National Infertility and Pregnancy Loss Month
When my second daughter was 16 months old, I began to hear a nagging voice telling me that if I wanted a third child with the same two year gap as our first two, I needed to get pregnant asap. I told myself to stop thinking that way since my husband and I had decided that we were done at two children. One month went by and I was still thinking about it, then when I couldn’t shake the voice by the end of the second month I knew I had to talk to my husband. It turned out that he wanted more children too, but he hadn’t wanted to tell me because of how awful pregnancy was for me, not to mention the traumatic delivery.
When my second daughter was two and a half we finally had a positive pregnancy test. The pregnancy started with bouts of nausea and dizziness, not to mention exhaustion, and we were so excited. I couldn’t wait to tell the girls that they would have a baby sibling for New Years. I got my sister to agree to come home for a visit at Christmas instead of the summer and we told our parents and my grandmother for Mother’s Day. As the weeks wore on, I was both delighted and worried that I did not have more morning sickness. I was still having waves of it that would cause me to need to lie down but on the whole I was feeling good. Even though we started the process in 2019, it was then the height of the covid-19 restrictions and my doctor’s office would not see patients in person very often. I called several times to ask about my concerns and I was told it was fine (came to find out later that they never passed the messages on to my doctor who told me after the fact that she would have wanted to see me right away as a woman who had previously experienced hyperemesis gravidarum shouldn’t then have almost no morning sickness, no matter what I had done to try to prevent HG this time). At ten weeks I had some spotting and called the office. After asking about the color and whether I had cramps, I was told it was fairly normal and probably implantation bleeding, this did not comfort me since implantation bleeding typically takes place well before 10 weeks. Over the weekend the spotting got a bit heavier and Sunday night I awoke with painful cramps. I was on the phone with the doctor’s office in a panic as soon as the opened the next morning. After a few hours they finally told me that I could go in. My doctor wasn’t working that day so I had a different provider who offered me absolutely no comfort and told me that it was probably fetal demise and that this happens. As I sat there, soaking my mask with my tears, I wanted to scream at her that while it may ‘happen’, and she might not be emotionally invested, I had been living with a beautiful secret for weeks now, daydreaming about if it was a boy or a girl, how excited my two girls would be when we told them, and what we would name this baby. I was alternately panicking because I knew I couldn’t stop this and hoping that I still could. I was sent for blood tests and told to go home and rest. After my blood draw I sat crying in the parking lot trying to compose myself so my daughters wouldn’t be worried when they saw me.
It took a week for the miscarriage to complete. A week of hoping, praying, and despairing. I cried at nap time and after the girls were in bed. Before this I had had no idea what happened to a woman during a miscarriage, all I knew was that there was bleeding and cramping and no more baby. I didn’t know that it could take so long, or that some women don’t pass the fetus and pregnancy tissues naturally and must have them surgically removed. At what would have been the start of my second trimester I finally got my pregnancy sickness. I threw up, and had horrible cramps, and passed the fetus that I had longed for. The desperate, ugly sobs shook my body for hours. The post pregnancy bleeding lasted for five weeks. The heartbreak, and anger at my body’s betrayal lasted much longer. My husband’s guilt over not being there with me (or at least waiting in the parking lot, as this was the height of covid-19 restrictions) took a long time to subside and if I am honest, I didn’t tell him it was okay, because going through that alone was a horrible experience.
I am not sure how to convey, for those of you who have not suffered the loss of pregnancy, all of the emotions. I have lost many loved ones in my life and the sting of their deaths was always poignant, but it is very hard to mourn a life that most people didn’t know existed, that was your responsibility to grow, and that had been a dream but you hadn’t yet met.
For weeks I talked with both my husband and my doctor about whether to try again. I had just about given up hope when we had gotten pregnant, and I was devastated by the loss of the tiny life within me. Ultimately, we decided that we had been so over-the-moon about a third child that we had to try a little longer. Each month that I wasn’t pregnant and every time I saw a friend, or even a stranger, pregnant or with a newborn it felt like a stab in the heart. I was angry and jealous, hurting and guilt ridden.
It has been more than a year since we lost our baby and it still hurts to talk about. We have a happy end to this story, a precious rainbow baby who is now 12 weeks old, but so many women don’t get that. I will admit that I spent most of my pregnancy trying to guard myself and not be too excited. When we got through the first trimester I thought about how someone in our family lost a baby at 18 weeks, when we got through 18 weeks I thought about how the baby wouldn’t be able to survive until at least 24 weeks. When we got to 24 weeks I wanted 30. Finally I was able to let myself relax and rejoice and make plans for a new baby in our house.
I had the odd experience where a friend asked me if I planned to try for more children and I said that I had recently had a miscarriage and instead of acknowledging it in any way, even with a change of facial expression, she began talking about something else. I was shocked and very confused. Why is it that miscarriage and infertility are not often talked about? Sharing in another’s grief should not be awkward, we should be helping others to heal. If you or someone you know has experienced the loss of a pregnancy, there are resources to help:
https://www.stillbirthalliance.org/
https://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/
https://www.marchofdimes.org/complications/loss-and-grief.aspx