I haven’t posted publicly about it, but I found out I was pregnant in November. I was beyond thrilled and Alex and I were really excited for July, when our baby was expected to arrive. We slowly told family and friends as I neared the end of my first trimester and everything seemed fine. Well, today we received terrible, terrible news. Our baby had miscarried. It came as a complete shock as I’d never had a lot of pregnancy symptoms when the pregnancy was confirmed, and so there was no noticeable difference in how I’d been feeling. We found out when we went in for our twelve week ultrasound. I could tell right away that something was wrong. The tech couldn’t find anything and instantly looked worried. The images that I could see didn’t look right – what I recognized as the uterus didn’t look big enough, compared to the pictures that I’d been staring at online for weeks. Alex was oblivious to the fact that something was going wrong. He asked the tech what we were looking at and if it was too early to be able to make things out and her answers back to him confirmed my fears – she was red cheeked as she stammered something about the doctor needing to look at the images. We waited to see my doctor upstairs and when the nurse brought me directly to her office instead of the scale I really knew. The doctor came in and told us what I expected to hear by that point, that the ultrasound showed no heartbeat and that it didn’t measure up to the 12 week mark. She left us for a few minutes and I fell apart.
I’d been so excited for weeks for that appointment. All day today at work I was planning on how I was going to tell my boss and coming up with a maternity leave plan that I was super proud of. I had no expectation of anything but good news at this appointment, and so I was shocked. I couldn’t ask the doctor any questions and could only half listen as she explained that I would need to have surgery to remove the placenta and fetal remains. Apparently I’m looking at a good few weeks of unpleasantness, and then will need to wait for my body to get back to normal before we can even think about trying again. It’s so depressing.
I feel betrayed. I don’t know by what – my body I guess. I feel stupid for believing that everything would, of course, be alright. I feel sad for the loss of our hopes for the summer. I feel dread for the next few weeks of unpleasantness. I feel worried that it will take months and months before we can start trying again. I’m worried that once we are able to start trying again, it will take us months and months before we are successful again. And I dread that if/when we are successful again, that we’ll go through this pain another time.
I remember that as we told people, I kept thinking that we were going against advice to hold off until we were out of the first trimester, “just in case”. We were so happy and excited, though, that keeping it to ourselves wasn’t an option. We’re not private people, Alex and I. That’s just not the way we are. And now that the worst has happened, I don’t feel terrible about having to tell people about it. I’d rather people know why I’m sad or looking depressed. I’d rather people know that we’ve had a loss than unknowingly insensitively ask us, “when are you having kids?” I’m an over-sharer with most things in my life, so I just didn’t see why this should be any different. And frankly, talking about it helps. If I couldn’t talk about it, I’d internalize and get extremely depressed – that’s just my nature.
I took all of my pregnancy books and the few baby things we were given over Christmas upstairs to the nursery where I put it in the closet and closed the door. That was really hard, but I needed to make sure that I didn’t have a bunch of “emotional triggers” laying around the house. I’m trying to stay positive and distract myself as much as possible and focus on the fact that we were able to achieve one time (and really quickly) – so we should be able to do it again. I can try and lose some weight in the meantime and the longer we wait the more we’ll have in savings (theoretically). I know, rationally, that there are a lot of positives that I can focus on, but it’s hard. Hard to see past the immense disappointment, sadness, and shock. Hard to not think of the next four or five months as time wasted – a terrible purgatory of waiting when it was supposed to be an exciting and happy time.
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