Annabeth Rose or Rhett Colton?

It's been a very roller-coaster 7 weeks.

Some of you know what's been going on but not everyone and I need to get our story out there, even if it doesn't help someone else it will help me. So consider this me selfishly informing you about what's happened.

Christmas was great, Chris and I snuggled by a fire all day and opened our presents and played games in front of the fire and literally spent the whole day in front of the fire. It was relaxing and going into it I was a bit sad that it was going to be our first Christmas away from family. Then I thought about it more and remembered when we first got engaged and started planning family holiday's I really wanted a Christmas just the two of us so I really enjoyed it this year.

The Sunday after Christmas I had a very busy day planned and was crazy tired and had been told by a few people that I should take a pregnancy test so I did just to appease them. I found out I was pregnant and was completely shocked.

We're Pregnant! Already in love with our little one!

I was so excited and it explained why I was so tired and not feeling so well. Mornings were great but about three hours after I woke up I ended up feeling sick and eating didn't make it better so I spent a lot of time on the couch not doing much. I called the Dr. that next Monday and they scheduled me to come in on the 9th to do my blood and urine test.

8 Weeks - Baby is the size of a Blueberry

We went home on January 2 to spend time with our family, celebrate Christmas, and tell them that we were pregnant. We had a family photo shoot with Chris' family and got to break the news to them at the end. The photo's are super cute and it was so much fun breaking the news to them and getting it on camera. We got to tell my family with Christmas presents which wasn't as exciting because they all apparently expected it but it was still great to tell them.

So after we got home I had my first appointment with the nurse and that next Monday they called and said my progesterone levels were low so they just wanted to supplement until week 12 when the placenta is fully formed and the pregnancy can maintain itself. I got some free stuff which was exciting and my mama and I talked and I got What to Expect When You're Expecting on my Kindle. My clothes were really starting to feel snug at what was about 8 weeks along so I went and got a totally cute red and black maternity skirt. My first ultrasound was scheduled for January 22 and I was super excited for it and crazy anxious to finally see our baby. I'd been feeling like crap for a long time so I couldn't help but want to see the baby to give a vision and reason to all of that.

9 Weeks - Baby is the size of a Kidney Bean

10 Weeks - Baby is the size of a Blackberry

When we finally got to our ultrasound and I was so excited. They finally got a good picture of the sac and saw what looked like a fetal pole but the baby was only measuring 5 weeks 6 days, the doctors had me at about 10 weeks but I was expecting around 7 weeks. They were concerned about the discrepancy in dates so they ordered another round of blood work to check and make sure everything was progressing. The doctor didn't call me back the next day like they said they would so I went and picked up my results from the lab myself and while they had increased they hadn't increased as much as I thought they should have so I had a really bad feeling but couldn't get a hold of the doctor until Monday. Once I did they called me in for another round of blood work to check how things were going. The next day they called me and told me that my blood work decreased and it was supposed to be increasing. The nurse told me about the options that laid before us and said we'd wait until our ultrasound in two days to know more. I had a total mental breakdown.

Thursday our ultrasound came around and it felt so somber. We had so many people praying for us and while I was really sad I knew that we really had no control over what was going to happen. I had a vision earlier in the week that we'd see the same fetal pole but with a heartbeat this week so I had been praying for that. I got so excited when we saw the baby again, and they detected a heartbeat. They measured it and I'm pretty sure that they measured the baby growing only 2 days over the last week and they even got the doctor to come in. He agreed that it was indeed a heartbeat but it was weak at only 100 bpm. He looked at us and said, "We just don't know, you've got a 50/50 chance at this time. We have no idea." I started feeling better and was really happy that we got to see the heartbeat.

My parents were planning on coming in town Friday night trying to beat to winter storm that was rolling through and staying through the week because Chris had to travel for training for his new job at work. At noon on Friday I started bleeding and was so grateful that my parents were headed into town. After 47 horrible hours I finally miscarried. We sent off our baby for testing to find out if there were any chromosomal abnormalities and if not then we could at least find out the sex of the baby. Unfortunately the test came back with too little fetal DNA so they couldn't tell us anything, not even the gender of our baby. We had names picked out so that once we found out we could name our forever lost baby instead of just calling it our little jalapeno. I know years ago when women lost their baby they had no idea and if this were that day and age I'd be OK with it but knowing that we had a chance to find out and still weren't able to know just makes it all that much harder.

Instantly after miscarrying I felt a lot better, clearly I had some major healing to do physically but I felt better than I had in 48 hours. Now that we're two weeks out I'm amazed at how much better I feel. I feel like myself again, albeit a grief stricken version where I'm not sure if I'm going to be happy or sad, but I'm not exhausted anymore, I'm not sick all the time and I feel a little guilty for finally feeling better and feeling like my normal self again. But the truth is for those six weeks I knew I was pregnant I was the best mom I could be for our child, I prayed for our baby daily. I kept thinking nothing in life really is as important as growing a human being. It changed my perspective on life and any challenges we now face as a married couple. I really stopped worrying about the future and thought about how grateful I was to have a baby. Looking back I was so much sicker and way more exhausted than I even thought I was. 

We've been going through a grieving process. I know to some it might not seem like much but to us we lost our baby, our first child and that hurts. I support the cause "Now I lay me down to sleep" and I think they do amazing work but looking at those photos I couldn't help but be upset. They got to hold their baby, they got to get pictures with their baby. I never got that chance, we saw it twice on the monitor and that's it. We didn't get to bury our child and say goodbye to it. February 1, 2015 will forever be the day we lost our baby.

My mom bought us this ornament so we could forever remember our little angel

We always said we would tell our family and friends we were pregnant really soon into our pregnancy so that if anything went wrong or we miscarried we would have their love, support and most of all prayers. I'm so thankful that we had people holding our hands through the muck. This is so hard to go through and talking about it makes me feel better, most of the time but sometimes it just makes me sad. I'm not going to ask why because that's unfruitful. It's just part of our story now and I'm thankful for our friends and family who have prayed really hard for us over the past couple weeks and we'll gladly take prayer for healing over the next who knows how long.
We have to wait 3-6 months before we're allowed to try again which throws us into spanning medical years and it would have fulfilled our deductible and had a majority of the pregnancy covered thanks to our amazing health insurance but that's not the case now. A really hard part for me lately has been people telling me that one day they'll tell me their story of infertility but honestly I don't feel infertile and science doesn't tell me I'm infertile. We lost our baby and 20% of all pregnancies end like this so if you're in that same group as me know that I love you and understand the pain you're going through!

So Annabeth Rose or Rhett Colton, we'll never know but you'll always be our little Jalapeno and we will know that you were loved even for the short time you existed in our lives.