THURSDAY, MARCH 7TH
After absorbing all the news from the day before, Thursday morning felt exhausting before it had even really began. Waves of anxiety and uncertainty kept hitting us and many tears were continually shed. At different times we both panicked and feared that we weren't going to be able to handle what lay ahead. The night before, I stayed up to look at adoption families on various sites. I read several stories of seemingly amazing people and wondered to myself if this was a path I'd truly consider. I was left with more questions than answers. That morning, we also learned via a phone call that abortion was not a viable choice as the baby had developed too much for anyone to consider it safe to proceed forward. We accepted that information, truthfully even before this call came through, as a sign that this life was meant to be.
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Another early appointment had us trekking across the city to my family doctor to help navigate what to do next. The walk in clinic doctor was nice but its not the same personal experience as discussing with the doctor who has watched me grow up. She's one of the best and has always made me feel like she understood me and never medically judged me.
My first words to her were "So, we found out that...we're expecting"
"Oh, congrats! That's exciting!!!"
"Except we weren't expecting to be expecting because you put in an IUD in me! So we're here to figure out what to do next."
We then explained to her the series of events from earlier this week, along with my general health story of the last few months. We dropped the news on her that we were 22 weeks as of yesterday and didn't know what this meant for my health and for the baby's health. She too was surprised at the quick developments and sought to capture as many of the details as I could relay to her. Her first concern was for me and my well being. She then asked if we had contemplated what we wanted to do next, being completely open and willing to support whatever we wanted. She went through our options and offered to give us names and phone numbers whichever path we decided.
She immediately went to call up the imaging lab to get the results so we could discuss further. The primary issue was figuring out if the IUD was sitting in the correct place or if it went missing altogether, and what its effects meant for the growing baby. Since I had opted for a hormone IUD and there was a possibility of keeping it in until birth, she explained that the continual release of the hormone would mean different things depending on the gender.
She then asked if we wanted to know what the gender was and we explained that we'd prefer for it to be written down to reveal at a later time and her staff obliged by sealing the results in the envelope. But she did comfort us in letting us know that baby appeared to be as healthy as can be expected. She examined my body to see if she could feel for the IUD and it too, seemed to be fine, all things considered but she did not want to remove it without consulting the OBGYN so it was left in place. We bombarded her with as many questions as we could think of, everything that had built up earlier this week and we were met with her kind and comforting words. No question seemed too dumb or silly and she never made us feel like our time was up. She advised that she would report my case to the IUD manufacturer as a failed experience. Our next steps included a whole array of bloodwork to check that I was internally doing well and referring us to an OBGYN close to home whom she would fill in on the whole story.
David and I left that office feeling much more comforted and calm. We decided to go to lunch right after and discuss things over one more time and then agreed to give all the baby discussion a rest until Friday so that we could give ourselves time and space to be normal people again.