Two years ago in June, I had a miscarriage. My husband and I went through our grief and had made peace with what we were dealt. We gave the name Vincent James. We tried again after the miscarriage and I found myself pregnant again in late July. I didn't really know what to expect with that pregnancy seeing it was only a month after the miscarriage in June. I waited with baited breath until my first doctor's appointment at 8 weeks. I was feeling the same as I did in June.
Around the 5 week mark I started having morning sickness at all hours of the day until I was about 7 weeks, then everything would stop and I would feel fine and nearly starving. My 8 week appointment came and I was beyond nervous. I watched as the doctor looked with the ultrasound to see if they could find anything in my womb, but there was nothing. No image of a fetus, no heartbeat of my baby. I miscarried August 8th, giving the name of Rebekkah Anne to the baby if she were born a girl.
I was so lost after that. Being miserable and hating God was what seemed to take over my life as a mother, a wife, and a Catholic. I stopped taking communion and started emerging myself in the universe of the Twilight series. Reading the books over and over along with the fictitious stories that are out on the web. I didn't want to be near my daughter, nor did I want to take the role as a mother at that point.
It felt like I was being punished not being able to get past the 8 week mark of a pregnancy, but I didn't care. By doing those things, I felt like I was punishing God rather than taking the blame. It didn't help my relationship with husband in the least, but he was always there to keep me from drowning.
After four months of waiting, I found out that I was pregnant for a third time. Things felt different than the last two pregnancies and I felt hope once again. Around Easter, we had some friends over for an Easter lunch/dinner. I felt fine throughout the whole day. After I ate, I really had to use the restroom. After I finished, I saw blood on the toilet paper and started to freak. It wasn't just some spotting, it was heavy, like I was having a period, but not too heavy where I was having a miscarriage.
I came out of the restroom, some what stalling the inevitable. I looked to my husband and he knew something was wrong. I told him and one of my best friends what happened in the restroom, and we rushed to ER on base. It took 3 hours to be admitted into the hospital and another 3 hours until we were discharged.
During the stay they did blood work and a PAP to make sure I didn't have any kind of diseases that would cause me to be bleeding. They also did an ultrasound to see what was going in the womb. When the results came back, they said that there is a fetus still there, but the heartbeat is very low. All that we can do is hope and pray that I will still have a baby within a week. With that, we left the hospital in hopes to become new parents onces again.
The week passed by with me bleeding the entire time, but it was a constant flow, never getting heavier. One day I went to the restroom and thought I might have passed some tissue. I took it out of the toilet with a ziplock baggy to examine it more clearly and to keep it just in case it was in fact tissue.
When I took a closer look, I could make out the rounded part of the head and little webbed hands and the beginnings of feet. Then I knew. I knew that I had passed my baby that day. We gave the name Jude Elliot to this baby.
I went to my 8 week appointment as scheduled and told them what happened. They asked if I brought the bag with me so they could do some testing and with my brain on other matters, I totally forgot. They did an ultrasound to make sure what I told them was correct and they saw that my uterus was empty.
After this third miscarriage, the doctor's finally started to be concerned about why I've had some many miscarriages in a row after having a healthy baby for my first pregnancy. So they did more blood test and chromosomal testing for myself and husband. The results came back negative, meaning there was nothing to be found that would cause these miscarriages.
To say that I was angry again is an understatement. I was livid by this time. It took the doctors three miscarriages before they started to consider that there was something seriously wrong with me and yet, the results clearly show that there isn't. I will never understand the base doctors and their method of thinking.
I struggled even more after the third one. Really truly fighting with my family, my husband, my true friend, but he was always there. Even after I've hurt him with some of the things I have done in the past, he was still there.
You are probably wondering why I keep writing how thankful I am that my husband is still with me after all the turmoil and hurting I have done to him. Let me now go into the "obsession" aspect of my life for you to have a better idea of why I keep saying how thankful I am.
My Obsession:
I had often wonder how one gets over an obsession, whether it be drugs, alcohol, or romance novels, to name a few.
Would it take them days, weeks, months, possibly years to get over it?
I can't answer that for everyone. It's really up to you to decide...am I right? Or am I wrong?
I, yes I, had an obsession. It all started out with the wonderful series known as the Twilight books. It came about my senior year in college, a year after the movie came out, that I picked up that first Twilight book. It took me a week to read all four of them and be able to start over with the series yet again. I've read the series four times.
After I slowed down reading, I turned to the movie. I watched that sucker practically everyday after I bought it in May of '09. Then I found out about fan fiction through various people I followed on twitter. The first story I really got into was Tropic of Virgo in which I fell in love with Debussy_88 and Ordinary_Girl. After that I spiraled into any story that involved a Edward and Bella relationship (all with a happy ending of course).
I found myself following authors like crazy on twitter in hopes that they would, in turn, follow me. Some did and others hadn't. I tried my hand at writing my own story called My Saving Grace (which has been removed from the fan fiction site for 2 years now). I had started it back in August of 2009 and completed in March of 2010. I found myself getting more ideas for other stories as I wrote the finally chapters of my fiction. I did, however, start writing a new one, but have put it on hiatus and continued to read my favorite stories and seeing many come to an end.
I am writing this because in all of this, I never once asked myself how this is affecting my husband...my family. I have been lost in the world of Twilight since I first discovered the books in 2009. I have lost interest in reading anything else and have only gotten myself deeper into what is happening with all the cast of the saga and the great stories that are out there. I even found myself obsessing over two stars and trying my damnest to see if I can catch a glimpse of them holding hands or something to let me know what I knew all along.
My husband started to take notice in the changes that were happening within me that I was too stubborn or blind to take notice myself. It always takes a outsiders point of view to notice things like that, weird huh?
Anyway, he notice how I would ignore my eldest (my only child at the time) and had a very terrible relationship with her. At one point, she had locked me out of her bathroom when she was 2 and I was yelling, screaming, and cussing at her to unlock the door. I actually had the MP (military police for those not familiar with military terms) called on me by a concerned next door neighbor. They came into my house to examine my child to make sure I hadn't beaten her or left any marks on her after my outbreak. Needless to say, I wanted to change after that experience. I kept telling myself I wanted to change and for the better.
I'd say I never really actually tried to change. I wound up going to back to the stories and becoming more angry at my daughter for interrupting me. My husband, bless him, saw that I was turning away from him and from God. It got so bad that after one special night that I shared with my husband, I got onto my twitter account (which I have closed 2 years ago), started a direct message (or DM) with a "character" from one of the stories I was reading. I told myself, and my husband after he found out, that "it's just role playing. I'm not hurting anyone." Boy was I wrong.
May of 2010 was the HUGE turning point of my marital relationship with my husband. As I stated above, my husband found out what I had done on my twitter account, I was confronted about it, and in my anger, I started packing up some of my items and was planning to leave my husband with our 2 year old daughter. But by God's grace, or some miracle, my husband stopped me from leaving.
This was my breaking point, where everything that I had built up inside me, came forward. I had to gain my husband's trust back with every aspect of my life. I was a stranger to my husband and I didn't know what I was going to do to fix our relationship. I didn't know if I was going to succeed at all. I had to become vulnerable. This was not an easy accomplishment for me. It took some time for me to gain my husband's trust back.
The most struggle I had during this part of my life was lying to my husband and hiding in a world that does not exist what so ever. I had lost all trust with the one person in my life, even the respect. In a sense I felt like I was a lost dog and did not know if I would be able to find my way back home.
Thankfully I was able to go through this life experience, not to gain just the trust and respect of my husband back, but it was a way to show myself what a mess I had become over the series and how horrible an obsession can be to my life and my marriage, and to trust in God that he will be there to guide me through my life.
Fourth Pregnancy:
Just before we moved to another base in June of 2010, I found out that I was pregnant a 4th time. I was so grateful that God has graced us with a fourth pregnancy in which I had another little girl, whom we have given the name Victoria Faith.
I had started this post shortly after I had my third miscarriage, but have never been able to sit down and truly write how and what I was feeling during the time. I wrote this not as a way to gain pity or sympathy, but as a way to show that even those who are truly in the Grace of God, that they too go through struggles of things that are unseen to the eye.
I hope with this post that even those who put God first, struggle through their faith every now and then, but with the help of someone close to you and God's will, you can always find your way back home.
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