Dual losses.

My brain is full but numb at the same time. I am up super early because I can't turn it off.

I didn't like the doctor who did my u/s. It wasn't my doctor- they send you to a different place for u/s. When he did the external, I commented that I had had one at 7 weeks at my clinic. He said "This is an IVF pregnancy?" I didn't like his tone. Now I know why there was a tone.

When he did the internal u/s it was amazing how much the fetus had grown in one week. Last week it looked like a seahorse shaped blob. This week I could see the shape of the body and could clearly see the head.

What I couldn't see was a heartbeat. It was conspicuously missing.

My baby stopped growing at 8w, four days before my appointment.

I had a D&C yesterday. I love, love, love my OBGYN. She totally squeezed me in so we could get it done asap and so it didn't interfere with our travel plans this weekend. (Family wedding-unavoidable.) Between my infertility status and my diagnosed anxiety disorder, my insurance will pay for chromosomal testing even though this is my first miscarriage. (My first. Please let it also be the last....) It will take two weeks to get the results.

III was obviously with me. I did okay for most of the intake. Until the idiot nurse we had, who was asking me questions in her obscenely cheerful voice like "How far along were you?" concluded her idiocy by asking "This was an IVF pregnancy?" Cue tears. Once I started, I couldn't stop.

Among the many, many awesome things about my OBGYN is her insistence that a patient be pretty much totally asleep for the procedure. The anesthesiologist was the opposite of idiot nurse. He actually gave me a bit of a giggle. As he's asking his questions, he said "This one's a little embarrassing..." I'm thinking, geez! What is he going to ask me? Followed by "Do you snore?" After he left the room, I said to III, "They are about to go in through my vagina to scrape out my uterus, and he thinks 'Do you snore?' is an embarrassing question???" LOL

I am having very little bleeding and am physically feeling fairly comfortable. My cramps are there but not even bad enough to have taken the motrin my doctor prescribed.

This pregnancy seems unreal. Like I imagined it. I never felt totally pregnant, and was worried for much of it that it would end like this. Sometimes I am okay, and then a few minutes later I'm in tears. In an email to my old roommate, I told her how I (morbidly maybe) always wondered how I'd feel in this situation in terms of losing a pregnancy-- losing a baby? A fetus? Turns out I feel similarly to how I thought. In my previous post about neo.natal loss, one of the things I found said that in Judaism, while they don't consider a baby to be a full person until it is born, a fetus is as important because of the potential of becoming a life. That's how I'm feeling. I don't feel the same as if I had lost a full term live BABY but I have lost the potential of this baby.*

I'm sure they will make me take a break. I plan to ask my doctor how much of the break is for emotional reasons. Because, for me, the hardest part of this is the loss of more time. I am ready to be a mom. I want that to happen as soon as possible.

*This says nothing of people who do feel the same as if they had lost a full term baby. It's just how I'm feeling.

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Today is the day I have been dreading for almost five years.

This afternoon, we take B-dog to be euthanized.

It was such a hard decision for me, but III kind of put his foot down this week, which is probably what I needed. She has been quickly deteriorating over the past week. She is starting to have trouble eating and pooping. She tires very quickly. She is just not herself.

Except, sometimes she is. She wants cheese, and if we have it, she's going to sit pretty and look at us as if to say "See what a good girl I'm being!" She barks at the mailman and even last night, her last 9pm potty break, she ran outside to try and chase bunnies.

But she's restless at night instead of sleeping. She chooses the coolest spot on the hardwood floor (or this morning even the bathroom tile) instead of the cushy bed, which she has been invited onto. She's had accidents for the past three days.

I had originally planned to have a vet who was recommended by a friend come to the house to do it. As we made our final decision, I began to have second thoughts. Dr. C is the vet who did all of her cancer treatments. Dr. C loves my B-dog almost as much as I do. The rest of the staff there too- B is a super star there in a way that M-dog or other dogs I've seen there are not. People just love her. So I decided that a) it would give everyone there a chance to say goodbye and b) B would be with a vet who she knows and loves. I called to ask if she would do it, and Dr. C told me "Of course I will. It will kill me- just to warn you I'll cry. But I will do it." I told her we could cry together.

So I have nine hours left with my best friend. I plan to order pizza for lunch and share it with her- it's her favorite. III told me "I can go to the grocery store and get one of their frozen pizzas," but I told him "No, B prefers delivery."

This is going to break my heart. But it's time.