A Downer Day

So yesterday was church. I got up at the usual time and went to my normal early Sunday meetings at 7 am. It was busy, and went well enough, but my family wasn't able to join me for sacrament meeting. My wife had a need to go to the sacrament meeting of the ward that meets before us, and choosing not to subject the children to two hours of sacrament meeting, she skipped ours and took the kids home for a few hours between the sacrament meeting she attended and the remainder of our own church meetings. Therefore, I ended up sitting alone during our own sacrament meeting while my family was at home. (Did you catch all that?) Normally, this would be a good thing as I can usually focus much better on the speakers when my kids aren't talking aloud and hopping on my lap. However, I just didn't really enjoy being alone yesterday.

So church proceeded as normal, and, again, it went well enough, but it just wasn't quite as nice as it usually is. Something just felt amiss. After church, I stayed around to help facilitate the bishop's interviews, as usual, and they, too, went well. They even ended early, so I was able to be home by 3:15 (remarkable!), just in time for my wife to leave to go back to church to lead choir practice. This put me on child watch. All things considered, it was a decent time -- my youngest was asleep and the older kids were well behaved. But again, things just felt off.

Then dinner came and went and our home teacher was supposed to come at 6. Before that, I got a call from the family I was to visit that night for home teaching and there was some drama going on there. After fighting that fire, I waited with my family, and waited, and our own home teacher never showed up. My own home teaching companion showed up at 7:15 (he was supposed to be there at 7) and so I left and went to my home teaching appointment.

Again, this appointment went well enough, but fifteen minutes into it, my wife called and told me that the prophet, President Gordon B. Hinckley, had just died a few hours before. It was sad news. We had a good discussion after that about succession in the presidency of the church, and we wrapped it up. It wasn't a great visit, but good enough.

So we then went to our second appointment and sat down to visit with that family. We had a good visit there, and shared a lesson about how to feel more comfortable at church. Since this particular family doesn't attend church, it was an honest and frank discussion, and I think they just might come next Sunday. I'll fall out of my chair if they do, but I've vowed to never give up on them.

Anyway, so after that, my home teaching companion took me home. My wife called when we were half-way home, and I decided not to answer my cell phone since I was going to be there in a minute or two, anyway. Well, I went into my house and my wife was sitting on the couch. She told me to be fast and to go get my home teaching companion, but he had already driven away. So, what was up?

My wife is pregnant. Well, she might be pregnant. We've kept it somewhat quiet, but chose to announce it a few weeks ago since we were confident the pregnancy was going to take (history was on our side!). She is over ten weeks along in her pregnancy, and for some reason she was bleeding last night. When she told me, my stomach sank. The pregnancy and birth of our previous three children went so very well that we often call them "textbook" pregnancies. This was something new. She had never bled during her pregnancies before, so immediately we concluded she might be miscarrying.

We called a friend from up the street to come down and to help me give her a blessing. He came over and we did so, but for some reason it just didn't feel very comforting. The balance of our evening found us trying and failing to distract ourselves from the fears in our minds. Going to bed, neither of us slept well, and I just kept having nightmares about her losing the baby.

This morning, her bleeding continued to get a little worse. She called the nurse at the doctor's office to ask some advice, and they put her off for two hours before calling her back. (They were busy, I guess, but still ... my wife might be losing our baby!!) She's been discharging not just blood but some other substances, too. It seems evident that she has indeed miscarried the baby.

We had an ultrasound already scheduled for tomorrow, and after finally talking with the nurse, who had consulted with the doctor, we've been instructed to keep her flat and hydrated, and to wait for tomorrow's appointment rather than going in to see the doctor today. Apparently, there wouldn't be anything they could do, anyway. Tomorrow's ultrasound will be either extremely wonderful or extremely horrible; it all depends on if we hear a heartbeat.

Now, I know that miscarriages are perfectly normal. They are nature's way of ensuring that only mostly healthy children are born. Nevertheless, we tried so very hard for this baby (it took us a year and a half to conceive) and we were so excited when everything finally "came together." It's a double-whammy since we were so confident that things were going well. My wife has never miscarried before, and never had any issues other than the usual morning sickness and dietary changes forced on her by the baby.

So now until at least tomorrow, we have a constant fear. It's looking quite likely she has miscarried. If so, we get the lovely opportunity to tell everybody what has happened. While we're sure that informing all our friends and family (some of whom will probably read this soon ...) will elicit plenty of sympathy, it is telling our children that will be the hardest if the baby is, indeed, lost.

We don't need any calls right now -- we handle emotional trauma together, as a married couple, and we do just fine. Nevertheless, we won't ever turn down some prayers on our behalf. Indeed, this past day has been a downer.