I would have been entering the 3rd trimester today.
I’ve been a little quiet recently as we worked through a bit of a tough time for our family. But I think I’m ready to share my experience now, because hearing about others’ experiences has really helped me.
I’ve struggled a bit with how to share this journey, because in some ways I felt that I wasn’t having a “normal” or “expected” reaction to experiencing miscarriage. But I think everyone processes something like this differently, and that’s just all the more reason to share what might be a slightly different perspective.
We got the most wonderful surprise during our trip to the Virgin Islands back in early March. Our 2nd to last night there, I finally put together the symptoms I’d been having and took a pregnancy test. Looking back, it should have been pretty obvious, but we were so shocked because we were just about to start officially “trying” for #2. It took a while of trying for me to get pregnant the 1st time, so for this to just happen on it’s own caught us totally off guard. But we were so thrilled! The thought of not having the stress of tracking things and “trying” for months, and for it to just happen basically right at the timing we were hoping for was amazing!
I went to the doctor right after we got back from vacation and we got to see the baby and heartbeat on ultrasound, and they confirmed that I was 7 weeks along. I had blood drawn just after 10 weeks for genetic testing and we found out it was a boy at 11 weeks. I was also starting to sport a bump already – I guess it really does come quicker the 2nd time around! We shared the exciting news with family and close friends since we were rounding out the 1st trimester, had seen the heartbeat, and the test results came back good.
About 5 days later I started spotting. Then the next day (when I was at exactly 12 weeks), heavier bleeding started and I knew something was wrong. Of course, it was a Saturday. I talked with my doctor’s office and they recommended just staying at home and off my feet unless there was a concern that I was losing too much blood, in which case I should go to the ER of course. We made plans for me to go in to see my doctor first thing Monday morning. The rest of that weekend was scary and full of anxiety of the unknown. But I tried to stay calm.
Monday morning we confirmed that the baby no longer had a heartbeat, and I was in fact, in the midst of a miscarriage. I don’t think I can ever fully explain the range of emotions I experienced when I heard those words, but it was a combination of shock, loss, inadequacy, and fear. I’ve always really loved my OB and said that my visits with her felt more like grabbing coffee with a friend, but the compassion she showed during this difficult and scary time is the stuff of truly wonderful doctors. I am forever grateful to her for helping me to feel that all of my emotions were completely fine to feel, answering my million questions, and explaining what was going on from a medical perspective and my options in a way that I could understand.
The options are basically to try to wait and let your body miscarry naturally or to medically intervene. My body appeared to be trying to do it’s thing, but we were unsure as to whether this would be fully possible given that I was already 12 weeks. So we decided to wait a few days to see. I won’t get into all the details (although I’m more than willing to share if anyone is going through this themselves and wants to reach out), but those few days were honestly worse than (medicated) labor. Things weren’t progressing enough, so I had to have a D&C a few days later.
The procedure was unpleasant but very quick and I felt much better after, physically and emotionally – like I could move forward. You do have to go under general anesthesia, but only for 5-10 minutes so it’s very “light” anesthesia. They generally don’t even intubate you. I relaxed that afternoon while the anesthesia meds fully wore off, but there really wasn’t any downtime required beyond that.
It has been an interesting grieving process for me. It has certainly been sad, frustrating and unpleasant, but I didn’t feel devastated in the way I usually hear about with pregnancy loss. I felt a little weird about this – like I should feel more devastated. But I think it’s probably because I have Hudson. I can’t even imagine if this had happened when we’d been trying for so long to get pregnant the first time. And then to have the extreme hope and joy when we finally were pregnant get destroyed. That would have completely devastated me. I think the fear of potentially not being able to have children at all would have been crippling.
But because I know that I can and did have a successful, healthy pregnancy, and I know how unfortunately common miscarriages are, I’ve been able to see this as hopefully just a very sad event in our journey of creating our family. As sad as it is, this just wasn’t meant to be. As perfect as the timing seemed for us, I guess it just wasn’t. I try to remind myself that our sweet Hudson didn’t come to us in the timeline we wanted, but we ended up with the most perfect baby. So it was worth the wait.
Not to mention, if I am ever feeling down, it isn’t long before my adorable toddler, full of personality, has me laughing so hard that it’s hard to remember what I was thinking about before.
So I guess the take away is, rather than devastated, I feel hopeful. Hopeful that the perfect addition to our family will come when the timing is right. Hopeful for my rainbow baby.
For anyone that has previously or is currently experiencing pregnancy loss or infertility, I hope that this might in some small way help you to feel hopeful too.
xo,
Shannon
