Plans are a funny thing

Sometimes your best made plans are interrupted and cast by the wayside...Life occasionally steps in and makes a completely different plan. On a small scale, that's what happened to me this week. On a large scale, that's been the last 8 months of my life! But let's look at the small picture because the big picture has been exhausting lately.

So I have been planning some fun things over these months during the deployment to keep myself busy and such. One of the things I did plan was a mud run - it is a 5K mud run that I was going to do up in Boston with some friends. It's this Saturday! So the last 48 hours I have been plagued with this awful stomach bug! It has been just dreadful. While I had every intention of going up to do the run, I don't think I'm going to be able to go. I'm just today able to eat some crackers and a banana. Hoping that things get better from here.

An interesting observation I've made over the last few months has been regarding my decision to come off Facebook. Initially, during the first phase of the miscarriage, it was a lot to have the input of seemingly everyone posting that they were pregnant. That, coupled with the idea that people would be knowing or potentially posting that DH was away, lead me to come off the social media site. I have definitely noticed some of my friendships have fallen off and become more distant. It takes a lot to keep friendships going with the busy lives that everyone has, and in some ways, social media has made it easier for us to just know the day to day of people's lives without even really trying. I have found myself putting more time into the people that invest their time into me. There is definitely a clear line of people who have reached out and invested into me. Who know what is going on with me. Who know what is happening in my life. And there are others that have moved to the fringe.

The evolution of life is something that is really very funny.

A new reality

So it's not quite new, but it's not old, but it's the now and it's not forever. So let's just go with new-ish. My routine was just starting to settle in... and by routine I of course mean keeping myself so insanely busy that I don't have even a minute to think about what is actually happening in my head! I mentioned in my last post that I called the NaPro doc as soon as I got back from Cali after sending DH on his way overseas. That is just in a lull right now. Waiting on insurance, which we all know can take some time..

In the meantime, I have scheduled dinners, and outings and meetings and made plans with everyone I can think of. DH is in a motorcycle club, which I was at first resistant to, but have since warmed up to very much! I adore the women in the club and the good hearts of these "motorcycle" guys never ceases to amaze me. They are made up of all veterans, army, navy, air force, marines, police, fire fighters, the list goes on and on. They are the most generous souls and some of the kindest men I have ever met in my life. The fact that I get along with the women in the club is just an enormous bonus! So they run a fundraiser every year, so I'm pushing to throw myself into that to not only help the club, but also to distract and to give back.

Something I have learned over my 34 years on this globe is that when things in my life get crummy, things seem more hopeful if I can come out of myself and serve others. Somewhere along my journey I heard a quote - I googled it to make sure I got it right!

“The best antidote I know for worry is work. The best cure for weariness is the challenge of helping someone who is even more tired. One of the great ironies of life is this: He or she who serves almost always benefits more than he or she who is served.” ― Gordon B. Hinckley, Standing for Something: 10 Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes

When you can give someone else assistance, or hope, or a helping hand or even a smile - what a great feeling. Keeping my heart in shape is important. I need to make sure it stays strong for not only me, but so I can continue to life DH burden - after all, I'm not the only one separated from their spouse! I got a call at 1:30am today from him telling me that it will be a while before he can call or contact me again. One of the worst calls to get as a military spouse - yet one of the best, because it was a heads up. Now I operate off the "no news is good news" mantra! I will focus on a weekly e-mail full of uplifting stories of how I'm keeping busy and seeing my friends, both of our families and relay entertaining stories and pictures to him. I don't want him to have an image of me sitting at home with piles of tissues around me wallowing in his absence!

There's a picture of us I keep on my desk at work. It was taken just a few weeks after we started dating, which we coincidentally used as our engagement announcement picture. I'd love to show it to you, but he is very cautious about information and pictures on the internet. The leaves are bright and bold with fall colors, he is looking at me and smiling with the most genuine smile while his arm is around me. It looks so natural. And we had only been dating for a few weeks! I hold on to the fact that we came together so easily and quickly. I hope the home adjustment is just as easy and quick! I'll try not to borrow sorrow from tomorrow - haha 

Explosion of emotion!

Today I popped into a local eatery for lunch. I ordered a sandwich that I was very excited to enjoy. I haven't been sleeping well this week - but I made it through the week (almost)! My emotions are ready to bubble out at ANY time.

I have read a LOT of blogs and articles about deployments and what to expect. One of the great ones that stands out in my head is this one - Why I wish Your Husband Would Deploy. Today I had a first experience - it was with the waitress of the lunch place. When I mentioned in conversation that my DH was deployed, she said "I wish my husband would leave for a year." This comment may seem innocent from the civilian side of things, but I burst into tears. I would give ANYTHING to have him back at my side.

It took me a minute to pull myself together, but things flash through my head. I'd love to be able to boss him around to take out the trash, I want to feel his body heat in bed to warm my cold toes. I want him to help me put my jacket on, kiss my forehead, open my car door for me, fight with him about stupid little things, listen to him laugh on the phone with his friends, talk to him about whether or not we should buy a raffle ticket for some random prize, eat the crust on his pizza, put my arms around his body and hug him and to be able to kiss his soft loving lips. I would give anything to be close to him again.

Re-reading that paragraph, it's the little things. Don't get me wrong though! There are times that I just want DH to be quiet and stop arguing with me, or times I just want space for a few hours from him. Overall though, I miss him and I want him home! I have reached out to a lot of the wives I know through his different commands of days past. I am very lucky that he set me up with a network of people I can talk to about this whole situation. It's always funny when the guys give their opinions also! If I listened to the men, it would be all naked pictures lining his care packages! That's not happening - absolutely not.

So this week I also called my Doctor to get in for the NaPro surgeries. They are contacting the insurance company and they will get back to me to schedule. The things I have read online regarding the Ovarian Wedge surgery say that people have the highest success rate in the first 6 months after the surgery. So maybe before the summer I will go, and then DH return should fall in that 6 month window somewhere! I hope....

Time vortex - A miscarriage story

I've become so aware of time. How quickly it's been going by and how much everyone seems to be craving extra hours in the day. Some people want that time to work, or clean, or exercise, or just to jam in a few extra minutes of sleep. Where does the time go? I went to have blood drawn this morning, and after a quick stop at Whole Foods (yum!) I got back to the hotel and realized I had been running around for 3 hours. It didn't seem possible, but clearly it was. Ha ha

I'm so fortunate to get to spend a little extra time with my hunnie before he deploys. As I mentioned in other posts, we have been trying since we were married to conceive. One of the plus sides of regulating my cycles with NaPro Creighton Model charting is kind of being able to guesstimate when our chances to try for pregnancy will fall for the next month. Sadly, it won't line up for us to have another try before he leaves. At first I was really sad about that fact. Then after lots of time to reflect and work through my self-imposed "must be pregnant ASAP" pressure, I realize that my state in life has me being a wife. Why not totally embrace that? Obviously it's not our time to be parents, especially for us to become first time parents while we are worlds apart. 

I'm getting emotional even typing this. I feel so so so lucky to have the husband that I have. I can't imagine enduring the miscarriage that we did without him by my side. He is so wonderful, supportive, understanding and can always lighten my spirits when I'm feeling down. We work very hard to have open communication in our relationship and be totally honest with each other. It's one of the things that  took me some time to get used to! Since the miscarriage really has catapulted me onto a different (overly) emotional level, I thought I would force myself to talk about it, so here it goes.

In October DH and I were in Florida visiting his parents. Things felt so different in my cycle. We had hit our peak time to try for a pregnancy, I had been doing acupuncture for pregnancy, I had a huge change in the way my appetite was, I was soooooo tired and I was having a lot of cramping on one side of my belly. I would break into sweat, my heart was racing a lot of the time...just weird. So my SIL who is a nurse, handed me a pregnancy test. I took the test the next morning, ran into the kitchen where she was, and she confirmed, there were two lines. I couldn't believe it was real. I showed DH and he was just as shocked. "Are you serious, babe?" As his eyes lit up. I felt like I could take on anything in the whole world. We flew back to NJ, I called my NaPro doctors office and they sent me right away for blood work. The blood work confirmed, I was pregnant. I couldn't believe it! DH would be able to hear the heartbeat before he left, we would have a baby in June 2015 and suddenly our whole world was changed. They said I was 5 weeks at the point we found out. Apparently that is early.  

So I went for blood work again a few days later and when my NaPro practitioner called me, she sounded apologetic. She said my HCG numbers weren't doubling. They wanted me to start a special progesterone injection compound right away and told me to stay off my feet for a few days. With DH in NYC training, I did just that. The injection progesterone came, and we started on that as quickly as we could. We started getting comfortable with the idea we were going to be parents! After a few days, they sent me for more blood work. My HCG numbers had increased, but weren't doubling, which is what they are supposed to do early on in pregnancy. I started reading everything known to man on the entire internet about early pregnancy HCG numbers. There were women who had successful pregnancies after low numbers, as well as women who had successful pregnancies after first tirmester bleeding (which I was having). I would call the doctor every day to make sure every little pain or twang that I felt was normal. I started worrying that everything was wrong. 

I went to have blood work done again in the middle of week 6 of the pregnancy. I stalked the doctors office to find out what the bloodwork said! Finally my Doctor called me back, not the NaPro practitioner. Her voice was calm and very very somber. My low HCG numbers had fallen. She said that this was the tell tale sign of a miscarriage. I kept myself together and I asked her several questions about what to expect over the next few weeks and what were the "normal" parameters. I called my husband and told him what the doctor said. He was away for training and I asked him to please come home that night. Not totally unreasonable since he as about 1.5 hours away and could make that happen. Then I called my mom and I lost it. I cried and cried.

To try to explain the loss I felt is very hard. I felt like I let down our baby, I felt like I let down my husband, and even thought it was 6.5 weeks into the pregnancy, I felt like I let myself down. The doctor assured me several times that it wasn't my fault. There is nothing I personally could have done to change the outcome, but my heart felt so incredibly hollow. I really felt like a disappointment as a wife... I mean what's the root of being a wife? I think it's to segway to a Mom...  if I can't carry our first baby to term, what am I supposed to do? That feeling took some time to kind of figure out. My DH never once said anything other then how proud he was. He told me he married me because he loved me, not because I could maybe one day mother his children. 

Miscarriage is such a hit to a lot of areas of life. I feel like I'm still stuck in this time vortex. I can't quite get my head back into the game of life. Granted, a lot has changed in the last 3 months. We sold our house, we miscarried, we moved into an apt and probably most importantly, DH moved across the country to continue training. Life has taken some unexpected turns. Sometimes you just have to hold on and pray that God will get you through!