Sanchez Stories: June 2009

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Blessings & Loss

Our family has had some tough times this past year, although we are still blessed beyond belief. We have some amazing times together as you can tell from the blog. I think there are few parents out there that cherish their children as we do ours, but I am biased!
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In Aug. 2008 we suffered our first miscarraige (MC). I knew it would be a difficult thing to have to go through, I had always told myself if there's one thing I didn't want to have to go through it's a MC, but we did, and it was very hard. We grieved, and decided through the struggles of getting over our fears and disappointment that we wanted another child, and so we continued to try again.

In Feb. 2009 we found out we were expecting fraternal twins and we were not only shocked, but over the moon! In early March we again suffered another MC.

At this point our doctors sent us for lots of testing and it was a scary time. We thought perhaps our journey and dream of more children was finished. It was frustrating to think about moving forward and again suffering another loss. It was some thing I couldn't imagine not only for myself but for Justin as well, not to mention Waylon as we told him all about it and there's nothing more sad than for a 3 year to not be able to understand what happened to the baby. Especially when you can't explain it to yourself.

You believe in God, you believe in the plan, and you have to have faith, and we continued even if we didn't sing in church because at times it hurt so bad, we still continued to swim through the pain.

After the testing came results:

Diagnosis: Pregnancy related antiphospholipid antibody also known as APS/Huges Syndrome.

What is it: Hughes Syndrome (APS) is sometimes called 'sticky blood syndrome'. This is because people with it have an increased tendency to form clots in blood vessels (also known as thromboses).

Why is it associated with the losses: One miscarriage is a disaster. Two is worse. Imagine the suffering of women who have 3, 5, 7 or even 12 pregnancy losses, and sometimes as late as the last few weeks of their pregnancy. We now know that Hughes Syndrome is the most common treatable cause of recurrent miscarriage: depending on which study you quote, the figure is up to 1 in 5. Furthermore, late pregnancy loss, fortunately an unusual problem in pregnancy, is very strongly associated with Hughes Syndrome as is pre-eclampsia, placental abruption and intra-uterine growth restriction.For the sake of a simple blood test, patients with miscarriage or late pregnancy loss can be tested for Hughes Syndrome. Treatment of these patients has proved one of the true successes of modern medicine, the successful pregnancy rate rising from a previous low of fewer than 20% to figures now in the region of 75-80% success rate. Treatment is with low-dose aspirin and/or heparin.

If you would like to learn more click on the right corner or here:

http://www.apsfa.org/aps.htm

So we got the results and decided that we were done trying to have children and that we were going to go on a healing, LONG vacation to sunny San Diego. So we made the plans. In mid May, I started getting sick when I would open the fridge, and I told Justin he needed to clean it out because it was so bad, he checked it and couldn't smell anything. This happened 2 days in a row, so he joked and said "you need to take a pee test, aren't you late anyway?" I thought about this later that same day as I was really tired, and checked the calender and sure enough I was about 8 days late, but I had also just had a D&C so why would I assume I would be on time anyway.

I e-mailed him and said ~ Please pick up a pee stick on the way home, just so we could rule out the question. If I was pregnant I knew I needed to start blood thinners ASAP in order to prevent yet another MC.

That night Justin brought the sticks home and he asked me if I was going to go and test, I told him no ~ I wanted to wait for the morning, why test when I knew I wasn't pregnant.

I had a dream that the test was +, woke up took the test and it was just that +, so I went into the room at about 5:30 am, and told Justin...... He looked at me and said, "Dre, go back to bed", I had to get him to wake up a bit in order to grasp what I was saying.

So there went our plans to get our team of doctors on track..... I am now on blood thinners (Heprin), and am currently 10 weeks as of Saturday with TWINS, that's right IDENTICAL TWINS (which by the way were done the natural way, so don't ask if we did IVF). Also Identical twins are not "passed down".

True Identical Twin Definition: Twins derived from the same fertilized ovum that at an early stage of development becomes separated into independently growing cell aggregations, giving rise to two individuals of the same sex, identical genetic makeup, and closely similar appearance.

Each day is just like Avery's pregnancy but much earlier, we are thankful and look forward to the end of the pregnancy while trying to enjoy being pregnant at the same time, which isn't easy. It's filled (like Avery's pregnancy), with lots of fears due to the diagnosis we have. However we do feel like God has a plan and that God is with us ~

As Gloma says, "Let go, let God",

My 4-eyed Friend says "Here is a great scripture to memorize and keep close to your heart---it will help you through all things and give you strength": Jeremiah 29:11: For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future.

We are taking one day at a time as we all should, an we don't really understand why we are constantly put in a situation where we have to be some what fearful if we bring children into the world, but we have faith that there is a wonderful end to this story.

Thank you all for your support and understanding if this past year we haven't been around much. The losses have been hard to recover from and we have been sad a lot, but we are healing slowly and are excited about the future.