Baby G & Naomi

March 2021- it had been 9 months of carefully tracking every sign and symptom of my cycle. I even bought an expensive OPK from a Facebook ad thinking I’d get better results. Then, in mid March, on the day we were heading to my OB to start the conversation of helping us in our journey to parenthood, we got the 2 lines. We were pregnant! My husband and I were excited, relieved, scared, etc.

These feelings however were short lived. That night I started spotting. But my medical degree from Google University taught me that was normal. I bled off and on for a week and we finally went to the ER to see what was going on. We then found out our little bean was ectopic. At the time, I didn’t realize the severity of what could have happened. I was given an methotrexate injection and instructed to get blood work done once a week until my hormones returned to normal.

I bled for a month straight! I didn’t realize until later how lucky I was. We caught it early enough, Baby G was only 4 weeks along. “It was just a fluke!” We kept saying.

Once we got the okay to try again we did.

September 2021, another positive test. Because of the ectopic, we went in for an ultrasound at 6 weeks to make sure it wasn’t another ectopic. We held our breaths until that appointment.

Whew! Sigh of relief, not ectopic and we even got to see the heartbeat. We had to go back in the next week to make sure the heartbeat was continuing to rise as normal. During that week I was out on progesterone. That week 7 appointment was more good news! Things looked good. We were really going to be parents and we could finally be excited about it.

At this time I had also entered into, what would be, my last & most stressful year as an 8th grade teacher. Things seemed to be progressing well. My symptoms were bearable.

Then came the week before Thanksgiving break….11 weeks along

On Monday, I started bleeding at school. I ran to a co-worker’s office crying on my plan and she did her best to calm me down. As with most teachers I thought I’d stay through the day and then reevaluate from there….I did just have a pelvic exam so that’s the cause of the bleeding right?

I told my principal what was going on. She came to my room to check on me and she could tell from my frazzled instructions to the class that I wasn’t okay. She insisted I go home so I did. Bleeding had stopped so I went home and relaxed the rest day. Luckily we were given an online learning day the next day so I just had to post my assignment online and I could spend the day relaxing. The bleeding had stopped, things seemed fine.

On Wednesday, I went to work as normal. By lunch time the bleeding started again. I knew this time something was wrong. I told my teaching team and principal I needed to go to the ER. My amazing principal even offered to drive me. The ER doctors confirmed what we already knew, I was miscarrying.

I immediately texted my therapist who got me in the next day along with a follow up with my OB.

The next day I went to my therapy appointment and towards the end the cramping started. I made it home with the worst pain I’ve ever had. What happened next was a whirlwind of tears, trauma, multiple pairs of underwear, a towel, and eventually an emergency D&C.

Through all of this, take a wild guess what I spent a majority of the time thinking about? My classroom, my students, what quick sub plans I can get together, how I’m going to explain my sudden absence to my 8th graders who watched me leave in a panic twice in one week.

See, that’s the thing about teaching. Our whole identity becomes about our students and our classroom. I barely had time to grieve what had happened before I had to go back to class and try to explain to my students what happened all while dealing with the same behavior issues I’d been dealing with all year. Oh, and did I mention I was in my last year of grad school?

It was a lot. I became mad & bitter towards God. I lost who I was, I lost my baby Naomi, and even though I thought I was hiding it well, those closest to me knew I wasn’t the same.

It’s been a tough year of finding out why our journey to parenthood has been this painful. 2023 is off to a better start, I’m in my new role as a school counselor in a new school district. I have a doctor who is willing to help us.

Hopefully this story will have a happy ending and not end here; feeling left behind by life while those closest to me have been building their families.

This isn’t a club I want to be a part of but man, it’s a community of some of the most supportive strangers I’ve ever met.