Seven weeks

I’m sorry it has taken me so long to write about yesterday’s ultrasound.  It may sound strange, but I haven’t really known what to say.  There were no huge surprises.  We have one very healthy baby, with a healthy heartbeat that was flickering away on the screen.  We have one empty sac that can barely be seen anymore. 

I had requested that the head nurse at the clinic perform my ultrasound.  I didn’t want to take any chances that I would walk away from yesterday’s ultrasound wondering if the nurse who did the scan was just not careful enough or just missed the twin.  Denial is a powerful thing.   The head nurse is incredibly thorough and, I know that if she says something is so, it is.  She saw our big baby immediately, but scooted around it and looked for the other sac for a long time.  It wasn’t easy to find, but when she found it, she was very thorough about making sure there was nothing in it.  Then, probably sensing that my tears were about to start pouring down, she quickly moved on to our healthy baby, and turned on the Doppler.  I thought seeing our baby’s heartbeat last week was awesome.  But I’ve got to tell you…hearing the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of a tiny little heart beating inside of your belly is truly awe inspiring!  The nurse had handled it perfectly.  I couldn’t dwell on my loss and listen to a miracle at the same time.

That feeling, of not being able to deal with both of those things at the same time has carried over, even though I’m not listening to the whoosh right now.  The mind is a funny thing.  It protects us in very creative ways.  My mind, instead of saying “Ha Ha…I was right and you were wrong Heart,” immediately decided that there never was a twin.  My mind capitalized on the fact that we never saw a heartbeat or fetus in the second sac (we only saw the sac itself), and convinced my heart that there was never a baby in that sac.  Sometimes, empty sacs form around an embryo that didn’t fully implant.  That’s what I have convinced myself happened in the case of our “twin.”  It doesn’t hurt as much that way.  We didn’t lose a baby, we just had an embryo that didn’t take.  That’s an easier pill to swallow.  I can move on from that.

Maybe someday I will feel equipped to experience the joy of my pregnancy and the grief of a loss at the same time, but today is not that day.  Right now, I need to go back to my “all-in” attitude and just start being over the moon happy about the baby I have.   If things go well at next week’s ultrasound, and there is no indication that it won’t, I get discharged from my fertility center, to my OBGYN.  The mixed emotions about being “discharged” will have to wait for another post, but for now, I am just settling in to the comfort of being truly, closer to out of the woods, pregnant.