Following God’s Plan. My Pregnancy Journey One Year Update
“I am with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. One day I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you.” Genesis 28:15
My Pregnancy Journey has been an incredible challenge for me. For much of the last 10 years, I had convinced myself that I did not want to be a mom. I figured that with all of the student loan debt I had and how hard it can be to manage stress sometimes, it was easier to convince myself that I just did not want kids or would not make a good mom than it was to face my fears and insecurities. Life was pretty hard for me, emotionally, growing up. That is a loaded topic in itself that I might share someday, but for now, what I will say is that growing up believing that life was really hard has been another factor that created fear for me to consider when having kids of my own. Many of my childhood and teen year memories are rife with reminder that being a parent isn’t easy, and not being able to manage stress well enough to provide a safe and loving home that is conducive to nurturing a child’s emotional needs while also managing their discipline issues in a healthy way has been daunting for me. I did not have many experiences in my younger years as a model of how to live a God led and mostly joyful home with children in it.
I am not sure what finally forced me to face these fears. It was February 2020 and I was working from home with a new fully remote position. Our Serra pup was finally settling into her home with us, and I realized that we had survived the worst parts of the puppy days. We had also been binge watching Duck Dynasty for the first time, and Jeff and I both realized we really did want that family experience. We wanted to teach our kiddos our favorite hobbies and subjects. We wanted to teach them about God and how to love others. We could see ourselves having a little homestead with a few children running with the chickens and dogs, helping me tend the garden, learning to hunt and fish.
We began to pick apart our reasons for not wanting kids and realized they were all really just walls we had put up to hide our fears and insecurities. So, we found a church, got back into Bible study, and prayed on it. I started preparing my body for pregnancy, learning what it was all about, and how to be healthy for building a baby. I read on how to track and manage my cycle to predict ovulation and cycle start dates. After 5 months of planning, I came off birth control at the end of July.
That was my final fear. I had been on oral contraceptives since I was 15 due to wild hormone swings that made me totally irrational – crying and getting angry over the dumbest things. The hormone changes throughout my cycle caused cystic acne and the most painful menstrual cramping I could imagine. I would miss school from the pain, writhing on the floor like there was a beast in my belly. Needless to say, this step took a lot of preparation and trust for Jeff and me. I promised I would try my best to not let my cycling hormones control my reactions, and he promised to be patient with me as I got used to all the changes I would be going through.
Fortunately, all of that worry was pointless, because we got pregnant in our first month in August. All the temperature and LH hormone tracking really helped time ovulation, I guess! We both were shocked and nervous. We thought we would have several months more of planning and learning, since many couples our age (at the time, I was 33 and Jeff was 38) did not have positive pregnancies until 6 or more months after trying.
I started feeling symptoms about a week after my missed period and positive pregnancy test. So, I went to my primary care doctor to get set up with an OB/Gyn and have any blood work done, plus ask like 100 questions I had been collecting in my pregnancy journal. I do remember asking about ectopic pregnancies, and ironically, my doctor said I was “far far more likely to NOT have an ectopic than to have one.” Go, figure!
Fast forward to week 8, and we had the first ultrasound. My pregnancy symptoms were on overdrive – nausea constantly, bloating, constipation, extreme fatigue; it even looked like I was starting to show! While getting set up, the ultrasound technician remarked about how she had been seeing many cases of twins since the pandemic started. Twins have been a dream of mine since I was a little kid (when I wanted kids, of course). Jeff and I told her, well if it is twins, then at least we only have to go through this once. She got part way through the ultrasound and said, sure enough, there were 2 “fetal poles” and 2 yolk sacs sharing the same placental sac (identical twins). However, both were measuring at just a few days after 6 weeks and neither had a detectable heartbeat.
Fear and dread set in immediately. We knew twins could measure a little behind, but 2 weeks was extreme. There definitely should have been heartbeats. And what the heck is a fetal pole? Why didn’t she call them babies?!
After meeting the OB for the first time, we were completely heartbroken. She just kept repeating fetal poles and no heartbeat, possible signs that development stopped or that I had an irregular period and ovulated later than I thought. Maybe a missed missgariage. My head was spinning, and it really was hard to focus on what she was saying through my sobbing. WHICH by the way, was made even worse by mask mandates. Try wiping your tear soaked face or blowing your nose without snotting all over your mask. In the end, she wanted to recheck in a week. Either they would grow or they would not, and we would be able to make a more informed decision then.
We tried to stay positive on the drive home. Our parents and sisters all called to see what was up, since they knew it was the day. We told them it was twins, but it didn’t look good. We headed to the gym to try and clear our heads, and by that point, we both had allowed ourselves to get SO EXCITED about having identical twins. We even picked names if they were girls, Hope and Faith, because that is all we had to get through the anxiety of the next week. But, in our last set of shoulder work, I felt like I had peed my pants. I ran to the bathroom to find my gym pants soaked in blood. SO MUCH BLOOD, and it kept coming.
The blood was all red and thin, and when we called the OB, she said that beedling can happen after the first ultrasound if there was any trapped cervical blood. She still wanted to wait the week to see me. However, 5 days later, October 6th, I started cramping really badly and bleeding again, though this time, clear signs that something was very wrong. We went to the ER where they diagnosed a “threatened abortion.” Bleeding continued for the next 2 days, and the regularly scheduled ultrasound confirmed a completed miscarriage. The OB said not to get discouraged. Miscarriage, while very sad, is very common. Trisomies of larger chromosomes can happen and development cannot proceed, and identical twin cell division has its own set of risks as well.
It took me several weeks to get out of the devastated headspace I was in and turn back to God for guidance and consolation. I decided to start reading the Bible from the beginning, praying to God for understanding. It really did not take long to find what I needed. The chapters of Genesis chronicle the struggles that Abraham and Sarah (who goes on to have a son in her 90’s) had with pregnancy, then Isaac and Rebekah (who later goes on to have twins), then again with Jacob and Rachel (who also goes on to have children). In each of these cases, we hear from the women who struggle with their desire to have children of their own, crying out to God about their pregnancy losses and/or lack of conception. That helped me put my loss into perspective. Since the earliest record of humanity, women have had to deal with fertility complications and pleaded with God for resolution. All at once, I was able to see beyond my grief and have hope for what could be next for us.
For the last few months of 2020, I had to investigate some health issues, so we did not try again until January. Again, we got pregnant right away, with an expected due date of October 6th (the anniversary of the miscarriage). I prayed probably 100 times a day for this to be a healthy baby, to be a baby I would get to hold one day. I continued to focus on my health and my Bible study. We were nervous, but hopeful. Chances for another miscarrage were low.
Because of my previous pregnancy loss, my OB scheduled my first ultrasound for week 6 on Feb 10th, 2021. Again, I had already started feeling pregnancy symptoms, although I had also started feeling pain in my lower back only on the left side. This ultrasound visit began with a lot of apprehension. Within minutes, that seemed to fade. Tears of joy streamed from my face as the technician used the word “baby” and a heart rate of 160 BPM.
Those joyful tears turned quickly to tears of sadness as her tone of voice changed to concern. She was having trouble keeping the baby in her line of sight and was worried it may not be in my uterine cavity. Once again, we left the ultrasound room in tears and filled with fear and confusion. The OB told us that I had a rare form of ectopic pregnancy called a cornual ectopic pregnancy, where the baby implants at the upper horn of the uterus, rather than inside of it. She explained that the condition is incredibly dangerous for the mother, leading to death about 7 – 9% of the time, with no known surviving cases for a viable live birth. The only course of action was to terminate the pregnancy.
After sobbing uncontrollably for who knows how long, I finally spit out the words, “So, I have to have an abortion?!” She tried to describe it differently, but all I could think about was my baby who had a heartbeat. This innocent little future child we had prayed for and wanted so much. My world dropped out. I was furious at God for not answering my prayers to keep my baby safe. I was so confused about why this would be happening to me and ashamed that I was pro-life but had to kill my baby to save my own life.
It was my mom and mother and law who snapped me out of a very dark tailspin. My mother-in-law reminded me that we don’t always understand how God answers our prayers in the moment and that because of sin, the world is not perfect. My mom told me that God loves my babies and me so much and reminded me that we would all be together in Heaven someday. She reminded the biologist in me that DNA is not perfect and that God does not dictate our lives. Sometimes, things just go wrong, and it is a sad part of life. She reminded me that I needed to keep seeking God and reading scripture so that I could find meaning and direction.
The next day, after an MRI confirmed that the position of the baby was outside of where it could grow and develop without risking my fertility and my life, I started methotrexate, a form of chemotherapy to stop the cell growth. Jeff and I prayed for God to take our baby to Heaven so we could be together someday. While we never knew the sex of the baby, we decided to name the baby Zechariah, meaning “God has remembered.”
My OB needed to monitor my HCG hormone levels to make sure they were coming down. Unfortunately, a week later, they were the same, though another ultrasound confirmed the baby had not grown and there was no longer a heartbeat. This time, I would need 2 doses, one on Friday, and another the following Monday.
Friday, while at the hospital waiting for my second dose of chemo, I talked to my mom. Her sister had passed away from Lung cancer Feb 9th, and the funeral was the next day, Saturday. We prayed together, she shared he favorite memories. She talked about loss and grief. She talked about always trying to find joy, even when life was hard. She talked about how perfect Heaven is and how her sister Joyce and the babies were all free from pain and suffering there.
That was the last time I ever talked to my mom. I had planned to talk to her Monday during my 3rd treatment, but that morning, my sister discovered my mom unresponsive at home; she had suffered a stroke. As I was preparing to head to the hospital for my 3rd chemo injection, my sister let me know that mom was heading into surgery. When I got home, my sister told me that the surgery to remove the clotting and stop the bleeding was unsuccessful, and it was unlikely mom would recover. While on chemo, during a pandemic, and against my doctor’s judgement, my husband and I drove from South Carolina to northern Illinois to say goodbye to her as she went to heaven that Thursday, exactly 2 weeks, almost to the hour, from when we found out about Zechariah.
Losing my mom is something I might talk about in a separate post, and I only bring it up now because it is part of the timeline.
Back on the pregnancy journey. The MRI found a “possible uterine abnormality.” My OB was concerned that I had a T-shaped uterus, which is incredibly rare today. It is predominantly caused by a medication that was banned when my mom was 10 and is caused when women took it while pregnant with girls. To confirm, my OB had me wait a month until the pregnancy had fully resolved to do another MRI, which came back showing a T-shaped uterus and a septum. Finally, we knew why the ectopic pregnancy, and possibly the miscarriage, had happened. I had a deformed uterus. That helped me better move on from my grief of the ectopic pregnancy, but created even more fear of the unknown. This type of issue would likely require surgery to be able to carry a pregnancy to term. Without the surgery, chances for late term (10 – 20 weeks) miscarriage are very high, as well as risks for another ectopic, stillbirth, developmental abnormalities for the baby, and preterm brith.
I was then referred to a fertility specialist for further testing to decide if and how we could have children using my uterus. After meeting with the fertility doctor in July, he recommended a 3D ultrasound at the start of August, which oddly, detected no abnormalities. Again, I broke down crying. I had built so much of my understanding as for a “reason” for that ectopic pregnancy on that issue, and there was none? Why had the 2 MRI’s been wrong? What are the chances they are right now?
We did one more procedure, an HSG, to make sure the ectopic had not caused any issues with flow between my uterus and fallopian tubes, and to confirm whether the uterus was normal. While it was a “little smaller and more narrow” than typical, it was normally shaped, with no septum! Also, all my bloodwork showed signs that my eggs are still healthy and I am fertile as ever, despite now heading into my 35th birthday in October.
Finally, a year after the first positive pregnancy test, we know that we *should* be able to have healthy children and a healthy pregnancy. However, I will have to be watched early and closely to make sure there isn’t a subsequent ectopic and will likely need genetic screening in case there are other trisomies.
So, when are we trying again? Honestly, I am not sure. It has been a VERY hard year, and to add to that, we recently purchased a new, smaller home that is being fully renovated, and with a child, we will outgrow it in a few years. It is much different thinking about kids when you are 33 and 37 compared to Jeff turning 40 in less than a month, and I turning 35 a few weeks later. We are kind of in limbo with what our life will look like in the next year with the move, wanting to dive deeper into homesteading, downsizing. Plus, there is a lot to consider starting a family halfway to the end of the average American lifespan.
We definitely are not closed off to the idea of picking back up on the baby journey, but there is fear that we will have to go through all that suffering again. Right now, we are taking things one decision at a time and we continue to pray and seek God’s direction for our lives. Once we get the new house finished and we get moved and settled into our new life, we will have plenty of time to think about all that. Afterall, in Genesis 28:15, God promises, “I am with you, and I will protect you wherever you go. One day I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have finished giving you everything I have promised you.” Quite prophetic that we start life over again “back” in the land where we felt most at home, in the city where my mom’s father was born, don’t you think?
Keep in the faith, lean on the Lord, and choose joy.
This Going HomeSteadily blog will be loaded with stories about how I am working to rebuild my faith, how we have survived repeated pregnancy loss and fertility complications, learning to live life without my mom, striving to dig ourselves out of massive student loan and multiple mortgage debt, sharing a full time home office, cultivating a home garden, relearning the Bible as an adult, exploring and planning for a homesteading future, and above all, actively choosing joy.
So, stay tuned, and God bless.
Stephanie Brown
