Bitter Sweet

Our week 8 ultrasound showed that Small Fry was no more. Doctor Sunshine looked for a heartbeat for a moment, but there was nothing. She hadn’t turned the screen so that I could see so I looked up at Howie and he just shook his head. She quickly showed me that the sac had shrunk a little bit and then quickly moved over to Little Nugget. My heart just sank.

Little Nugget has grown and looks healthy. Its little heart was beating 158 beats per minute. Doctor Sunshine said that was great. She took lots of pictures and we looked at it for a few minutes. She explained where its head was and that the dark space was its brain. It looks a little bigger than it did last time, but it still resembles a chicken nugget or a gummy bear.

I think that I probably appeared to be underwhelmed by my beautiful baby. That wasn’t it at all. I can’t explain how much I love Little Nugget and how amazing it is to watch its little heart beating. I’m so happy that I don’t have words for it, but it was all mixed with the unbelievable sadness I feel for our loss of Small Fry. I was in love with the both of them. Yes, we’re grateful for Little Nugget and we know that we’re lucky that we aren’t left with nothing like we were after my miscarriage. That doesn’t mean that I don’t feel equally heartbroken as I was when I lost our first baby. I am happy that we have Little Nugget, but I don’t want to act like because we still have one that it’s ok that we lost Small Fry.

Doctor Sunshine gave us both a hug and said congratulations. We said goodbye to everyone on our way out. It was sad that it was our last appointment there. They’re all really wonderful people. Everyone knows your name and they all knew what was going on with my cycles and always had something comforting to say. I’m really going to miss them.

On the way home Howie told me that he felt sad about Small Fry too. Then he said that Small Fry had given everything to Little Nugget to make sure that it continued to grow to be healthy and strong. That made me cry. I t’s a nice way to look at it. I guess if I had to lose Small Fry its better that I lost him now rather than further down the road. I don’t want to miss out on the wonderful new things that I will experience with this pregnancy, I just wanted some time to mourn Small Fry.

Last weekend Howie and I told our parents that I’m pregnant. We gave them these little silver photo albums that can also stand up on a table or whatever. On the outside of the album it says “Grandkids”. The first picture in the album was the blastocysts photo, second was the ultrasound photo of Little Nugget and the third was the ultrasound of Small Fry. We gave the photo album to my parents on Friday. My father knew as soon as he saw it that I was pregnant. It took my mother a little longer. My sister had a baby two months ago and Howie and I weren’t going to do our first IVF until July, so my mother thought she was looking at old ultrasounds from my sister’s pregnancy. She couldn’t understand why we’d give her old ultrasound photos when they had plenty real photos of the baby. Then she got it and said, “So, you’re pregnant right now?” They were very excited. Later that night my mother gave me a bunch of crackers and her raspberry gingerale to help me with the nausea. When they got home from RI my mother showed the pictures to all of our family.


On Sunday we gave the same gift to Howie’s parents. They both knew that I was pregnant as soon as they saw it. They looked at the pictures, then looked at each other and kissed. It was cute. His father gave me a 5 minute hug. They’ve been through a lot in the past year. His mother had colon cancer, which she has since recovered from, and there have been other hard times in his family, plus my miscarriage in December. His mother said, “This has turned a very bad year into a very good year.” That was good to hear, it was nice to see them smile. As we were leaving his father said, “Howie’s going to be a father.” I think it really hit them at that moment, they looked a little teary. It felt so good to share our news with them.