2002 Happenings

This is our T family picture from New Year's Day 2002. L (in the purple) is only days away from giving birth to D. My family came in town and was hopeful to see the baby before they had to turn around and go back to CA. D was born the day they had to leave, so they got to see her.


I am holding Miciah, a few months old. And Grandma is holding X, a year old. X was a happy, happy kid (he's probably laughing in this picture). SO cute.


10 May 2002: This is our little family at L's apartment in SLC. L had just graduated from U of U, so we went up to participate in that. Shortly after that, L & J moved to CA.

24 June 2002: Miciah spent a lot of time in her first 2 years being watched by family members. I was working, Rob was working and going to school. This picture is from an afternoon at the B's house in Orem. They loved this picture and set it as their desktop for months, cause it made them laugh. Miciah had a funny look on her face for lots of her early pictures.


2 July 2002: This is one of my favorite pictures of Rob ever. It's not a great picture, for sure, but he's smiling that killer smile and looking hot.

3 July 2002: I love this picture of Miciah. She's sitting inside her bouncer and she's just been crying. But still cute!

3 July 2002: What a great picture of Miciah! That smile is a Rob smile. I adore this picture.

3 July 2002: Me, my mom, Miciah, and K right before he left to go into the MTC. Notice Miciah is sucking on her binky upside down, just like I did. (We tried to get Elijah to take it upside down, too, when he was little, but he wouldn't do it.) She had a binky until about 14-months-old or so. She kept losing her binkies and we couldn't keep up with it. She'd lose 5 binkies a week. Finally we couldn't find them and I refused to go buy another set. She screamed for a day and then she was over it. Was easier than I thought. (And then there was Elijah,...)

16 October 2002: Miciah on her 1st Birthday, opening gifts. We have other pictures, but they weren't digital. ... Maybe someday I'll scan them in and post them on here.

Christmas Day 2002: My mommy gave me fuzzy pajamas with feet! I love them! They keep you ridiculously warm, though.

Christmas Day 2002: Rob in the back, and me with my some of my siblings on the couch. We were at my parents house in CA for Christmas.

2002 was a happy year for us, full of love and stress! At the start of the year both of us were working part-time jobs and going to school full-time. We would swap Miciah off between classes and find babysitters for her at night so we could both go to work. We would then see each other after I got back from work, some time after 10 p.m.! After a semester of that not working, I stopped going to school so that we could have money to eat and I would be stress-free enough to survive. I figured out that, for me, I could do 2 of the 3 things, but not all 3. I could be a mom and go to school. Or I could go to school and to work. Or I could be a mom and go to work. But I couldn't do all 3 at the same time. We made a choice.

And things were better. I worked extra hours over the summer. Best of all, I got to work with my brother, C, and that was a blast. I think people at work thought C and I were married instead of siblings. You'd think that the different last names would have tipped them off. :) But often C was our babysitter for Miciah and we'd swap off at work. Or I'd bring Miciah in to visit him or whatever. C and Miciah were inseparable.

My mom came in town in July to see K off at the MTC. It's always nice to see my sweet mother, and it was fun to connect with K before he left for 2 years.

We had a great time being with family in Utah. The family outing for 2002, if I'm remembering right, was a camping trip to a lake a few hours away. There was 1 cabin and an RV or 2, but Rob and I and Miciah were in a tent. It was fun! And we stayed up late with the family singing songs around the fire and listening to Rob do his Gay French Bear routine.

In October Miciah turned 1. Miciah was a difficult baby (colicky for the first few months--seemed like eternity), and that wasn't changing as she got older. She has always had a definite opinion about things!

Miciah was a tiger for Halloween, in an outfit that my mom made matching for all 3 grandkids at the time. So cute. All 3 of my kids have been tigers for a Halloween, and Teancom still uses it as pajamas (though he's almost out of it, sadly). We'll retire the outfit and keep it for our grandkids.

We got pregnant for time #2 in the fall. October/November-ish. The pregnancy was AWFUL and I was sick a lot. I had absolutely no energy and I was going home from work early more often than I was staying to finish my shift. I was talking to Rob about seriously cutting back my hours for 2003, cause the pregnancy was just not nice to me.

I don't remember where we spent Thanksgiving. We probably bounced around from family get-together to family get-together. Turns out that long ago the Thackers and D's had done their get-together every other year to accommodate V & C when they lived close. Somewhere along the line, it had gotten mixed up and so every other year we had too many get-togethers to attend, with the middle years finding us begging to attend someone's (ANYONE's) get-together. :)

Christmas was spent in California at my parent's house. I think all the siblings were there except K, who was on his mission by then.

Some time during the CA trip, I started feeling much better pregnancy-wise. I figured it was just getting to be that time of the pregnancy. In November, I had spotted once, just a little, which was a little scary. When we went into the doctor the next time (early Dec.), he did an ultrasound and the baby was fine. The ultrasound pushed the due date back almost an entire week, and I was only 8 weeks along!

Anyways, when I went in for my next doctor's appointment at the end of December, the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat when listening to my tummy. I told him I'd been feeling better and he said, "That's not good." Then he went to do an ultrasound to see, and there was nothing in there. No baby at all.

So I spent the end of 2002/start of 2003 miscarrying pregnancy #2. This is a long story that I won't expound upon here (maybe in a post of it's own that you can choose to not read if you don't want to). Basically, I took a drug that is intended for something else, but which causes miscarriages as a side effect. Since I hadn't had a spontaneous miscarriage (only 20% of miscarriages aren't spontaneous), this was meant to throw me into "labor" to expel all the stuff. Round 1 cause contractions, but nothing major. I went back to get Round 2 and it was awful. I was very ill and in a ton of pain. I would have preferred someone shoot me. Seriously. I ended up at the hospital anyways to have a D&C to finish the job. Near-immediately after surgery I felt SO MUCH better. I rested for a day or two and then I was fine.

The miscarriage wasn't a sad thing, though. I was not and still am not sad about it. That pregnancy made me really really sick and I was happy to be well again. I didn't feel like I was losing a child. I have sympathies for those who have miscarried and it's been tough for them. My experience helped me comfort a friend who miscarried about a year later. It was her first pregnancy and they were so excited. My heart went out to her and her husband.

If that pregnancy had been carried to term, and it had been a girl (we felt it was a girl), her name would have been Claire with some middle initial A and we'd call her CAT. Fun, huh? But I guess it all turned out well enough, because M&K have had a baby girl since and her name is Clara.

(written 23 July 2008)

Miscarriage Details (like you wanted them, ha)

I've often thought I should write this down. Not just so I have a record of it, but so that other people might benefit from it. Benefit how, I don't know. ... If you would rather not hear some not-too-pleasant details, then simply don't read this post. It's that easy.

We had told everyone we knew that I was pregnant at just about THE moment I found out. There were a few reasons for this:
1 - We were excited!
2 - Nothing had gone wrong with pregnancy #1. I just assumed that's how pregnancy #2 would go, too.
3- I was sick. A lot. The pregnancy was horrible and I had to go home from work early a lot, etc., etc. It would have been tough to find another reason for that.

In late November I spotted just a touch. It was a one-time incident, but still a little scary. I was almost 8 weeks pregnant, and anything can happen during that time. I had a doctor's appointment about a week later, so we mentioned it to him when we went in (Rob went to almost every single appointment with me, for all 3 pregnancies. What a guy!). He decided to do an ultrasound and the baby was fine. The due date was pushed back a little because the baby was smaller than expected, but there was a heartbeat and movement and all that.

We went to CA for Christmas and sometime on that trip I started feeling much better. I could eat breakfast. I was happier. I wasn't feeling near so sick. I figured I was just starting to feel better as a new phase of pregnancy. I was almost 12 weeks along. I was grateful to be feeling better.

We went in for our 12 week visit when we got back to Utah, New Years Day 2003. The doctor couldn't find the heartbeat. I told him I'd been feeling better lately and he said, "That's not good." We went to do an utrasound again and the baby was gone. Just gone.

I was not sad about this. I think Rob is still bugged that I wasn't in the slightest sad. I was saying things like, "I don't have to be sick any more!", and "I can take Advil any time I want." Rob thought this was very callous of me, and maybe it was. But the pregnancy had been awful, and the baby wasn't a baby to me yet. It was too early-on in the pregnancy still. It was only an agent making me terribly sick. I was happy to have that agent gone. I never did cry. It just wasn't sad to me.

So the doctor said I had 3 options. I hadn't spontaneously miscarried the fetus (80% of miscarriages are spontaneous), and who knew when my body would decide to expel the waste from my body. He said it might take up to a month. I thought that was a LOUSY option. Sit around waiting for my body to throw out a dead fetus? No thank you. Option #2 was to schedule a D&C. Quick operation, but not cheap (not too expensive either, but we were dirt poor). Option #3 was to take a drug that would cause me to miscarry. It was something to treat ulcers or something like that, but a side effect was that it causes miscarriages. Poor women who had to figure that one out initially.

We choose to take the drug. It was inexpensive, and we figured if it didn't work, we could always do a D&C anyways. What would we have lost? A few dollars?

Round 1 of the drug caused uncomfortable cramping, but nothing else happened. I kept waiting for it, but nothing. By the next morning it obviously hadn't worked and we went in to the doctor again. He said we could try Round 2 of the drug or we could schedule that D&C. So Round 2 it was.

Wow. Pain. ... If the miscarriage was any indication of how actual labor would be, no thank you (all 3 of my kids are C-section, and the miscarriage is the only experience I have with anything close to labor).

I think the pain didn't really start until mid-day or so (I think this because I wrote a journal entry on that day. I don't start the entry with the miscarriage news (the first paragraph talks about New Year's Resolutions that I dislike), and I don't give any of the fun details I'm about to share. I wouldn't have written the entry AFTER the events of the day, I would have been too tired). I took the pill in the morning and the whole thing was over by that evening, but the time from mid-day on, ... Wow.

Some of the details of those horrific hours:
I was puking and then dry heaving. I had severe diarreah. I was bleeding so fast that it just wasn't worth it to get off the toilet. I would sit on the toilet and puke into the bath tub. I couldn't find any position that was comfortable. Not standing or sitting or laying down. I tried to take a bath to relax my body. Nope. Nothing. I was absolutely exhausted. My body was drained.

I asked Rob repeatedly to kill me to put me out of my pain. It was so painful. Probably the second most painful experience of my life (second only to trying to brave the pain instead of taking the drugs the day of my first C-section. That was more intense, but lasted less time). I was losing my mind. Mentally I was gone.

I finally looked at Rob and told him I couldn't do it any more. He gave me a Priesthood blessing and it said that I would be able to pass the stuff quickly, or we would know quickly that I needed to go to the hospital. Pretty soon after that my body was hurting so badly and I felt so weak that we decided that I needed to go into the hospital. Rob called the doctor and told him to meet us there (the doctor gave Rob a condescending tone and told him, "I told you it'd be painful."). C was already at the house to help with Miciah, so he stayed with her while we went (C is the only person except Rob who saw me like that. C saw more than he ever wanted to, but he was SO supportive). On the way to the hospital I was starting to space it. I was getting loopy, things seemed far away. Rob kept telling me how pale I looked. By the time I got to the hospital I was very very weak. I laid down on the hospital bed and I think I fainted--I don't remember quite a bit of what happened at the hospital. They got an IV in me pretty quickly, I know that.

Then I was in the pre-operating room. I remember the doctors there to do the surgery. My doctor looked at me and said he was going to give me a drug to let me take a nap. I almost cried when I heard the word nap. I was so exhausted. I thanked him for letting me sleep--I hadn't been able to sleep through all the pain of the day, and I hadn't slept well the night before. If I could have forced my body to sleep through all that, ... So when my doctor said I could take a np, I wanted to get up and kiss him. I didn't fight the drug that knocked me out (normally I probably would have, or at least I would have needed to force myself to relax). It seemed like paradise to go to sleep.

I woke up in the recovery room with Rob by my side. Rob asked how I was feeling. I smiled and told him I felt GREAT. SO MUCH better. I can not even describe how much better I felt. It was like being half-dead, and READY to be the other half, too, and then suddenly you're re-born and perfect. It was near-miraculous.

Rob told me that I had almost passed the remains of the fetus on my own. The surgery took a matter of minutes because my body had almost done all the work already. But I am SO GRATEFUL that we went into the hospital. Not so that they could let me sleep. :) Not so they could do the surgery, even. But because I was so dehydrated and sick that I think had we stayed home, I would have quickly become a medical emergency. That IV saved me from getting any worse. I am grateful to have not found out how much worse I would have become.

This is the only experience in my life that I remember being so listless. The pain at first was excruciating and I wanted to die. But then, as I got more and more dehydrated and exhausted, things just drew quiet. The pain was still there, but everything was dull and grey. It would have been peaceful to just let this life go.

I took the next day to recover. It was really the only day I needed to fully rest. My boss at work was really great. C (who worked at Nu Skin Enterprises with me) explained my circumstances so I didn't have to make that phone call, and my boss said I could take as much time as I needed. This was super great of him and I took something like 5 work days off. However, turns out that NSE changed their sick days policy mid-January and made it effective Jan. 1st. That's the first day I found out about the miscarriage. Before that, sick days in a row could all be counted as 1 sick day. After Jan. 1st, though, that was only with a doctor's note. Which I could have gotten, no problem, HAD I KNOWN! ... My immediate supervisor told me it was cool, things could slide later if they needed to.

I could have gone back to my doctor and asked for a note for those days, I guess. But he and I soon were not on good terms over a billing issue (that I don't need to discuss here). ... I suppose what bugged me most about work being dumb about the time off thing is that the boss (whom I adored then and adore still) said he would "take care of it" and to "take as much time as I needed." While that sounds very understanding and nice, to not follow through and leave me without sick days for the rest of the year? Not cool. (This was a non-issue later, since we went to OH for the summer, so I stopped working there in late April or early May.)

And that's my miscarriage story.

Oh. Here's why you don't tell people that you're pregnant when you're only 4 weeks along: If you miscarry, people will be asking you for up to a YEAR about the pregnancy and the baby. We decided a good rule, from then on, was to announce the pregnancy to the same people that you wouldn't mind announcing the miscarriage to. I didn't mind telling people about the miscarriage, really, but it was so akward for THEM that it was painful for me to talk about. I didn't want to have to go through it all again with each new person.

(written 25 July 2008)