Life Update

So it has been almost 9 weeks since I delivered Emily.  It seems like a lifetime ago that we were in the hospital. 

Phil and I have been doing well.  He stayed home from work the first week and I stayed home for two weeks.  I only worked part time for my first week back and then went back to my normal schedule for the most part after that. 

Thank you soooooooooo much for all the messages, cards, flowers, gifts, visits, care packages, emails, phone calls, etc.  We were seriously getting cards for a couple of weeks.  I’ve never gotten so many cards in my life.  All the love and support truly did give us strength.  Every message and card put a smile on my face and made that day just a little bit easier. 

We have been keeping busy by basically planning something for every weekend all summer long.  We are evening planning a 10 day trip to Italy in September!  We will be in Rome for 4 nights and Cinque Terre for 4 nights.  If you've never heard of Cinque Terre here is a link to a blog about it.  Also click here to see some amazing pictures of it.  Basically they are 5 small towns on the Mediterranean coast that are connected by train and hiking trails.  I'm so excited about this trip that I couldn't sleep last night.

Most people have been asking me about what the doctor said so here is what we know.  Emily died due to a blood clot in the placenta.  The autopsy showed that there was NOTHING wrong with her.  She was as we suspected, perfect.  We found out through my blood work that I have a double copy of a gene that may or may not make me more susceptible to blood clots while pregnant.  They aren’t sure if there is a correlation between this gene mutation and blood clotting.  The research is very contradictory.  We know that there is a chance with every pregnancy that this could happen again.  To help reduce this chance I am supposed to take a baby asprin every day once I find out I’m pregnant again.  I’m also supposed to increase my folic acid intake.  They will monitor me very closely throughout all subsequent pregnancies.  Lastly, they will induce me early (around 36 weeks) so the baby doesn’t have to be in there any longer then it has to.  Other than that we can’t do anything.    

What we need now are more prayers.  Prayers that we can get pregnant again, prayers that the pregnancy lasts, and prayers that we get to bring a happy healthy baby home.  We know that we will get pregnant again in God’s time.  Hopefully his timeline aligns with ours ;)  But seriously I am working really hard to have faith in his plan and know that I will get pregnant again when he thinks we are ready emotionally.

Thank you so much for all the prayers.  Hopefully I will be able to write again soon with happy news.

Love,

Megan

Ps.  For all you science nerds out there the gene mutation is called Methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR).  I am homozygous (2 copies) for the C677T mutation.  Thank you to my two favorite science nerds Dr. Erika Bechtold and soon to be Dr. Terrell Brotherton and for using their science nerd powers to explain to me in Megan terms what exactly all the science mumbo jumbo means.  Man I wish I was a science nerd too.