in a mad assualt of tears and anger. It is the face of pain and loss and endless sadness. The pain of losing onetoomanybabies.

During work I bury myself in projects and get lost. I even forget to eat. Who really cares anyway. Food does not fill my emptiness.

I listen to old jazz. I try to love what is. I remember what it was like the first time I got pregnant in July 2004 and how innocent and hopeful my husband Bob and I were. OH!!! Had we only known! I had always thought you just "get" pregnant and grow big and then give birth. I was never scared. Only when I started bleeding both times. I knew I was losing the second baby. But the first loosening of blood and tissue into my panties during the beginning of my first miscarriage... I had no idea. I just though the baby was growing and stretching itself. Little did I know.

What startles me the most is the lack of acknowledgement in society.

Yeah, there are a few books out there and some stories. But no one talks about it. Had I known that it occurs 1 in 4 pregnancies I might have been the pessimest I am so accustomed to being during round 1. Self preservation baby. I had no idea miscarriage was so prevelant. And until I had my first miscarriage I never knew that so many women around me had also suffered a loss, if not many. It is striking how silent this issue is in our society.

So, my game face is on. Now I must continue my projects. Bury myself. Preserve.

Till next time,
Ashley E. Underell

I feel like dying....

It has been 1 1/2 months since I lost our second baby in a miscarriage. It seems to be getting worse. I cannot stop crying and I am so angry I feel like hurling something through the window.

I am having nightmares and I am afraid this pain will never subside. I have the biggest knot in my stomach and I can't get rid of it. I feel like I just want to die. Like that would be better than the pain I feel right know. Yes, I am in therapy. Yes, I have gone to grief groups. Yes, I have a network of friends. A loving husband. And I can't move. I am shell shocked. How do women go through this? How does it get better.... Why is this such a silent struggle in this society? How can I "bounce back".... I just lost two babies in six months.... and I even know that the second one was a girl... The insensitive Doctor left me a message telling me that "after he tested the chromosomes that everything was normal... that of a baby girl." He left me this message the day before Christmas.

I don't want to cry anymore. I don't want my whole existence to be about wanting or losing a child. I want to be that good friend I use to be... that wife that wasn't crying all the time. The woman I use to be... I don't know how to find my way out of this.

Ashley E. Underell