My Miscarriage Story
Did you know that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage?
That might seem like just a sad statistic… until you are the 1.
People talk about the happy parts of pregnancy: what it’s like, giving birth and holding your baby for the first time, and what happens after you get home from the hospital.
But there is another side of pregnancy that people are suffering through, often in silence.
I wholeheartedly believe that talking about miscarriage and normalizing having conversations about baby loss will help those who are struggling not feel so alone. I was reading a book recently about miscarriage and the statistics for suicidal thoughts post miscarriage were astounding. So this is why I share, because if someone finds the smallest ounce of comfort relating to my story: then it is all worth it.
So let’s talk about when it happened to me. Twice.
When I got pregnant the first time, I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be the 1.
I will never forget the feeling of seeing the positive test for the first time. In a span of three minutes my entire life changed: my priorities, my future, my hopes, my dreams of having a family. Everything was different, and the mix of emotions from excitement, nervousness, giddiness, it was so beautifully terrifying.
Telling my husband I was pregnant is still one of my favorite memories of my life, even if it still hurts to think about sometimes. He was BORN to be a Dad. He is the fun uncle that crawls on the ground with the kids. For him to finally be a Dad was his dream come true.
We went to the doctor a few weeks later and got to see our baby (it was too early to hear the heartbeat as I was only 8 weeks, but we got to see it). It was a tiny blip on a screen but it’s heart was beating SO hard and fast, like a little energizer bunny. I stared at the screen thinking that I’ve never loved anything more than that little blip on the screen.
We told our families and eventually told our friends, who were all thrilled. My stomach was growing, and I still felt GREAT during workouts which was amazing. Life was good and I was finally wrapping my head around being a Mom.
I was waiting for our 12 week appointment to post our pregnancy announcement. I was waiting until the second trimester, so I was counting down the days until I could shout to the world that we were finally having a baby. We had been together for 7 years and married for 3, so everyone could finally stop asking when we were going to have a baby.
Going into the ultrasound, I wasn’t nervous because we had seen our little blip on the screen a few weeks earlier and they were healthy as a horse. Plus, I was feeling great and my pregnancy app was right on par with what was going on with my body. We were just so excited to hear the heartbeat for the first time.
When I sat down and the ultrasound tech tried doing the ultrasound over my stomach, she said she was having a hard time hearing the baby, but “not to worry it happens all the time”. We would just do a vaginal ultrasound instead (they shove basically a curling iron up your vagina and push it around until they see the baby, it’s GREAT). My husband and I were still smiling, waiting to see the baby and the bumping heart beat. The ultrasound tech took a quick look and we saw the blip on the screen again. She said, very calmly, “Okay, I’m going to get the doctor to come in”. We naively still didn’t understand what was happening.
When the doctor came in, the tech did another ultrasound and the doctor looked at the screen and then looked at me. She looked grim, and serious when she said, “Unfortunately, there is no blood flow in the baby. We don’t see a heartbeat. The baby is gone.”
A voice that didn’t even sound like mine said, “okay” numbly. From then on, they kept telling me information about how these things just happen. This was a missed miscarriage because there were no symptoms, no bleeding, and that the baby hasn't grown since my 8 week appointment, but my body was fighting to hang on. I couldn’t hear much of what they were saying, and the small voice that didn’t sound like mine just kept saying, “okay”. My husband was squeezing my hand so hard, but I couldn’t look at him because I couldn’t look at the disappointment on his face, that would make it too real. I realize now that I was in shock, just staring at the screen waiting for the heart to beat again.
When they left the room, the shock faded and I started sobbing. My husband held me so hard, it was like he was trying to physically hold me together. I’ve never cried like that in my life. The feeling of hopelessness where each cry took a piece of my heart along with it, I thought I might die, and I didn’t really care if I did. Trying to comprehend that the little blip that had changed my life so quickly, was gone.
One of the many things I didn’t know about having a miscarriage, is that you have to make decisions quickly about what you want to do. I had a few options due to the fact that it was a missed miscarriage and the baby was still inside of me, option 1: I could let it “run it’s course” and I would eventually just bleed and have a natural, “typical” miscarriage. Who knew how long that would take. Option 2: I could take pills that would make me have contractions and it would induce the blood and tissue to come out, in the comfort of my own home. Also uncertain how long that would take. Option 3: I could have a procedure done called a D&C (dilation and curettage), which is where they scrape out the remains (how they also perform abortions), but this option meant they could test the baby to see what had gone wrong.
I’ve read a lot about the decisions women make once they realize that their child is inside of me that is no longer alive. I have read every kind of response but since this is my story I can only speak to what I felt. I can’t really describe the feeling of knowing that your child is inside of you, and they aren’t alive. Everyone’s religious and political beliefs aside: I felt like the grim reaper. I was a walking grave site for my child, who was rotting away inside of me and it made my stomach turn. I chose option 3: D&C, to get the baby out of me STAT.
The next day I had a D&C. It was an emotional roller coaster. Leaving the hospital and shaking off the anesthesia, I felt so empty inside. I went from being pregnant and happy to being empty in a span of 48 hours. The physical recovery was nothing compared to the emotional recovery.
Did you know you can have postpartum depression, even if you didn’t actually have a baby? Because I didn’t. I could barely function. I couldn’t do my job and started just trying to make it through the day. I didn’t want to do anything. The things that used to bring me joy just made me feel empty inside. I thought every day about what they did with my baby after they did the genetic testing. Did they throw him/her in the trash? Did they bury him/her? Obsessive, intrusive thoughts entered my brain and I struggled to push them away.
I tried seeing a therapist. It was NOT a good fit. She tried to ask me if I “felt my baby’s spirit with me”. I said no, my baby is dead. Shocker, it wasn’t a great fit and that was the last session.
My husband suffered in silence because he was too busy worrying about me to really let out his own feelings about the loss. He walked on eggshells around me, worried that he would accidentally say something that would send me spiraling. Miscarriage and fertility issues can be TOUGH on a marriage. I can see that if you don’t have a strong foundation, it can expose the cracks. Luckily for me, I married a real life superhero who carried the team during the few months after we lost our first baby.
We got the results back from the genetic counselors. Long story short: random genetic abnormality that is unfortunately pretty common. The pregnancy was doomed from the start.
Oh, and it was a girl. I didn’t realize they would share the gender of the baby. We said that we didn’t want to know to make it easier on ourselves. The genetic counselor didn’t get the memo and I had to stop the conversation to do some deep breathing. That set me back about a month in my healing process. Visualizing the little girl I’d never get to see, the fact that my husband would never get to walk her down the aisle, that I’d never get to hold my daughter in my arms. That grief is a hole that I can still climb in and out of at any point if I think about it for too long.
But somehow, eventually, I crawled out of the darkness and the days started to hold small glimmers of joy in them. I felt like I was able to do the bare minimum. I actually wanted to see people and I could be around babies without crying. It was a bizarre feeling. My heart wasn’t healed, it would never be, but it was like I was finally able to function with a piece of it missing. My smile didn’t shine like it used to, my eyes lost a little bit of sparkle, but I was returning to being the new version of me. That was as good as it was going to get.
We waited six months before we tried again. I got pregnant again after two months of trying. I had secretly hoped it would take longer. Then I felt horrible that I hoped for that because I had so many friends who couldn’t get pregnant at all. Just add that to the long list of things I felt horrible about those days.
This time, reading the test didn’t feel like it had the last time. There was a second or two of pure joy, followed by a wave of anxiety and fear that overshadowed my joy. I had lived this before. I had hoped and dreamed for a baby that never came.
I can’t put into words the anxiety of being pregnant again after having a miscarriage, but I’ll try. I would touch my stomach constantly, like that would help protect what was inside. I regularly had dreams that I would have another miscarriage. I would tell my husband to not make any plans because we didn’t know if this was real.
I couldn’t sleep the night before my 8 week appointment. I couldn’t eat. I was a ball of nerves waiting to snap. I couldn’t manage having casual conversation with anyone. I told my husband the whole way to the doctor that I was mentally preparing myself to have another D&C tomorrow. I wanted to be ready and to have zero hope or expectation.
When we FINALLY got into the ultrasound room I started deep breathing so I wouldn’t have an anxiety attack. My husband joked with me and tried to keep me calm, and I had never been more thankful that I married the greatest human I’ve ever met. The ultrasound tech came in, shoved the curling iron up there, and poked around. We held our breath and my husband squeezed my hand like it would will a heartbeat to come. Then boom. There it was. Another little blip whose heart was beating 100 miles per hour.
Tears streamed down my face when I saw the screen. My husband let out a sigh of relief that I could tell he had been holding onto for weeks. I couldn’t believe it. Our rainbow baby. We had gone through the worst time of our lives, and now this was our second chance at being parents. Our struggle was all worth it, for this.
Externally I told my husband not to get too comfortable, and that there was still a lot of time left before we were safe, but internally I was jumping for joy. I begged the doctors to bring me back in as soon as they would allow me. Because I was now a higher risk pregnancy and my doctor is a literal angel, she said they’d see me back in a week.
The night before my next ultrasound I felt the same pangs of anxiety that I did before the 8 week appointment. I couldn’t eat that day, and I felt sick, but I realized that this was my new normal when it came to having doctor’s appointments.
When we got to the doctor and got called back by the ultrasound tech, I realized it was the same girl who had been our tech when we lost our first baby. I paused when I saw it was her. Surely I can’t say, “hey I want a new ultrasound tech, you’re bad luck”, so I just acted like I didn’t recognize her and went into the room.
The usual occurred: me panic breathing, my husband cracking jokes, trying to keep us both relaxed. Curling iron goes up there again, pressing around to see where the baby is. Death grip is on my hand.
The worst part about the second time they tell you that there is no heartbeat, is that you know it’s coming. The first time we were so naive, so hopeful, that we had no idea what was happening. I knew the second she started poking around and we didn’t see the little flutter. I stared at the screen thinking, “please beat, please beat”. But there was nothing.
“I don’t see a heartbeat,” the ultrasound tech said.
My husband finally cracked and lost lost his composure. He said “What the f*ck, this can’t be happening again,” and put his head in his hands.
I sat there, lifeless. Starting at the screen, staring at my baby and knowing it was going to be the last time I’d ever get to see them. A week earlier that screen was full of life, now it was gone. Tears streamed down my face when they turned the screen off.
The doctor came in and confirmed (they have to). Another missed miscarriage. No signs, no symptoms, and they were fairly certain it had happened within the past 24 hours.
Questions flooded my brain: What was I doing when my baby’s heart beat for the last time? Was I sitting there doing nothing? How could I not feel something, what kind of mother was I?
The rest of the process felt like a routine. Another D&C scheduled for the next day. We left the doctor and I cried the familiar cry of someone whose whole heart had shattered. I thought I would pop a rib. My shoulders caved in and I felt like a black hole was going to swallow me alive. My husband drove us home and just kept saying, “I’m so sorry babe” over and over with tears in his eyes. He wanted to take the pain away so bad and I know it killed him to watch me suffer. But there was nothing he could do. There is nothing anyone can do.
It’s a strange feeling to be right back where you started. You spend such a long time finding a way to move past something like this. To be sent right back to where you started for the second time, it’s all too familiar.
The second D&C went by, and I was in a daze (probably from the Oxy that they gave me when I woke up). Since this pregnancy was further along than the first one, the physical recovery was a lot worse. I was having contractions for days afterwards. At the time I called them “very sudden cramps” because I had no idea they were contractions.
When you lose your first child, you hope that it’s just your “one”. I have friends who had a miscarriage with their first child, and then went on to have multiple healthy babies afterwards. My mom had a miscarriage with her first child. We said to ourselves, that was our one. Now we will go on to have healthy babies.
So when you lose the second child, you lose your hope. You become jaded. We looked at happy families and people with healthy babies and we were angry. Why do you get to have that? What did you do to deserve a healthy baby when we are 0/2?
This time, instead of just sitting around in a pit of despair, I was MAD. When we got the genetic tests back, long story short: ANOTHER random genetic mutation. Doomed from the start. But different from the first one. So “there is no reason why we can’t go on to have a healthy baby”. I replied, “well do you see any healthy babies here?”. She knew I was jaded and upset and suggested I seek a therapist to talk to. I put it off after my last therapy experience.
I watched friends of ours get pregnant, family members had babies and healthy pregnancies around us, and we sat there wondering what we did to deserve this.
We lost our second baby in April. It’s July now, and I’ve finally started seeing a great therapist who has helped me work through a lot of my feelings surrounding losing two babies within a year.
I wanted to write this, partly because I think it’s therapeutic to journal and write things down, but also because I want to tell my true and honest story so that no one else going through something like this ever feels alone.
My life has been a rollercoaster of grief, exhaustion, hormonal swings, gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight again, anxiety, and pretty much just trying to survive for the past year. I’m not afraid to say that I’ve struggled, that I’ve cried more than I ever have in my life, but that I’ve experienced and felt more love than I ever thought possible just from seeing two little blips on a screen.
So for the Mom who is grieving: I have continued on through a pain that was almost unbearable, and you will too. Even when you think you can’t get through another day, you will. You are stronger than you ever thought you could be and you will survive this. Honor your child’s memory by living your life to the fullest and honor them by sharing their story. They deserve to be remembered and cherished, no matter how small.
1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage.
1 in 10 people have recurrent miscarriages.
1 in 6 women experience infertility.
So you might be the 1. But so am I.
You aren’t alone.
