A Bear With A Bike And A Baby

It started with Eleanor not feeling great for a few days straight and someone at her work suggested that she may be pregnant. We HAD been trying but it was waaaay too soon for her to be having any symptoms.

The thing is, it's crazy how long you need to wait until any kind of medical advice. We thought you'd need to book in with a doctor, get connected to a midwife, arrange a scan. Nope! None of that until 8 weeks. We thought we'd at least be given an 'official' pregnancy test rather than relying on weeing on a stick (4 times!).

So we wait. Wait through the symptoms of morning pregnancy sickness until we can book our midwife appointment.

We have booked an early (viability) scan as we really want to be sure early on, one, that the baby is as okay as it can be at this early stage, and two, to check that we aren't having more than one. My wife, being older, is 'at risk' of having twins (there's no sign of that in either of our families, but we'd at least like to know).

We've only told some very close Christian friends to support us in prayer, and Eleanor's direct family. We'll be telling my family after the 12 week scan which is when we're past the 'danger zone' as we have very little experience of pregnancy in my family, and we think for them, knowing we're pregnant, only to lose it could really hurt them as it's been a long road for us (a story for another post) and especially as we lost our Mum just over a year ago last year we want to be kind.

That's all for now. We're in The Netherlands (booked before we knew Eleanor was pregnant - sickness is playing a big role in the holiday, but salty crackers are helping.

So, today we get to see our little one for the first time. We decided to have an 8 week scan, just to make sure everything is okay and to see how many we're having as our risk of multiple births is quite high to due my wife's age.

I'm really excited to see our little one, but it's mixed with some apprehension - this is technically called a 'Viability Scan' which is part of what we want to see - we need to be sure that our little one is okay. We've known we've been pregnant for pretty much the whole 8 weeks as Eleanor had symptoms from almost 'Day 1' and Eleanor is still experiencing symptoms but we just want to check - we've had one friend who recently had a miscarrage and another with a 'missed' miscarrage so we want to be super-sure things are as they should be at this early stage.

I've heard at this stage they'll have a visible (and possibly audible) heartbeat and look like a Jelly Baby, I can't wait, but the event is very much tinged with the thought that something may not be okay, although there's no reason to believe there is a problem but we just want to be sure.

We're telling some close friends today Eleanor has a group of women she meets for praryer and support, and I'll be meeting a friend for a curry and a catch-up, these will be the first friends here that we've told. We have told some other friends and family, but these will be the first friends from our local church to find out. These will be our 'close support' network and a major part of our 'village'

I'll let you know how it goes and hopefully post a PICTURE.

So, we had our scan just over an hour ago and what we thought would be an 8 week embryo, was just 5 weeks. There's no way this is a miscalculation on our part because Eleanor is regular, and because she's had pregnancy symptoms for the whole 8 weeks.

We're devistated and having an hour long drive home was full of numbness, sighs and me beign on auto-pilot the whole way home. We have a midwife appointment tomorrow which was supposed to be our 'Booking' appointment where we register and 'Book In' with the midwife, talk about our medica histories and get into the system, Eleanor has called them so they're aware of our situation and can change the appointment as necessary.

It's one of those thigs that you never think is going to happen to you, we were so certain everything was okay, it all seemed fine, Eleanor was very much showing the symptoms of being pregnant, only to find that we haven't really been pregnany for about 3 weeks. i keep wondering, where were we 3 weeks ago? What did we do? How did this happen? What could we do to stop it from happening?

We'd told several people, mostly family but a few friends too, it's hard telling them the news, we were supposed to have some people over this evening (Eleanor's ladies group) which we've cancelled and told them - we have a big outpouring of love and support from all our friends. The plus side of telling clsoe friends and family that we're pregant was the joy on their faces when they found out, but the downside is remembering who we've told and then telling them the news, re-iterating it again and again for different groups.

I think I'm going to have to change the title of the blog now, but I think it's certainly going to have some posts about our journey from here. We'll try again but I don't know when. We're currently waiting for a call from our doctor to refer us to the appropraite hospital department to confirm everything and to do the harrowing task of removing the little beginning of life from Eleanor.

We'd bought a few cute things already, a squishmallow, a Miffy (from Amsterdam), all were in a box ready to bring out, but I fear now will just be reminders of what we have lost.

UPDATE - We are booked in for another scan in two weeks to see if the baby is just slow at growing or if we're behind in our dates. This is going to be the longest two weeks ever and I'm not looking forward to it. I just want to hibernate and stop existing for two weeks, wake up, and hear the inevitable news. So, we wait…

So, we may have some hope - after talking to some friends, we think there may be some reason to hope that the worst hasn't happened. Many people have said that a baby can quite possibly measure small at this stage, that people have had similar news from this specific group as they're private rather than NHS meaning anyone can operate the equiment without the specific and in-depth training required by the NHS, that ME/CFS can impact the speed of growth, and more importantly Eleanor is still very much experiencing symptoms and has show no sign of having lost the baby so we wait. And so we wait, wait, wait for just under one more week, it's been the longest two weeks ever full of ups and downs. Also, being the person I am, I look at how many people we know have lost a baby recently and the statistics are in our favour, but I also know that doen't really mean anything - you can make statistics say anything, but I'm clinging to the maths.

I'm feeling really hopeful though, so much so that I'm not even thinking that a miscarrage is a possibility which I really hope doesn't turn out to be a big mistake but that's what makes this kind of thing difficult as a Christian, where is the line between having faith and hope, looking at the evidence but then not wanting to set myself up for heartbreak if the worst happens because we do live in a broken world and the worst can happen, no matter your religious belief because simply having faith doesn't mean that everything goes your way.

Believing in Jesus and what He did on the cross doesn't mean you live in a world free from pain, it just means you have somewhere to go when things are rubbish, you have a counseller and a king who loves you and wants to walk through the pain with you, going to church also means you have a community of people around you who will love you and walk through it with you. THAT is what church is supposed to be, yes, a place to learn and to worship, but a community of people who will love you unconditionally be there for you; we've had friends continually checking in on us, praying for us, supporting us, people we wouldn't know or have in our lives if it weren't for church, we wouldn't know and we both know these friends will be with us whether the news us good or bad.

We're just waiting, waiting until Friday until we find out the actual news, the waiting is hard - Eleanor is still full of the symptoms of 'Morning Sickness' and if the baby is a slow grower, it potentially means more than two extra weeks of her feeling rubbish all the time but I think the joy of knowing everything is okay will overrule the thought of having two extra weeks of sickness. I just want to jump forward to Friday to get the answers, my head isn't in anything else right now.

We had our scan yeaterday and found out for certain that our little one didn't progress any futher than just over 5 weeks. The news we were dreadding came crashing into our hearts and became a reality.

I think over the days leading up to the scan, I had finally accepted the more likely answer that we had lost the baby so it wasn't a surprised. I watched the screen as the sonographer zoomed in, and measured and I see that there was hardly anything there so when she turned to us and uttered the words we were dredding to hear "I'm so sorry"

We're now booked in tomorrow to go through the agonising process of medically inducing a miscarrage - Eleanor has taken the first of two pills, then tomorrow morning we need to call the hospital and go in for the second pill to get things moving along.

I think we're both just dazed by the news. How does this fit in withour faith? We prayed, we thought we heard God say that he "doesn't drop a stitch" - did we mishear? Was He telling us what we needed to hear to get us through the two week wait?

So, Eleanor had the miscarrage at the hospital, I don't know what I can say about it to be honest. It was hard, I shut-down and burried myself in the laptop whilst Eleanor was going through it. I just didn't know what to do, I couldn't help, I couldn't take it on, I couldn't fix it, I froze, I burried myself into something I could control and fix and I'm ashamed of myself for that.

Eleanor was able to 'give birth' to a sack so we had something to see which in a way was nice because we could just imagine our little one in there, it gave us something to see and to think of as the child that never was.

Another failure in me was that I just wanted to leave as soon as possible - I just wanted to get away - It wasn't until Eleanor mentioned that she felt bad that we just left our child in a cardboard box in the hospital, and when I was on an extended ride that it really hit home. Wow! We just LEFT them there. I hadn't thought about it properly until then, and I know we couldn't take them with us or anything and they'd be treated with respect and then cremated and laid to rest at a local burrial grounds, just thinking that we left them there…. wow..

We are naming them 'Remy' after a tulip we found in the garden in Amsterdam (when we still thought we were pregnant) we liked the name and feel it's a nice name to use. Interestingly, we both see them as a girl - we envision a little girl with dark hair and a cheeky smile. Looking into the Theology we beleive in life beginning at conception, so they were a person, with a soul and will be there when we die. It's interesting to think that my mum will have met our child before we do.

Another difficult thing to come to terms with is that the whole time we were telling people (we did start telling people early, but it coincided with when we were seeing people), Remy wasn't alive any more. We were excitedly telling people and making plans, we even bought a squishmallow for them (something we do for our godchildren and something we wanted to do for them). All that has now been packed away; the books, the little bits we excitedly bought (we have the squishmallow in our room, watching over us as we imagine Remy is).

The thing is, my 'behaviour' or way of dealing with Eleanor miscarrying highlighted something Eleanor brought to our counsellor and we began investigating together. It's very possible that I'm Autistic and possibly have ADHD (the combination being called AuDHD) and it's a diagnosis I'm persuing through out doctor, this is also something I'm going to explore here and process in the hope that processing it will help me but also that it might help someone else going through the same thing.

This is my experience too, I'm not diagnosed but I'm beginning the process through my GP who has given me a referral to The Owl Centre. It wasn't until our counsellor mentioned it and ran me through some of the 'symptoms' of Autism and ADHD (AuDHD) and then me reading articles and peoples' real-life experiences that I've realised that it is most certainly something I have, even if I don't get a formal diagnosis.

The struggles mentioned in this post and the ones people responded with sound exactly like something I could have written. The forgetting, the not finishing, the constant mental exhaustion (and yes, I've had all the blood tests which have come back negative). You mention you're tired to people and get back the 'everyone is tired' - but I don't feel much better after a night's sleep and this is something many people with this find too. Our brain is always on, processing, over-processing and it's exhausting.

I hate that I never finish anything and it's not that I don't want to, I do, there's just some kind of mental block preventing me from doing it.

I often have trouble beginning tasks, not because I don't want to start but because things need to be right and ligned up before I can begin, or I need to be in the right head-space, sometimes it's something I really want to do so I want to savour it and do a good job which is now why I realise that I leave writing Bible Notes until the last minute. I love writing them and get a lot out of them but I want to be my best when I write them and I also don't want to get the over and done with too soon - I want to give people something of value from them but there will also often be other things going on in my brain that I want to get out before I can fully concentraite on the notes, even if that thing is silly and trivial - it's still a mountain in my way before my brain is clear to produce something of value because I know the nonsense will be there gnawing at my attention whilst I'm trying to focus.

I can also see that's something that affected my job too, I'd purposely put things off until I was ready, but through a combination of things, I was never ready so things didn't get done when and how they should - I wanted them to be perfect but I never reached the perfection I needed "never let perfection be the enemy of good" (Voltaire). I often let perfection get in the way of even starting a task, let alone finishing it and that's if something doesn't distract me from completing the task. It certainly feels like the odds are stacked against me.

I think that's why a career shift at this point is perfect, I'm realising my shortcomings and the things I'm not actually good at because my brain isn't actually physically built that way. A desk job isn't for me - sitting doing for 9 - 5 day-in day-out isn't where I'm going to thrive. The AuDHD brain craves a certain amount of routine, but also thrives in chaos and change. I'm hoping that the jobs I'm applying for are going to be compatible with that, we'll see.

I didn't think AuDHD would actually be the answer, I didn't want to feel like I was jumping on the bandwaggon of the hip thing to have but it genuinely fits my symptoms, the stories match my own and I feel like I've 'found my people'. Every meme, every post has something of me in and it's a sigh of releaf to know that I'm not alone, that there is an answer and a reason for it.

I'll keep you posted on how things go and I'll certainly keep posting these memes and discussions because it's helping me to process and I hope it helps whoever is reading this too.