Karen’s Story

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The first pregnancy I was 18 and had only been married for 3 months when we found out. Needless to say no one was happy for us not even our parents. We struggled with what we needed to do and although up to this point I was sure I knew exactly what action I would take if I ever got pregnant while I was married, when you are actually living it you ask yourself every question!

We decided to carry the baby. I was very sick with this pregnancy – flu, chicken pox, and placenta privia, along with just the regular stuff. I was cleaning my glass front door one morning while I’m 6 months pregnant and all of a sudden I don’t feel well. I go to the bathroom and there is a ton of blood. My husband and I head to the hospital. I am in full labor and they are trying to stop the contractions.

Over night they get the contractions to stop with medication and they move me to a regular room on another floor. Once I’ve been moved they take me off the meds. As soon as they do I go back into labor and dilate out to 10. Complications arise where I can’t deliver when I needed to and the baby dies in the birth canal. I deliver the baby and he is 1 lb 3 oz. but isn’t breathing. They can’t save him. We bury our first son. We grieve and our lives go on.

We wait 10 years and decide to try for real this time. We get pregnant again and go for our ultrasound and she starts typing Baby 1 then Baby 2. My husband and I were so excited, our parents and all our friends are also excited because by the time you’ve been married 10 years everyone wants you to have a baby! We go along day by day and everything is going great. Grandparents are buying double of everything because we are 12 weeks pregnant now and everything is getting real.

I start spotting so we go to the ER and they do an ultrasound but she can’t tell us anything, she says we need to wait because the doctor wants to talk to us. We wait a few hours and he comes in to tell us the babies are dead. He doesn’t know what happened and we have to have emergency surgery. I wanted to die with them and my family did too.

We then decided to wait a few months and try again. The doctor was hopeful in what he thought might be the problem. So we waited 3 months and tried again. We got pregnant right away. Started taking some medicine and everything looked good. We were 8 weeks pregnant and I go to the bathroom and again I’m spotting so we rush to the ER. They basically say I’m probably aborting but there isn’t anything they can do to help me so we go home. A few days latter I pass a clot and we decide to try and find a specialist in a larger town. At this time we start driving 6 hours to see a specialist. Our first appointment was 3 months after I lost the last baby.

We go in and he checks me and says your placenta is still growing we need to do emergency surgery before I go septic. We are in shock and he makes us an appointment with a doctor friend that will do it in his office because we still don’t have insurance. The next morning I go into the office to have the d&c. They do the procedure and we head back home. We then start traveling back and forth every 6 weeks for testing, he tests me and my husband for everything. Once all the testing is done he call us into his office and says there is nothing wrong with you or your husband!

I look at him in anger and say I’m not happy with that. He gets up and leaves the room. I look at my husband and say I guess I made him mad. He says you didn’t say anything wrong. The doctor comes back into the room with the largest book I think I have ever seen and he says this is one book on all the reasons you can miscarry. He had given up but I knew there had to be something wrong with me. I said my sister has endometriosis can you check me for that? He said yes I can check you right now across the hall in the exam room. He checked me and I had it. I didn’t have all the classic symptoms so he hadn’t checked me for it before.

At this point he knows he can help us. We just have to decide if we want to proceed emotionally and financially. We still don’t have insurance that will pay for the procedure to have the endometriosis removed and it will cost $25,000. When I get the call from the doctor’s office to tell me the price I’m in traffic in Houston, TX . We had moved down there to start proceeding to try and have a baby. I pull over and just start crying my eyes out because I know we don’t have the money. My husband at this time is also scared to go through another pregnancy because I’m 32 by now and I’ve had 3 pregnancies. I’m still sitting on the side of Hwy 225 and a man pulls up beside me, he rolls down his passenger side window and says are you ok? And I say yes and he drives on. I always remember that day as God’s gentle reminder that he was there with me!!

We talk to the doctor about our options he says there is a way without surgery and we can try it. So we go on straight hormones for 3 months and then try to get pregnant. We are taking pregnancy tests every week; we have to find out ASAP when I become pregnant as to start treatment for the endo. It only takes 3 months to get pregnant but it feels like forever. Jan 1, 2004 we take the last pregnancy test and it’s positive, me and my husband are both crying in the bathroom over the stick. We make a doctor appointment right away.

We start the treatment and then things start not looking good – we find out my levels aren’t what they should be. I start having to give myself heparin shots everyday along with some other meds. Everything starts leveling out. The rest of the pregnancy ends up being pretty smooth sailing. Finally we reach full term and we know by now we are having a boy and they will schedule a C-section because of the high risk pregnancy. He will be born on August 19, 2008. Of course little did we know our son had his own agenda!! My water broke at the house on August 17. Everything went well, we still made it to the hospital on time for the C-section. And he was born Dakota Jay Brooks, 5lbs. 15.5 oz 18″ long. He is our only child. We are so thankful for God’s amazing grace, he gave us a healthy, happy baby boy!! I hope my story inspires the women out there to never give up!!

-Karen Brooks
Oklahoma
Published 3/14/15

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