Valiant Birth

I envisioned this blog back in the summer.  That is when I first suspected I was pregnant.  I shared my suspicions with two friends, both who are birth workers who would ultimately become part of my support team.  One of them in particular, really wanted me to take a test to confirm, more for her own curiosity than anything.  On the evening of August 14, I obliged them with a text message containing photographic evidence of what my body was already telling me. 










Based on the date of my last menstrual period, this put me somewhere between five and six weeks into my pregnancy.  Around this same time, I started feeling sick, very sick.  Twenty four hour a day nausea and fatigue, which is not typical of my pregnancies.  I really wasn't feeling very optimistic about a few months or more of physical misery.
I wasn't given the opportunity to dwell long on these feelings.  One week later I was sitting in a theater with my children when I felt something.  A cramp?  A twinge?  I am not sure how to describe it, but I felt it.  It was followed by a gush and I knew immediately.  A quick trip to the bathroom confirmed my fears, I was bleeding.  Having experienced an early miscarriage at home a few years earlier, I knew that there was nothing that could be done to save a pregnancy in trouble at only six weeks gestation, and that unless some complication arose there was no need to rush for medical treatment.  I returned to my seat, nothing more to be done.  The bleeding only lasted for a day and there was break in my nausea and fatigue, which seemed like a good sign. Thursday of that same week, so now right about seven weeks gestation, I experienced another episode of bleeding, again lasting for a day.  Sometime this week, I also took another pregnancy test, still very clearly positive.
The next week passed with no more episodes of bleeding, but on Wednesday or Thursday I realized that the nausea had lessened considerably.  I was beginning to be able to function again.  That should have been a sign that more was to come.  On Friday, September 3, I began bleeding again, but this time significantly.  I also experienced cramping.  I took a pain reliever and went to bed, assuming again that I was miscarrying.  I continued to bleed through the long weekend (it was labor day).  We had friends visiting, so I was able to take it relatively easy at the beach and pool.  When the bleeding stopped, the fatigue continued, but now I blamed it on recovering from a miscarriage.  On several occasions I questioned friends in the birth profession, to each time be assured that as long as I didn't have pain, fever or continued bleeding, that I probably just needed time to heal.  With some extra vitamins and iron, and a few weeks to heal and rest, I began feeling like myself again.  We hadn't announced our pregnancy, so no one needed to be told, life just continued on.  That also meant there was no need for a blog.