A week after we got home, she started having periods of excruciating abdominal pain and cramping. I'll shorted the story, but it turned out she had a very distended and blocked gallbladder, resulting in pancreatitis (a stone blocked the pancreatic duct), cholecystitis and hepatitis. Fortunately she managed to pass the stone and no real damage was done (pancreatitis can be fatal). She wound up having a cholecystectomy (removal of her gallbladder) in April of 2010. She now has post-cholecystectomy syndrome, resulting in episodes of excruciating pain if she strays from a fairly low-moderate fat diet. She WAY overdid it at Christmas and was in agony on Boxing day, requiring me to dust off my acute pain management skills.
Christmas Day, DPO 13, we had a BFN and the start of a period. We had it, I know in my heart that we achieved pregnancy. Our hippy/granola/super energy sensitive RMT said that she was sure. We're pretty sure that her body knew what was coming though, and ditched the pregnancy.
We were so devastated. I was hard on Christmas day to carry on, especially since we were both SO SURE that this round had worked. I cried, the first time, over a negative pregnancy test. In a way though, I'm glad. If it had been positive, dealing with J in agony for hours at a time, worrying about the impact of high dose narcotics (plus all the drugs to combat the side effects) would have found us a trip to the ER department. Also, since we are getting on a plane on the 11th, I'm not sure I want to expose my tiny developing zygote to that much radiation (about as much as an x-ray, which is HARDLY NOTHING), but I am paranoid. My whole body says "stay off the plane" when we're pregnant. We will drive to our close family friend's wedding next summer in Calgary (14 hour drive, but we'll take it slow and actually SEE our beautiful province!).
January will be a missed month, because we'll be on vacation, but I have good feelings about February.
In the meantime, I found this beautiful and heartbreaking blog. Stella, the moms' 2.5 year old, is dying slowly of an untreatable brain tumour. They found out in June, and she's made it to Christmas (and seen the birth of her new baby brother), however she is most definitely dying. I feel utterly sick reading the blog, but I also take from it many lessons I put into practice in my job. One of the babies I cared for lost his twin brother when they were only 10 days old. I cared for him the day his brother died, it was so so so heartbreakingly awful. I still see the mom regularly, since the surviving twin is still around, and I try very hard to not shy away from talking about his twin. When his brother died, someone erased any reference to being a twin on his white board (we have white boards that we/parents decorate and write names and family and whatever on). I thought it was so sad, that his brother was just being erased out of remembrance. I cracked out my white board markers and wrote "My twin brother, XXXX, is my hero!", and there it stayed until he moved and his board was re-written. His mom thanked me for that.
I have had conversations with parents who have lost a twin, and read a couple of different blogs by parents who have lost a child (or more than one), and the biggest thing they are afraid of is that people will FORGET their child. I learn something new each time, and I am deeply grateful to the parents who open their hearts to share with me.
So, on that note, it's New Years Eve. We're not pregnant, but that's how the universe has deemed it. It will happen when our spirit baby is ready (or when it's patiently waiting for us to be ready!). Both of us had dreams last night about our baby. J was pregnant in hers, and I was watching the face of our beautiful daughter who was 8ish months old and looked exactly like her Mama.
Happy New Years to everyone, may 2012 bring you many joys!
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