Yep, You're Pregnant! (Part 1)

     For those of you who may not know, I struggled with infertility.  My husband and I went through 3 years of tests, treatments, planning, heartbreaks, setbacks, and loss.  There really is nothing else in world like dealing with an infertility issue.  Your life becomes consumed with doctors, charts,lab work, and test results.  Infertility is all you think about and talk about.  It's mentally and spiritually draining. 
     Then the first time comes where you FINALLY have a "Pregnant" pop on a home pregnancy test.  I still remember the very first time I saw that double line.  It was better than a cold drink on a hot day, it was magical.  Then the doctor calls and confirms via blood-work that  you are indeed pregnant.  I remember that day vividly:
     It was the week before Thanksgiving and I was going back to the office after lunch.  Once I got off the phone with the nurse, I called my husband who would not believe we were pregnant until the blood-work came back.  (At that point it had been a rough year and a half for him.)  He was so happy that he started crying on the phone with me while I was navigating through traffic teary-eyed myself.  We told everyone and our family was overjoyed, our friends cried, it was AMAZING!  FINALLY! 
     The day before Thanksgiving, we went to the grocery store.  My husband patted my stomach and hugged me and said this would be our last trip before Thanksgiving without a baby, and we both were deep-in-the-gut happy.  Thanksgiving came and it was really all we could think and talk about.... the next day I woke up and my back would not stop hurting.   I went to the bathroom and saw a little bit of blood. We went to the hospital and they confirmed that my Beta levels dropped, and there was nothing we could do.  We were losing the baby we had gone through so much to get.
     I felt like a failure.  I wasn't supposed to lose this child we had just learned we had.
     If you have not had to deal with a miscarriage, then I cannot describe the grief.  It's unbearable to think of the loss of a life that will never be.  There could be a million things you did right to make that life, but if one thing goes wrong in the cell division process or if nerves do not fire correctly... you end up having to start over.  80% of miscarriages happen within the first Trimester.  50% of all pregnancy ends in miscarriage, according to he March of Dimes, and out of those of us who knew we were pregnant, 15-25% end.  That is a group of numbers for anyone thinking of having a child. 
    
     But you go on as best you can after.  There is still a part of me every year that mourns that baby.  I have no idea the gender, nor how far along we really were.  Would it have made it easier?  Probably not, so I don't know why I focus on it except to toss it up to my curious nature.  I refer to that baby as Baby 1, our first baby.