My Chemical Pregnancy
Did you know there was such a thing as a chemical pregnancy?
I didn’t until Sam and I started trying to conceive (TTC) our first little one in 2016. It was only when I hyper focused on all the things to try and get pregnant did I even hear what a chemical pregnancy was.
According to literally any health website on google (WebMD, Healthline, Everyday Health, etc) a chemical pregnancy is any pregnancy that ends before the 5th week of gestation. Many times people don’t even know they’re pregnant yet. It can be chopped up to stress making their monthly bleed a few days late, or they were sick and it threw off their cycle a few days.
There are LITERALLY SO MANY excuses that happen for people who experience an early miscarriage, especially when they weren’t trying to conceive.
Early testing.
Many times, people like myself, only know they’re pregnant so early because they’re literally counting the days after they’ve ovulated and guesstimating when implantation happened to try and get an extremely early positive pregnancy test.
With my first pregnancy, I had a positive home pregnancy test at 10 days post ovulation (DPO). The line proceeded to get darker until it was a full blown, undeniable two pink line test. That pregnancy ended in a miscarriage at 6/7 weeks.
With Killian’s pregnancy, I got a positive home pregnancy test at 12 dpo. I tested at 9 dpo but it was negative. I had been tracking ovulation because we decided to not actively try, but also not prevent a pregnancy if it happened because it was literally the next cycle after my miscarriage. I ended up never getting a “peak” LH surge which is the chemical surge before ovulation. So I assumed I never ovulated. So when I got a negative pregnancy test at 9 dpo, I figured I wasn’t pregnant and I would just get my monthly bleed soon. So when I took the pregnancy test at 12 dpo because of super weird symptoms, I actually took it to prove to myself that I wasn’t pregnant 😂 Jokes on me, he’s now 4 years old.
So when Sam and I decided to try for baby #2, I began doing everything I did when we were TTC #1. I began the ovulation predictor tests, and even purchased a kit that predicted ovulation but then also tested for a hormone called pdG which is necessary for showing successful ovulation.
And being a serial early tester, I typically begin testing at like 6 or 7 dpo. Which is crazy because the earliest implantation happens is like 6 days post ovulation if the egg is fertilized. But apparently, I just like peeing on sticks 🤷🏼♀️😂
So when I got the first SUPER faint positive pregnancy test at 10 dpo, I immediately had anxiety again since that’s how my miscarriage started. A positive test at 10 dpo. Once you’ve had a miscarriage, it’s really difficult to shake that anxiety.
But I was excited. We were pregnant. I told Sam by putting a hamburger bun in the oven and having him “check” it. I told my sister. I told super close friends. Because I wanted to celebrate this baby, no matter how long they stuck around for.
I waited until the following morning to test again, and even though it was still faint, it looked like it got darker. So of course I sent it to my friends to see if they could see if it had gotten darker, and of course they all agreed as well. I wasn’t crazy, it got darker.
However 12 dpo, when I tested in the morning to see if the line had gotten darker, the line ended up disappearing.
I no longer felt pregnant.
It’s a weird feeling when you don’t feel pregnant anymore. It’s something I can’t describe, but it’s an empty feeling. Something just feels off. And that morning when I was talking to my sister, I told her that I didn’t feel pregnant anymore.
It was the same as my first miscarriage. I remember it was a Tuesday evening as Sam and I were falling asleep, that I told him I didn’t feel pregnant anymore. And that Friday is when I began to bleed. With this pregnancy, I began to bleed at 13 dpo, 1 day before my expected monthly bleed.
I was right. My feelings were right.
I was sad. I was emotional. We had begun planning for this baby. We had begun getting excited. But I was also dismissing my own feelings because it was so early. I mean, I was BARELY pregnant. Like the tests BARELY showed two lines and it was only a few days.
But during those few days I began to change my entire life. We began to plan for a baby. We began to adjust things, and talk about what needed to be done in those 9 months. And even though it was only a few days, it was still enough to fall in love. It was still enough to need to grieve.