Welcome to our journey!

I had a fabulous career and was on the road about 75% of the time.  Today, I still joke with my husband that our first year of marriage doesn’t count as I was never home.  I loved it though and swore I never wanted to have children.

Life Transpires: My Personal Journey of Reflection…

Life transpires and my grandmother died in December 2014, she was surrounded by her children at home. 

A few weeks later my husband’s uncle passed away surrounded by his parents, children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, cousins, friends. I saw how the families came together and while it was a time of sadness and mourning there was also hope and love. They left behind a legacy.

As death does, it can force us to reflect on our own lives and the briefness of the time we are here on this earth. When reflecting on my own life, I was happy and enjoying every moment we had a great group of friends, lived a trendy neighborhood in Washington, DC. I loved my job, had a great career path ahead of me and was travelling the world. But… I started to have this nagging feeling something in my life was missing… children…

It was January 6, 2015, a month and three days after my grandmother passed away I got off my birth control. I was 34. I knew the risks and I was about 10 months away for being classified as ‘advanced maternal age‘.

What is Advance Maternal Age?

According to the Mayo Clinic Advance Maternal Age is women who are over 35 and pregnancy can come with a variety of risks. Including: 

• Taking longer to get pregnant.
• More likely to have a multiple pregnancy.
• Increase chance of developing gestational diabetes.
• Risk of chromosome abnormalities is higher.
• The risk of pregnancy loss is higher. 

I had armed myself with every book I could, to prepare myself on what to expect.

Based on averages, it could easily take a year for me to get pregnant. Patience is not a virtue of mine, but setting realistic expectations helped. I have a strength and a weakness of singular focus when I want something.

The Journey to Motherhood…

On February 7, 2015, I took a pregnancy test and it came back positive! I was elated when I got pregnant immediately. My journey to motherhood had begun.

Life Transpires: Miscarriage…

4 weeks and 1 days after my pregnancy test and roughly 6 weeks and 1 day into my pregnancy), I started having cramping.   So of course I did what any other pregnant mother-to-be would do, I went to Google.  I read all the regular website experts like WebMD and read chats between women experience similar symptoms. It sounded like that was pretty common in the first trimester, which helped put me at ease.  

However, it progressively got worse and Google was not giving me the answers, so I finally broke down and called my midwife.  She expressed while some cramping is normal, the amount I was experiencing was not.  She sent me for ultrasound and they thankfully were able to get me in the next morning for an appointment. 

The ultrasound technician could not find a heartbeat, but she assured me that was not unusual as I had just reached the six week mark.  The longer we sat however, the more concerned I started to get and she finally disclosed that she could not find a the gestational sac either. She asked lots of questions about how I calculated the due date and stated, perhaps I was just earlier along than I thought and to follow up with my mid-wife. 

My mid-wife took some blood to see what my hCG levels were doing, but she told me she believed that I was probably having what they call a chemical pregnancy.  She explained a chemical pregnancy is when the egg is fertilized, but never fully implants. 

Having a miscarriage you still hang on to hope. . .

I was devastated, but a part of me still held onto a sliver of hope that this was just normal cramping. 

Doing my research, I always heard and knew that there was a risk of miscarriage.  However, I didn’t know anyone who had one. 

Before I was even pregnant, I had dreams about this baby,  imagining the nursery, even thinking about names (I am a planner!). 

Those dreams were snatched in an instant and I cried the entire way home.  When I got home I crawled into bed. I could hear my husband talking to my sister on the phone in a hushed voice.  I knew he was telling her I was having a miscarriage and my heart broke. 

As the day went on, I convinced myself everything was okay.  I was in denial.   I prayed to God to take care of me and my baby, but God has his own plans. 

Life Transpires: My rainbow baby. . . 

He was healthy, happy, had all of his fingers and toes weigh 6 lbs and 7 oz.   Even though he came in December I still remember we were having a heat wave, literally it was close to 80 the entire week. 

Life transpires, it continues to happen and lead us down paths we may not have planned for ourselves.