Fri the 13th...the day my heart was absolutely broken.

I officially hate Friday the 13th.  Today was one of the worse days of my lives.

The past week or so I've just felt off.  Like my hormones were messing with me.  I started my period on the 5th so I chalked it up to pms.  It lasted 4 days and I just felt weird still.  Wed and Thurs my sense of smell was off the charts.  Pregnancy hadn't really entered my mind because I thought it was impossible.  Yesterday morning I really felt like I needed to take a test.  So I did and lo and behold there was a pink line.  Needless to say I was in complete shock.  I'm on birth control which I take at the same time every day.  I sat the test on my bar and every time I walked by I would glance and every time there was still a line.  I even called my friend over just to make sure I wasn't seeing things.  She saw it too.  Brandon is out of town working and I knew there was no way I could wait til he got home to tell him, so we packed up to get Miss E a "big sister" shirt.  I took this picture with the caption "Yep" and sent it to him:

 

Needless to say it didn't take him very long to call me!  I will admit that I was just in complete shock.  There was never a "oh crap not now" thought, it was just shock.  When I woke up this morning, I was feeling at peace.  I was actually kinda excited at the thought of another doodle!  I called the dr and they were able to get me in.  I get there and the nurse did the standard test.  It was + but very faint.  She gave me a due date of 1.12.12.  Which is Miss E's 2nd birthday.  I thought that was a good sign.  I get back to the room and the dr comes in.  He gets the doppler out and after a few minutes I hear the dreaded words "can't find a heartbeat".  This is devastating.  But in the back of my head I'm thinking, well maybe I'm just not far enough along yet to hear the heartbeat.  He sends me across the hall for an ultrasound.  She comes in and there is nothing there.  Nothing.  The dr comes back in and tells me that it's a chemical pregnancy, which means the sperm fertilized the egg, but never implanted.  You still get all the symptoms and a + test.  The period I thought I had was actually my body flushing my system.  He told me to test again on Monday and it should be negative.  If it's not then I have to go back to get my HCG levels checked.  

This was a lot to take in before noon.  

I had to call Brandon and tell him over the phone.  He's still out of town and won't be back until Monday at the earliest.  My friend surprised me with a visit after I told her what happened and she brought me some beautiful white roses.  That really made my day.  I can't even begin to explain what that meant to me.  

This was all within a 24 hour time period. It's just so much to take in all at once.  I told Brandon that I guess I needed to return Miss E's shirt(it's actually a pj set) and he said not too, to put it up for when we would need it.  I'm secretly really glad I don't have to return it.  

I'm dreading testing again and seeing a negative.  Brandon said that I could wait until Tues so he could look at it for me so I wouldn't have to see it.  It really sucks having the symptoms knowing there's no baby there.  The dr told me I would have them until my HCG and progesterone levels were back to normal.

Since Miss E's been asleep, I've had time to think and that's a dangerous thing.  I realized that I was miscarrying on Mother's Day and didn't even know it. This whole experience sucks.  I don't see a silver lining, a bright side.  I don't know why God chose to let me know and then take it away 24 hours later.  If I hadn't tested or if I would have waited to test, it would have been negative and I would have never known.  

I would have never known.

I used to have a handle on life, but then it broke.

It occurred to me today that I haven't blogged in awhile.  I've been a whirlwind of emotion lately and this is the first time that I've had silence to sit and gather my thoughts.

So good ol' Facebook stalking has worked it's magic again.  First I found my 3 foster sisters, then I found my 4 old best friends from Thomasville (6th grade), now the sperm donor's (dad) ex-girlfriend pops back into my life.  As I've said in previous posts, my bio father is not someone that I ever talk about.  Ever.  I lived with him for a short while when I was 8 or 9 and I don't remember hardly anything, but of course the bad things that still to this day give me nightmares and keep me awake.  He haunts my memory and I hate that after all this time he still has control over me.  But the good that I remember was his girlfriend at the time.  Her name was Linda and I took to her immediately.  She would take me shopping, let me listen to what I wanted to on the radio, I would talk to her about any and everything and she would always listen.  She would let me sleep with her when I couldn't sleep, she was just an amazing person.  When I got taken away from Bob(sperm donor), I lost contact with her along with my brother and sister.  I've tried numerous times to find them on Facebook with absolutely no luck.  So I was quite surprised when I awoke to a message from Linda. She told me that she and Bob broke up almost 20 years ago and that my brother was serving time in prison last she heard(big freaking surprise) and she has no idea about my sister. She said that the last she heard Bob had moved on to have more children.  I already have 5 siblings and now I may have more that I don't even know at all.  This weighs really heavily on my heart. She wants to meet up with me and have dinner so we can catch up.  She said that my aunt and uncle(Joe and Cindy) always said that I would find my way back to them.  I'm not sure how I feel about this.  I love knowing where Linda is and the chance to meet and catch up with her, but at the same time, I'm terrified of the emotion and what memories may come back to me.  I've been trying for so long to bury my past and forget the pain.  Joe and Cindy never did anything to me and I hold nothing against them, but they are related to him and I'm just not sure I can handle it.  But it would be nice to finally have some biological family in the picture.  The one thing I know for sure is that I cannot see him.  I'm just not strong enough.

On another note, the moving plans are still going.  We finally found a bank to do the kind of loan we want, so now we have to get pre-approved for a mortgage and things will finally get rolling=)  Had to throw something good in there!

My sister in law graduated college this past Saturday.  I had to drop Miss E off over at my friends house at 7:45 and of course Brandon had gotten called out at 4am so I was on my own.  When I got to my friends house I slammed my thumb in my car door.  Luckily they had an ice pack and pain meds to get me through the morning (thank God!)  It was NOT my morning, I made it there right at 9, but luckily she was in the last group so I didn't miss anything.  When Brandon and I started dating, his sister was in middle school, so I feel like I've gotten to see her grow up and I feel like she is my sister too.  I'm so proud of her and I'm so glad that I got to see her graduate.  She is a genuinely good person with a good heart and those people are far too few.  After the ceremony was over I had to go pick up Miss E.  When I got there she was sleeping, she took a 3 hour nap!  This kid never sleeps that long.  So I stayed there and waited for her to get up.  Poor thumb is still throbbing.  Brandon calls and says he's home.  By the time she gets up and we get on the road, Brandon calls back and says that he got called out again.  Meaning that he had to miss the graduation party that night.  We got home in time to eat a late lunch and play and then get ready for the party.  Miss E had so much fun, she was a little social butterfly, but at 9 it was time to go to get her in bed.  Brandon made it home at about 1 am, I was fast asleep thanks to percocet=)

Sunday was Mother's Day.  By this time I was ready to saw my thumb off myself bc of the pain. Anyway, I've learned to not have expectations on holidays and birthdays because disappointment sucks.  Not that Brandon doesn't have good intentions (sometimes), he just doesn't get it.  I told him 2 months ago that I wanted Chelsea Handler tickets and my canvas picture mounted.  Easy enough right?  So that morning, I got up with Miss E while he slept in 2 hours.  Right before her nap, he gives me my present.  He got me a camcorder.  I almost laughed.  It's a great gift and something that I really wanted so I wasn't upset or anything, it was just really funny that I told him exactly what to get and I wound up with a camcorder lol!  Not complaining though because I really do love it.  The day was just like any other day, nothing special and that kinda sucked.  I wish I could have woken up to breakfast in bed (or breakfast period) and flowers and a cute little homemade card that he had Miss E make me.  But I digress.  Like I said, poor guy just doesn't get it.  I did tell him that on Father's day that I was sleeping in.


And to end on a positive note, Miss E's adhesion opened up!  After just a few days of using the cream there was a huge difference.  Sunday was the 2 week mark and it was completely open and a huge prayer answered!  Not to say that it won't close again, but we will cross that bridge if/when we get there.  Miss E is seriously the best thing ever.  She constantly makes me smile and she is just amazing.  She's so smart and doing new things everyday, luckily I have my handy camcorder to record the memories=)

Bit of a rocky start, but a great ending=)

We've had a rough week with Miss E.  Poor baby has been running a fever since Sunday so I took her to the Dr on Thursday.  He checks her out and says that everything looks good, no rash, throat is good, ears are good, so he wants to get a urine sample to check for a UTI or bladder infection.  I immediately ask how he plans on doing so and he says that they have to do a catheter.  My heart just sank.  So the nurses come in and we lay her down and the nurse can't get the catheter in.  She tries about 7 times before the 2nd nurse took over and tried.  She tried and tried and finally I told them to stop, if it wasn't going in to stop tormenting my child.  I mean she is screaming to the point that she is choking and purple.  The nurse says that where the catheter is supposed to go in is fused shut so the dr will have to come look at it.  She then attaches a bag to Miss E to try to catch urine that way.  Well the nurses come back in about 30 minutes later to check and sure enough, she had peed but the nurse didn't attach the bag right so it caught a drop at most.  When she took the bag off, it left marks on my poor baby and she was just in so much pain.  The nurses told me that the stuff they had to swab her with for the catheter would make it burned when she peed, so that was just one more thing to add to the pile.  So the dr finally comes back in and tells us they were able to test her urine from the drop and it came back negative.  So the fever could be a viral thing or Roseola and the rash from that won't appear until the fever is gone.  So waiting game on that.  He then proceeds to check her and poor baby is already screaming bc of what she went through with the nurses.  He tells me that she is closed where she is supposed to be open so we have to use a cream for 2 weeks and if she doesn't open on her own then she has to have surgery.  So we are praying that the cream works bc I do not want my daughter to have surgery, esp that kind of surgery.  So after being there for 2.5 hours and Miss E is just so exhausted (the appt was scheduled during nap time so she didn't get her normal nap) and traumatized, we finally head home.  We took her out to dinner last night and took her to Target so she could pick out a new toy and she loved that.

Today we took her to the zoo.  But before I go into that, I just have to tell this.  This morning I had Miss E on my lap and I was feeling her fore head checking for a fever when I jokingly told her to go get her Tylenol.  Well she hopped off of my lap and walked into the bedroom.  I looked and Brandon and he looked at me and said "she's actually looking on your nightstand'!  Well a few seconds later she walked out holding her Tylenol and handed it to me!  We couldn't believe it!   She will bring us her toys or shoes if we ask, but this just blew our minds.  We are raising a little genius=)  Anyway, she had a blast at the zoo, she pointed to all the animals and smiled at them.  She did so good.  She loved the petting zoo, I got a great video of her.  I wish I could find my adapter so I could share some pictures.  So she's hopefully forgotten all about the events of yesterday.  We hope to be able to take her to an Easter Egg Hunt in the morning and then of course Easter is Sunday and she's got all kinds of goodies=)  It's going to be like Christmas all over again, we may have went just a bit overboard, but she is such a great kid and she really deserves it.  

Letting Go

This past week has been mostly spent cleaning out and organizing our office turned catch all room.  Yesterday as I was going through a box that has been on the top shelf tucked in the back of the closet and I found my old diaries from middle school(when I first moved up to Mableton).  There were 3 different diaries and in the very bottom of the box was a letter from my birth mom.  I thought that I had put all of those up a long time ago, but this one didn't get put up with the rest.  I of course opened it and read it. There was one letter to me and one letter to Tyler.  It was dated Aug 18th 2007.  In the letter she had told me to give Ray and Elaine a chance (this was before the thought of adoption) and that they were really good people.  I put the letters back in the envelope and started reading the diaries.  Almost every page was the same thoughts.  Besides the normal rantings and gushings of a 12 year old, it was "why doesn't she like me?"  "She's never going to love me like she loves Levi" and "please let her be in a good mood today".  It brought me back to that house and the tension and the nights spent crying myself to sleep.  I hated that feeling.  As I opened up the last diary that my Gram gave me, I saw what she had written on the first page:

Notice the date on it.  Aug 18, 1997.  She told me to let go of the past.  So that's exactly what I did yesterday.  I tore that page out and threw all 3 diaries away.  I tore the pages up in little pieces and they all went to the trash.  And it felt really good.  It's like I'm throwing away all those bad memories and all the hurt and insecurities with them.  Goodbye past, I don't need your burden anymore.

It's Official!

The Hollis' are moving!  Brandon has been out of town and when he called last night we were talking about it and he asked what I was thinking.  I told him that I was really leaning towards yes and he said that he was too.  So the call has been made and hopefully we will start the process next week on his stress days.  I haven't announced it on FB yet, I probably won't for awhile, but I'm so excited.  I feel like this is the right decision for us.  I knew I was leaning towards moving when I finally got my butt in the office and started cleaning it out.  Anyone who knows us knows that the office is the door that stays closed all the time.  Partially because you couldn't open the door because of all the stuff in there.  That was where I threw everything when it had no other place.  I knew when I finally broke down and cleaned the hall closet out that the office was next.  Miss E and I have been back there a couple of nights now and we have made huge progress. I'm very excited about it, if you can't tell=)  Anyway, back to the topic.  I'm nervous about the time frame of the rebuilding and moving because of Brandon's work schedule.  Here lately they have been gone more than they have been home.  I can only do so much because 1) I have Miss E and 2) He has the truck and I have a car.  I can pack and do all that stuff. Heck I could have this whole upstairs packed and ready to go in a day if Miss E had a sitter.  Anyone who knows me knows that that is not an exaggeration.  Oh well, God lead us to make the decision so I have faith that He will make it possible too.

Decisions decisions...

I posted awhile back about the possibility of moving.  Well Brandon's dad called last night and said that if we want that house then it is ours.  I've prayed about it since it became a thought a few months ago and went with the mentality that if it's meant to be then then Darryl(Brandon's dad) will call and say that Debbie(house owner) called and said we can have it for x amount.  If said amount was what we were thinking then we would do it.  So now Darryl is awaiting our decision.  I listed all the pro's and con's in the last post so I won't do that again.  But my heart is torn.  I don't know what to do. 

Old Meagan is not here anymore...and she's not coming back=)

This is my 2nd night of no husband and no baby.  It wasn't planned, just kind of happened that way.  As I'm laying here in my bed I realize that I just don't know what to do with myself.  I've never been away from Miss E this long(if I had it my way she would be here right now).  I'm used to Brandon being gone because of his job, but I always have Miss E.  I'm not used to being completely alone anymore.  Last night I couldn't fall asleep until 3 am and then I was up at 8 bc I had to take the dogs to the groomers.  When I got home to my empty house with no husband, kid or dogs, you can really imagine how I felt.  

Is it possible that in becoming a wife and a mother (and a sahm at that) that I've lost Meagan along the way somewhere?  I'm most certainly not the same person I was before becoming a mother, but I think they were all good changes.  Instead of going out and drinking and staying out all night, I'm researching vaccinations, benefits of ERF, and snuggling with my daughter.  I'm quite content with staying home on a Friday night and playing with Miss E and spending time with my husband.  I don't feel the need to go out and drink anymore.  Not to say there aren't times when I've felt like I could use a good drink, but I just have no interest in it anymore.  But most people would give anything or 2 nights of "freedom" and here I am on a Saturday night laying in bed wishing that my baby was asleep beside me.  I do okay with her spending one night away, but this is the first time that she has spent two nights away and I'm beside myself.  I had a great day, I got to have lunch with my best friend Erin and then I got to come home for a couple of hours and do absolutely nothing and then I had dinner with my other best friend Misty and her son Ayden.  I love getting to sit down with just me and her and talk, we seriously talk for hours and it's just great.  She's one of those people that I really enjoy being around and don't have to fake enjoy being around.  Those kind of people are few and far in between so it was truly a treat to get to do that with 2(3 including Mr. Ayden) of my favorite people today.  


So I guess that I haven't lost myself at all, I've just become a different  Meagan and that's okay with me.  I never dreamed that one little 26 lb person could have such a hold of my heart but man does she.  She controls every thought and action.  And I wouldn't have it any other way.