A little something something....

Today I have been thinking a lot about the upcoming summer. It usually goes so quickly, which I think this year will be a blessing. With DH deployed, it will get us closer to the window to his return. I was with my sister and my three nieces this week and the girls were asking about my husband. They are all under the age of six, so the questions are things like “does he ride camels?” and “Is he fighting bad guys?” which in all their innocence makes me smile. If only things were that simple.

Next week I’m going for my surgeries. It’s been a little emotional this week I think just leading up to that. I’ve had my mom drive me to surgeries before, but this one is different with DH half way around the world. I’ll miss him by my bedside taking care of me. He does make the best chicken soup! He had grown this moustache while he has been overseas. When we skyped yesterday I was so glad to see his handsome face – no moustache! It’s the little things that get you through! We hit the 6 month mark since he officially deployed. It’s kind of skewed since he was in the country for training for a bit. But it’s definitely been an adjustment.

My mind has been wandering to reintegration. Not only him coming home to me and readjusting to that, but also the fact that our home sold right after he left. So he isn’t even coming home to the place that he left. I’m in a small apartment waiting for him so once we have a little time to settle back into life, we can look for a new house to buy together. I wonder not only what kind of emotional bundle will be coming back to me, but what kind of emotional bundle he is coming home to! I’m sure I have changed a lot in this period as well. I definitely feel like our relationship has been through the pasta mill. It’s been the pasta dough that was watered and floured and pounded before finally run through the pasta mill. Now we are a pile of noodles waiting to be turned into something! Who knows what. Hopefully it’s a delicious thing!

Yesterday I had somewhat of a small breakthrough of sorts. I haven’t been able to get myself to go to the gym. DH and I went in the mornings together before work, and it’s been very hard for me to even face the idea of going since he has been deployed. It’s been the last big mental block in my life. I know – come on girl – get over it! So I talked my cousin into going with me. I knew if I could just get through the doors, I would be good. So yesterday, it happened! Today my arms are so sore. But it feels good. As I did certain weights and such I found myself watching for DH to come around the corner. Our normal routine. I can’t wait for him to be back. I really miss him everywhere in life!

So not much of an update here. But just a little catching up things are good post. I will have more next week after the surgery and I will let you know how that all goes!

Light in the tunnel!

Have you been to the eye doctor when they sit you behind that black apparatus and make you lean your head against it to look through the impossibly small holes? Then they hook up the "reading" bar with a little card and slide it closer to your eyes obstructing everything else in view but bringing those tiny little letters into your whole range of focus. That exactly explains where my life has been for the last few weeks. Those tiny letters on that little card have been the miscarriage - obstructing my ENTIRE LIFE. I haven't been able to see anything past that.

Why now? It's 6 months past when it actually happened, so why now? Let's think about that....At the time of the miscarriage, DH was getting ready to deploy, he was away at training, the house was in the final stages of selling, packing, apartment hunting, DH departing to CA, moving, back and forth to CA to visit him, moving again, finally DH going overseas.....then I came home to quiet. I was left with my DH deployed, I wasn't 6 months pregnant. I was in an apartment alone. I was dredging through life. I was finally facing the fact that here I was, in a non-ordinary life, alone - no husband and no baby. Not only that, but we didn't even really have another chance to try for a baby after the miscarriage because of the timing.

So we miscarried and I've just been kind of sitting with the disappointment. No hope to try again for a year. Now don't get me wrong. I know God has a plan. I know that things happened the way that they did for a reason. I know that it also took me a good 3 weeks to get in touch with what exactly my problem was! Guys, I was in  HUGE FUNK!

I finally identified the problem. I finally began talking about it. Working through it. I'm definitely not through it. But I've found a candle in my tunnel. I can at least see where I'm going now. It's a dim light, but it's helping me keep my balance, and step over the obstacles in the way. I feel much more in control since I've identified what it is that was weighing me down.

So I feel ready to move forward a little at a time. The first step is going forward with the surgeries I have scheduled with my NaPro doctor. I see him next Thursday and I have a list of questions. I'm scheduled for three surgeries. One to remove the endometriosis (endo as most people shorten it to), a selective HSG, and an ovarian wedge resection. The hope is to get in, get cleaned up and get healed and hopefully ready and ovulating on my own (without meds!) so when DH is back, we can start trying again for the family we want so badly.

It's funny the way life works out sometimes. In this season of Easter, I feel that I have been given new hope, new life and a new chance. I hope that I can hold onto this feeling of newness as I watch the flowers start to poke their heads up, trees start to slowly turn green and the sun stay a little higher in the sky a few minutes longer every day. It's such a hopeful time of year. I hope that the hope extends to you and your family too.

Dredging Through

So March is almost over, that will mark the first month down. It's been really rough since DH went overseas. We have gotten to e-mail pretty regularly, and we use Google Chat (instant message) a few times a week. We have gotten to talk on the phone twice since he's been over there, so it's in some ways not as bad as I thought. In other ways it is harder.

It's taken me a while to kind of get in touch with the fact that I feel like those scenes in the movies when one main point freezes, and everything else is spinning and whirling all around. I feel frozen and time is still passing. Life goes on, but I'm frozen in place! It's a weird feeling. This is the temporary normal. I'm so thankful it's temporary!

Lets change gears before I get too emotional....I booked my three surgeries. They are all going to be in one shot - the endo removal, the selective HSG and the ovarian wedge. They will be in May (hopefully). It's at least things I can do to get myself ready for DH return. It's so weird to think I will be 35 by the time we are able to try again for a baby. That means I'll be near 36 if we are successful right away. Where did the years go?

So I've been working like crazy on this tricky tray for DH motorcycle club. I really want it to be a success for multiple reasons, but mostly because he isn't here. I want to represent him well and have it be a successful event for him and the club. They are so generous and they donate 100% of their proceeds to the cause each year that they support.

I felt like I had a lot to blog about. My brain is so full carrying around this deployment. I'll try to focus more next time and come up with some more to blog about, I know there is more in there!

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 

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!