7 Years. 6 pregnancies. No living children and a lifetime of heartache. We have spent our entire marriage either pregnant or preparing for a pregnancy. This means we didn't make plans for anything else, just in case we were. Sometimes I look back and feel sad that we haven't been anything other than the couple trying for a baby, or losing them. We've missed out on a lot and though my heart aches for the experiences we've missed in life, vacations we never took, I wouldn't change it. Because there isn't a vacation worth the vacation we'll be taking in Jan.
In May of this year we had a phone consultation with Dr. Haney in Chicago. I had it set up in April and patiently waited for that day. May 17th, I was so excited I forgot they were in a different time zone and called an hour early. I waited another hour and then with my husband on the 2nd line, we were connected to Dr. Haney. A conversation that I will never forget. Filled with nothing but positive things and the phrase I hold dear "Sabrina, you will be able to have as many babies as you want." You mean, I won't be broken anymore? How is this so? How is this surgery going to give me virtually 100% success rate? Well it has for many women and it can for me too. He told me he could tell me all day it will work for me, but he knows after loss that I don't believe doctors, and he said women with similar pasts, don't either. He told me to check "consumer reports" and I have, every single day since then. I am on a fb page and a yahoo group of women with tacs and there are well over 100 women on there. The ones with Haney Tacs (transabdominal cerclages) have had successful pregnancies. It is unexplainable to see those photos, of women just like me holding living, full term children and most have had no bedrest. If there is any bedrest, it usually has nothing to do with the cervix but other pregnancy stuff.
I imagine every day of my life what a happy birth will feel like. I only know how the births of our daughters were. Watching my husband fall to the ground screaming "no" is something I wish I could forget and erase from his mind. Having to watch them breathe until their bodies could no long fill their lungs with air. I wish no parent on Earth knew the feeling of letting their children go. After speaking to Dr. Haney, I have imagined the operating room, where Dr. Tryska will deliver our baby and where for the first time in our life, they will hand Derrick a screaming, full term baby with lungs filled with so much air. Where he won't know anything but happiness for that moment. I cry every single time I dream of this. 7 years of trying to get to that point. A transvaginal cerclage surgery, all the fear, the many er visits, waiting to see a second line on a test, the roller coaster of emotions and there was one time that I was crossing my fingers that there wasn't a 2nd line (Something a infertile women would never dream of.) Only because I was too scared it would end in another loss. I can't explain to you all the feelings and emotions we've been through.
All of that is coming to a close. It feels like another page is being turned. I have waited 6 months to start the process of getting the tac. And we are so close. I was told I'd have a Jan surgery date and then whatever life brings us, we will handle it one day at a time. So for all the vacations we missed out on taking in case I was pregnant, or because I had to do bedrest. None of them will compare to the one we are taking to Chicago. Where I plan on ice skating with my husband in Millennium park and enjoying every second we have together. I will be nervous to go under and nervous to be operated on and most of all, nervous for the future but I will enjoy Chicago with my husband and dream of the future with a happy birth and a full term baby. Never will I forget the 2 children we brought into this world. The 2 that will be missing from every family photo, every family function, every moment of our lives and who Derrick will never walk down the aisle. But I hope to be that success story that helps another woman who feels like I do, who feels like she's the medical mystery, feels broken and can't give her husband a child or her parents living grandchildren. I want her to read my story and know that she has a chance. And that someday she'll hear those cries, and her baby will be crying for her. Not her staying up at night, crying for her babies.
I'm trying to hold on to each positive thing in my mind, each success story I've read and all the emails from Dr. Haney telling me this will work. I am thankful to that man for repeatedly telling me this will happen, a baby will come home with us. For answering emails even though he's extremely busy. And most importantly, for performing a surgery that gives thousands of women the opportunity to bring home a baby.
Right now, I have waited 169 days, only 11 more to go and I can send my surgery forms in, receive a date that I'll be getting my tac and my next countdown begins. I hope with every thing in my body that this is it for us. I fear of what may happen if we endure another loss, but I dream of a future where for once a birth is a happy thing and not a huge tragedy. For now, I am living in the moment of time over which I have any control: now.
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