Getting This Off My Chest

by smilingbuddha

Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998

When I was 19 I got pregnant and had an abortion. My father was a god fearing bible belt Christian that would have kicked me out and my mother was living overseas. My boyfriend, even though we had been together a couple of years, really didn't seen concerned, he gave me half of the cost for it and went with me to have it done and emotionally I still felt alone. I couldn't really talk to anyone. My friends were my age and could not relate. All I could do was send a letter to my mother to let her know of my situation. Even though I got phone calls and letters in response to what I told her, I didn't have physically to comfort me. I was young and didn't want the baby. It may sound horrible, but I thought more about me and what I was going to do, where was I going to live, who would take care of me. I was only 19. My thoughts didn't go far into the future and some young women think pretty selfishly. When I was 25 I got married to a wonderful person and had pretty much decided that at 26, I was ready to be pregnant. I didn't want to wait until my 30's to have a baby because my mother had 8 m/c's before she had my sister and I and didn't have me until she was 32. I always in my life thought that I wanted to be a younger mother than she was. My sister also waited until she was 31 to have her first one. For the first 2 years of trying to get pregnant, nothing happened. I started to get a bit concerned and my doctor referred me to an infertility specialist. He came to the conclusion that because of my abortion 9 years ago, I had scar tissue in my uterus from the procedure and a laporoscopy had to be done in order to clear the scar tissue out. I really didn't know what to do. I thought I was being punished for what I did 9 years back and didn't know anyone who was having the same problem. I knew people practically used abortion as birth control several times and still had healthy babies, not one person was experiencing what I was. My mother had passed away a few years back and I couldn't talk to her about her infertility or her miscarriages. I decided to get the surgery done and within 1 year I finally became pregnant. The doctor's office was happy, my husband was happy, my in-laws were happy, everyone was happy. Then at about four weeks into pregnancy, my quantitative reading (blood test to check level of pregnancy) lowered in numbers and I was told to expect a miscarriage and to expect a period soon. I was devastated. I thought my husband would want to leave me eventually because with me he wouldn't be able to have children. I had the miscarriage and to my surprise found out I was pregnant about 2 months later. At about 5 weeks I m/c again and was told by my infertility doctor the statistics of women who had miscarriages and to hang in there. He still had hope for me. I had a third miscarriage without even knowing I was pregnant and not even missing a period. I had brown spotting a week after my period and finally called my doctor because I knew something was not right. He had a feeling that soon after my period, when I had intercourse my egg was fertilized, but it didn't even implant on the uterine wall, it just went right through. So technically, it was a miscarriage. After being frustrated (my infertility doctor said he could do nothing else for me because I was no longer infertile) I looked for an OBGYN doctor to establish a relationship with. Before I had only seen my infertility doctor. I met with her (OB) and told her my life story and asked her if she could do anything for me. She read my medical history and saw that I was taking synthroid for a small goiter that is on my thyroid. She mentioned that the first thing we had to do was check my synthroid level to make sure it is sufficient enough to maintain a pregnancy. If it is OK, I may need to have more surgery to get rid of the possible scar tissue that appeared from my first surgery which sounded crazy to me. I was willing to see though. Thankfully my synthroid dosage was way too high and she changed my dosage to a safe level and thought that I should wait a few months before I attempted to be pregnant again. She put me on the pill and 2 months after my last pill cycle I became pregnant again. That was 6 weeks ago. I have some spotting and she did an ultrasound to make sure the embryo was ok. It was and it also had a good strong heartbeat. I'm still not out of the woods yet. She is more optimistic than I am. If I do maintain this pregnancy it will mean that after 3 m/c's, all it was, was my thyroid level being nonsufficient for pregnancy. That is amazing to me. My surgery helped me to get pregnant (oh yea, I forgot to mention that a cyst was also found on the end of one of my ovaries during my surgery and taken off) that also helped my chances of getting pregnant. I just keep my fingers crossed every day and thank my Supreme Being that I have come this far. Sorry so long. Just needed to get off my chest and it is good to know that I am not the only one out there. I have been through it all and I want to let everyone know that life is out there to create.