I am 1 in 4 🤍
At the beginning of October, I shared that in early August, Brian and I unfortunately had a miscarriage. The amount of people, both men and women, who have reached out to me has been extremely humbling, comforting, and eye opening! I know the facts; 1 in 4 women will lose a baby during pregnancy, delivery, or infancy. That’s 25%. And yet, it is so extremely hard to talk about and share. That is why I made the decision to share our experience and why I vow to continue to share these very real things to help all of us dealing with this feel less alone.
We were just about 6 weeks pregnant, yes, extremely early. And for me, that is what made it so difficult. In the beginning, I felt like it was silly for me to be so sad about something that I had only known about for a week. But as I said in my Instagram post; it really was the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. I fell so quickly in love and my mind & heart raced with the possibilities and the future. We had planned out how to tell our parents, the cute photos we could take with Vincent, and I dreamed of watching Vincent becoming a big brother. And just as quickly as those thoughts, ideas, and dreams filled my mind & heart they were replaced with the sadness, fear, shame, guilt, and numbness of learning I had a miscarriage.
After talking to my doctor, we learned that physically there was no “wait time” until we could try again. We took some time for ourselves, talked through the loss, our feelings, and our fears.
On my birthday, we found out we were pregnant again. All that excitement rushed in and I consciously fought to keep it at bay. I was extremely hesitant to let myself feel excited. I couldn’t help but worry about what was going to happen in the coming weeks. I called my doctor and she had me come in for some bloodwork to confirm things were going in the right direction. A couple l o n g days after my tests, I got the call I was dreading… my HCG was going down instead of doubling as it should have been doing and as the nurse on the phone struggled to tell me, “unfortunately this pregnancy doesn’t seem to be viable”. And just like that, less than a week after we found out we were pregnant again, we found out we miscarried again.
Even though I tried my hardest to not let myself get too excited, this loss hurt even more than the first one. We never thought this would happen to us twice in a row. A couple friends I had talked to optimistically told me that they had gotten pregnant one cycle after their loss. Why was this happening again? Why is my body doing this? What am I doing wrong? All of these questions and more raced through my head over and over.
As one friend told me, “grief is such an individual process”. It is so true. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. There are no right or wrong feelings that you go through. There are so many ups and downs, lefts and rights, and circles that you do while you walk through the process.
A couple things I have learned of the past couple of months:
You are valid in all your feelings of grief. It doesn’t matter how far along in the pregnancy you were, however you are feeling, is 100% right.
It has been so healing for me to share our loss and talk about our miscarriages. For me, it has validated that they were real and it removes the shame and guilt of keeping it secret.
It has been so comforting to talk to other women (and men) who have experienced this kind of loss. We are so much stronger together and it is so helpful to know we are not alone.
I am a firm believer in God’s timing and trusting in His path. I am trusting that when the right little baby/soul is ready to be with us, they will be.
So we are trusting in the process. Talking to doctors, getting some more bloodwork done, and trying to find some answers. Praying to God that when the timing is right we will get pregnant again. I find myself snuggling Vincent extra tight and holding him longer. It is an uphill battle somedays to stay positive and trust, but ultimately that is all we can do.
If you are or have gone through something similar, please know you are not alone. I am sending you a big hug and lots of love & light to get through these difficult times.
