What it's like to lose a baby, from my point of view. In 2,000 words or less.

I am pulled between a split sense of obligation and wanting to write my miscarriage “story.”  I struggle with wondering if I begin to write about it as an act for myself or for others. I’ve read several accounts of women’s miscarriages over the past weeks and as heartbreaking as they are, each one brings a sense of comfort to know that I am not alone. 

As I try to figure out what happened, I can't help but to be turned off by the idea of needing to call losing a baby a “story.” Stories are supposed to have a beginning, middle, and then an end.  Not only does it feel like losing this baby has no end in sight, but I don't really know when the real beginning was.  And how do I know that this isn't actually the start of a new beginning to something else?  I'm a firm believer that life works out the way it is supposed to, and that out of ugliness and pain can emerge the truest of beauty and strengths.  But I'm just not ready to go there with this one yet, nor am I willing at this time to be at a point of acceptance.

So what do I do when I don’t know what to write?

I write anyway.

Life for me has changed so much in the past couple years that sometimes it seems the only thing I have held constant is my first name. About 4 years ago I took a job working for a local agency, halfway through being promoted to a position that incredibly intense and stressful, and ended with a four day hospitalization for an unexplained dire affliction that had my doctors stumped.  I still suffer problems from it that will probably never go away, but in some ways, I'm glad it happened; once I was out of the hospital, life simply opened up.  Within one week I left my full-time benefited position, started working part time in an old position I always felt was my true dream job and calling, and met Sean. I had a sense of fulfillment and freedom I hadn’t felt in years. Just when I felt like life couldn’t get any better, two months later my part time position turned into a full time, tenure-track career, and Sean and I began an official venture together towards sappy, blissful love.

Sean proposed to me 10 months after we met, and almost 3 weeks later we were married.  We weren’t planning to buy a dream home only 6 months after we said ‘I do,” but we did it anyway.  Since we moved into our 5-acre “urban ranch” we have started up something resembling a hokey petting zoo. I took on his 2 dogs as my own, he has learned to love my cat he is severely allergic to and my 7 goldfish.  We've filled a coop with a rainbow of chickens and a few ducks here and there.  To mow our lawn, but mostly because they were irresistibly cute, we impulsively bought a couple of goats we treat like family dogs.  I love being with Sean, the laughs we share, the luck we have, and the life we have started.  I never thought I would be lucky enough to find someone I so truly love and feel so extremely comfortable with. It seems to me that ever since we met something in me fundamentally relaxed.  I no longer have an excessive compulsion to go, go, go, or achieve, achieve, achieve that previously propelled me forward.  In so many ways, life simply feels easier.

I always joke that Sean and I like to make major life decisions about every 6 months.  We talked about waiting a year to even begin conversations about starting a family, but soon after settling into our home we felt it was time to start baby planning and strategizing due dates that would best compliment my work schedule.  People talk a lot about how hard it is to get pregnant and how long it takes.  Even my most trusted doctor openly rejected my planning, saying that not only is it rare to get pregnant quickly, but couples actually have no say or control in their family planning; it’s actually the babies that get to decide when they are conceived and when their birthdays are going to be. 

We got pregnant at the first chance shortly before our one year wedding anniversary. For the past several years I have felt indifferent about having kids, but after falling in love with Sean, a family felt undoubtedly like something I wanted to grow and share with him.  Once I was pregnant, the feeling of wanting this was confirmed tenfold.  I loved being pregnant and I loved getting lost in dreams of our future family. For the first time ever I was excited to be as big as a house. The world suddenly smelled amazing.  I spend hours blissfully wondering what our kid might look and be like, reading pregnancy and parenting books, and googling stages of fetal development and how to best take care of my body and growing baby at each stage. I had a fair share of unpleasant pregnancy symptoms, but was only sick one day to the point I couldn’t contain my nausea anymore.  It was a day that all I could stomach was fruit, and also happened to be the day marriage equality was legalized in the entire United States.  As a result of all the fruit, I puked rainbows all over our property during an evening walk with our dogs and goats.  I joked that even my puke was so happy it was celebrating gay marriage.  Even the parts that really sucked were kinda fun.  Everything felt absolutely perfect.

It's said that after the first trimester the risk of miscarriage drops by 80%.  For this reason Sean wanted to wait before we spilled the beans.  One day before the end of the final stretch of the first trimester, literally the day before I had planned to announce to the world that we were pregnant, I found out our baby had died.  It is such a weird, awful, and puzzling thing to learn. Suddenly my reality simply didn’t exist anymore.  I couldn’t stop sobbing, yet couldn’t exactly tell what feelings or thoughts I was having.  To have a baby that is dead inside of a still very pregnant body is the emptiest and most lost experience I have ever had in my life. And no one outside of my family knew that it was happening. I kept using the word “sad” to explain it, but it just didn’t do justice.  When someone asks how you are, how do you politely respond that it feels as if everything in your being has been burglarized, brutally stabbed, and then left alone to silently bleed to death without anyone else being able to even tell just from looking?  

I scheduled a D&C as soon as I could and expected to feel some sort of relief afterwards, to maybe have a sense of closure. I honestly and fully expected that the procedure would help me begin to move on.  But unfortunately every day after the D&C got worse.

One of the especially difficult parts of losing a baby is that the experience doesn't stop.  5 weeks later I'm still bleeding and even though any sight of blood is a stabbing reminder of my baby not making it, I am absolutely paralyzed by the decision to either let it continue or seek remedy to make it stop.  It wasn’t until last week my body officially stopped thinking it was still pregnant.  My hormones are so out of whack my body and emotions don't know left from right.  I gained a lot of weight from the pregnancy that will not budge, no matter what I do. And now, out of a packed walk-in closet full of clothes showcasing a me from a different life ago, I only have 4 shirts and 2 pairs of pants fit ok enough to wear in public. I wear them like a surrender flag.

I hide from both acquaintances and people I know because I fear they will ask me how I am, even if just for compulsory greetings. Either I will break down and cry, or worse, I'll lie and say “I’m ok.”  I’m surprised that as much as I want to talk about it, I usually prefer to shut up, comply with social norms, laugh when I’m supposed to, listen even if I don’t want to.  Instead I write about it all later for people to read so they can pretend like they didn’t.  

The outside world moves at a pace that is faster than I can muster to move.  I have no motivation, energy, or interest for anything outside of what grapples in my mind. Even things I do that feel genuinely good tap my shallow reserves of energy.  My body and soul crave on a deep, deep level nothing but stillness and silence.  Stillness and silence are like the needle to my vein.  Yet even when I have that, I still can't get away from this screaming that goes on inside of my head and body.  It’s an unintelligible screaming that gets quieter at times, but never really stops. Ever.  And no one hears it but me.

They all say with time it gets easier, and to add insult to injury, all my doctors, confidants, and a therapist tell me the only thing that will help me heal is time.  Never in my life has time ever moved so slowly.  No matter how hard I try, I literally can't imagine the future. I struggle to envision even one day ahead, yet put myself in a frustrated frenzy trying to move forward. With the help of a trusted counselor and my best support- my dearest husband, my latest projects as of a couple nights ago are to practice patience with myself to help me through mere moments at a time and to soften the pressure I put on myself in an effort to move more forgivingly towards resolution of grief.  It's hard, but it's a lesson I imagine I want to learn. Seems like it would be a good life skill, and maybe the lesson I would be thankful to have pulled out of this once it's all further down life's road.  

It's so crazy that a non-visible something as little as a kidney bean can take over an entire life this much.  

In the eye of this storm, I can't help but to honestly wonder- would having a child really bring me that much joy?  What if we have a kid and the next 18 years is even worse than these last 4 months have been?  Is trying again something I really want to do? Though all at the same time, I feel an imminent deadline crashing down on me to try again as soon as I can because the longer I wait, the higher the risk.

These nonsensical, loaded worries don’t stop until I remind myself of my Project Patience.  So I try to let those thoughts go, and sometimes they actually go away. At some point I can think again about what is supposed to happen next, but now is simply not the time.

As you come to as much of an end as I can provide, please don’t get me wrong; my intent is not to publish a sob story.  I’m not looking for sympathy, I’m not looking for people to wonder whether or not I’m depressed, or if they should step in, help, or say something.  I am seeking out what I need as I need it, and writing this is part of it.  

Screw the need to have a story, anyway.  I’d rather hope that someone reads this and finds comfort knowing that she is not alone.