An Invisible Loss

On March 19th, I was in a panic. I’d had the flu for almost a week, with horrible night sweats, fevers off and on and horrible coughing. The worst thing about it was that my pregnancy symptoms had disappeared. Our OB agreed to meet with me if for nothing more than my mental health (her words.) Hubby drove me to the doctor and she performed a sonogram. We had thought I was 12 weeks pregnant, and this concerned her a great deal. She told us that if I was 12 weeks pregnant, she would guarantee I was going to miscarry – the fetus was only the size of a 6 week pregnancy. However, there was a slight chance this was a new pregnancy. She scheduled us for an ultrasound the next day.

On March 20, hubby and I went in for our Ultrasound. We explained to the doctor that my symptoms had gone away, I’d had them longer than I should have for a 6 week pregnancy and because I’d miscarried before, we were expecting it to happen again. He was a nice doctor. He showed us on the screen that there was a sac and a yolk, but no embryo or heartbeat. There was a miniscule chance that we had a very very very new pregnancy, but he didn’t want us to be hopeful. Even if it was a new pregnancy, there should have been a heartbeat – we didn’t even have bloodflow around the sac. We were going to miscarry again.

My doctor (the first one – lady) scheduled us for another ultrasound in a week and bloodwork meanwhile to confirm with absolute certainty that I was going to miscarry, and then we could schedule my D&C. This pregnancy thing was not as much fun as I had imagined all these years.