Today started like all the others.  I didn’t know this morning when I woke up that I would go to bed in tears, a completely different person.

I had my regular 16 week check up today.  In the last week and a half, I began feeling the first few flutters of baby, making this pregnancy more real and exciting!  Last weekend, Eric and I put together the new crib we purchased for baby and have been spending more time trying to organize the mess of a room that is baby’s.  I was even confident enough to purchase a diaper bag and some gender neutral onesies.  This was a big deal because I’ve been so paranoid for the next bad thing to happen.

Today was that bad day.  Today I checked in for my regularly scheduled appointment not knowing that while I sat in the waiting room, I was only 1 instead of 2.

Eric didn’t come with me to this appointment.  He had been out of the office half of yesterday waiting for the Century Link guy to come and fix our internet.  He felt he really needed to be in the office and both of us assumed it was just a normal, average appointment and felt ok with him missing it.

When the doctor came in, we reviewed how I’ve been feeling.  I was finally starting to feel better, my only complaint was a heavily used bladder and constant headaches.  She assured me this was all normal and after about 10 minutes, I hopped up on the table to do the Doppler and catch a sound of that beautiful heart beat.

She struggled to search for it for about 2 minutes.  She could tell I was starting to freak and assured me that this happens sometimes and that it appeared I was carrying pretty low and so this wasn’t anything to be too alarmed with.  She pulled out the handheld ultrasound thing-a-ma-gigger and confidently searched for the heartbeat.  Her confidence quickly drained when we could both see baby, but no fluttering organ.  There was no movement from baby.  There was no sign that things were ok.

She asked if my husband was at work and if so, was he in town?  She advised I would need to be sent upstairs to the “real” ultrasound machine and the specialty pre-natal doctor and techs.  She advised I should contact my husband and the nurse would bring me up to confirm what was going on.  She confirmed my worries with her own, but that we needed to see for sure before calling anything.

I texted Eric to get there, that there was no heart beat.

This is not something I was prepared for, but at the same time, have been half expecting since we found out we were pregnant.  You can’t possibly be prepared for something like this, to loose a child before they even had a fair shot at life.  The first thoughts in my head were “what did I do wrong?  was that too hot of a bath?  should I not have had that caffeine??  did I push it too hard working out???”

Eric arrived and the ultra sound tech turned on the machine.  She immediately confirmed there was no blood flow through the body which we could clearly see and there was certainly no heartbeat.  The small amount of hope I had been holding onto was taken away and just like that, I was no longer carrying life.

They measured baby and it appeared that baby stopped developing at 15 weeks 3 days….less than a week ago.  Nothing could be seen to indicate “why” on the ultrasound.  The prenatal doctor came in to speak with us about our options and what could be done to potentially provide us with a “why”.  It was easy for me to decide…I wanted to deliver this baby and be able to hold them, to know they were a boy or a girl, to take photos and prints and make some sad & cruel, but lasting memories.

I’m writing this now because after tomorrow, I don’t know how I’ll be.  I don’t know how I’ll function or if I’ll remember as clearly what happened today.  As much as this hurts, and so differently from all the other hurt the last year brought us, I want to remember it because this was real.

Tomorrow we will start our day as normal and bring Lincoln to school.  Then we’ll head to the hospital, go to the labor and delivery floor, and be taken to the “back area” where the full term women will not be.  I will be given medication to make my body begin the natural process of labor at an unnatural time.  I will deliver our miracle baby too soon and we will hold baby for a while, name baby to remember them always, and love baby forever.

We are not guaranteed anything in this life and this pregnancy was no different.  I’m clinging to God for strength right now and praying that He will carry me through. I always assumed that IVF would be the hardest battle to overcome and pleaded to God that I would know this devastating heartbreak.  But here we are and here we must grow from.