Waiting

This past season of Advent and Christmas was an emotional roller coaster for Kelly and I, and I wanted to update my friends on what has been going on in our lives recently.

On the first Sunday of Advent, we were very excited to discover that I was pregnant, via a home pregnancy test. We had been trying to get pregnant since August and we were thrilled.

While I could have been doing a lot of thinking and meditating on the theological significance of Mary’s pregnancy and expectant waiting during the season of Advent, I really didn’t. What I ended up doing was having a lot of nausea, trying not to puke at work (and in other public places – unsuccessfully at one point) and waiting more expectantly for Christmas, when we were planning on surprising our families with the news via Christmas presents.

Christmas, and the big surprise announcement to family went off without a hitch. The end of my first trimester (and the wider announcement of baby Filgo’s advent) was to come at the end of January, but I couldn’t wait and did end up spilling the beans to a few friends after Christmas. My extended family, some good friends and well, anyone within earshot of Karen (who told anyone she could that she was going to be an aunt) knew that we were expecting. We were all overjoyed.

However, our season of joyful expectancy ended suddenly on January 5th, the day before Epiphany. When I went in for a checkup, the ultrasound revealed that I had an empty gestational sac. I was officially diagnosed with “Blighted Ovum” which means that for whatever reason (most likely chromosomal abnormalities) the embryo did not develop, and that I would miscarry. I was told at that checkup that I had a choice – I could let the miscarriage happen naturally, or I could have the surgical procedure known as a D&C. Since I was headed out to a professional conference that next weekend, I decided to delay my decision until after I came home. Because the miscarriage could happen any time, Kelly decided to come with me just in case something happened, but also for emotional support.

I realized pretty soon that I was leaning towards wanting the miscarriage to happen naturally, but I didn’t really know why. Kelly helped me articulate why by reminding me that my original desire was for a natural, drug-free, less-invasive delivery so why have an invasive surgery when I could just wait and let my body do what it needed to do. So that’s what I decided to do. To wait.

Little did I know that I would end up waiting more than four weeks – almost as long as we had known we were expecting – for the miscarriage to finally happen. I waited, and waited, and went through a lot of emotional turmoil just hoping for the dang thing to happen. It had even come to a point where I had talked with my midwife and her consulting doctor and gone ahead and scheduled a D&C. However, finally, on February 5, early in the morning (3 days before the scheduled surgery), the miscarriage started. I won’t go into the details, but the short of it was that it was painful and bloody. But I did feel a sense of relief, after waiting so long.

It’s been a long season of expectant joyful waiting and anxious fretful painful waiting. I don’t really have a nice way of wrapping this post up with a nice bow, so I’ll just end it here.