Womb to Bloom - Maternity & Beyond

My husband and I made the overwhelming decision to start trying for a baby about seven or eight months after we got married. We had lived together for over a year before we married. We dated each other for three years before we moved in together. He was 30 and I was 28. So, the time was right. And we got pregnant almost right away.

I made an appointment at the obstetrician’s office and met with the prenatal care coordinator. She confirmed the pregnancy and gave me all of the appropriate literature.

We were ecstatic. Thrilled to be starting our family. Unable to keep the good news to ourselves, we immediately told everyone we knew that we were six weeks pregnant. It was August and I was due the following April 2nd.

Two weeks later, I had my first visit with the OB. I had experienced some very light spotting so she ordered a sonogram. The sonogram (a transvaginal one with “the wand” – yuck!) revealed a seemingly healthy little bean of a fetus - complete with flickering heartbeat. It took my breath away. Gripping “pictures” of my baby, I made my next appointment for four weeks later.

I continued to have very light spotting – although never heavy, never red. So, my doctor again ordered a sonogram (mostly, I think, to put my mind at ease). But this time, all wasn’t okay. There was no flickering heartbeat. The measurements indicated that the baby had stopped growing at about 10 weeks – two weeks after the last sonogram. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach and sucked the air from my lungs.

In a trance, I listened to my OB and told her that I would prefer to schedule a D&C rather than wait for the fetus to spontaneously pass. I had to wait two days before the outpatient surgery. Those two days were filled with tears and questions. It felt so strange that I was carrying a little being that was no longer alive and growing.

The D&C was unremarkable (though I’m amazed at how much of that day I still remember in detail now eight years later). It resulted in no additional information about the reason for the miscarriage. My OB suggested that it was probably some sort of chromosomal or other abnormality which made that life unsustainable.

Physically, I recovered within about a week. Some bleeding but nothing too terrible. My doctor advised us to wait through one menstrual cycle before we started trying again.

Mentally and emotionally, it took longer to recover. A friend who lost a full-term pregnancy once told me that it generally takes an amount of time equal to the time you were pregnant to get a grip on the emotional pain of loss. For her, this was almost a year. For me, it was pretty accurate too. I think I began to work it out after about two months.

It was strange to grieve something that I had seen only once on a tiny, black and white screen. I wasn’t even in maternity clothes yet. But it was grief. I mourned the loss of my hopes and expectations. I didn’t realize how very much I wanted that baby until it was gone. I was surprised at the depth of my sorrow.

It also happened to be the first big test of my marriage. My husband and I reacted very differently to the miscarriage. I truly grieved the loss of a baby – however early in the pregnancy it was lost. My husband was saddened and was very upset to see me so vulnerable and in pain. But the pregnancy had never been all that real to him. Not yet. It was still very intangible to him in that first trimester. He was confident that we would quickly conceive again and have a baby.

These different perspectives caused some tense moments between us. He didn’t understand the extent of my emotions and I felt that he was indifferent towards the loss. It took one big blow-up of a fight about 10 days after my D&C to get it all out on the table and resolved. If something good came out of the situation, it was a stronger relationship. We knew that we could help each other through an emotional crisis.

We had to deal with a few weeks of letting people know about the miscarriage – which was painful. But (spoiler alert) the next time we got pregnant, we still told everyone right away. Although I had to tell everyone about the loss, I got to lean on a lot of friends too. If we hadn’t told our family and friends to begin with, we wouldn’t have had the wonderful support group that we had.

Once people hear that you’ve had a miscarriage, they come out of the woodwork with their own stories. More people have experienced this pain than I ever knew. None of their stories made me feel much better – it was just something I had to work through.

We were one of the lucky couples. This loss truly was some sort of genetic anomaly. I conceived again within six months and two more times after that. We have a beautiful son, a perfect daughter and rambunctious twin sons. But every April 2nd, I think about the baby that wasn’t meant to be and what life might be like if he or she had been a part of our family.