sharing our hearbreak

I'm writing this knowing I may never post it but that I need to somehow get these emotions and feelings outside of myself so that I can try to let go and move on.

I had a miscarriage.

After writing that I had to take a break for a couple of hours. Just seeing it on the screen made me emotionally exhausted and drained. I'm really not sure what I'm setting out to accomplish by writing about this but I know that if I don't get it out it won't be good for me. I don't understand why miscarriage is such a taboo topic, why it's whispered about like it's a dirty thing. It's common. It happens to about 25% of pregnancies. Granted, they are usually so early on the woman doesn't know she was even pregnant, but thinks it was a heavier period. It's common and it sucks, but I don't want to hide it and pretend it didn't happen. It happened, it hurts, and Dave and I are trying to move on from this and feel hopeful for the future and our next pregnancy.

As I try typing the back story and how we found out etc, I just can't do it. It seems like such a private matter now and I want to keep it that way. What I will share is that we were over the moon happy and excited. We told close friends and family so they could be praying for us and because we were so excited we couldn't keep it in. On our second ultrasound the technician was worried because the baby hadn't grown as much as it should have and the heartbeat that we could visibly see, was slow. Dave and I cried and decided to wait it out, to see if the baby would grow and the heartbeat would quicken in the next few days. There was a heartbeat, so for me and my views and beliefs, there was no way I was going to terminate the pregnancy until I gave our little baby every fighting chance. We took the rest of that Friday off and didn't go back to work until Monday. We went back to the doctors on Tuesday, me feeling optimistic and strangely calm for being such a worrier. We had people praying for us, a family friend had said God had told her the pregnancy was all going to be ok, so what did I have to worry about? I had another ultrasound and right away the tech said something was wrong. The baby was smaller and there was no heartbeat. When the doctor came in to confirm, he told me I had two options. 1. to let nature take its course or 2. to go in and have a D and C procedure. As I'd never even talked about miscarriage before I didn't know what that meant. He suggested to have the D and C instead of letting nature take its course. He said it was safer for me and physically would be better. We scheduled the procedure for the next day. Click here for more information about the procedure.

To say Dave and I were a mess is an understatement. We cried, we stared off in to space, I yelled, more crying. The following day we went to the hospital and had the procedure. Dave was with me every step of the way up until they took me to the OR. He, through his own pain, was there for me while I was nervous for the anesthesia, worried about the IV, sad over our loss. He was my rock when I was scared. It's a pretty quick procedure and we were home that afternoon. Physically the next day I felt back to normal which made me sad and happy at the same time. I was sad because it was like I was just over the pregnancy just like that, but then I was happy because I had missed my appetite the past few weeks while feeling so nauseous every day.

It's been a few weeks and sometimes it doesn't feel like it ever happened to me, like it was some bad dream I had. But then I get these overwhelming waves of sadness where I'll break down crying. As for Dave, I sometimes don't know where he is emotionally. We had been trying for a while so he was really excited when I told him and we had started to plan and think about becoming parents, so I know he feels this loss as much as I do but he's less vocal about it. I think he'd rather move on and not dwell on such sad things but for me I just can't get fully over it yet and I don't know if I ever will.

Through all this we've grown even closer than we were before, and I've fallen more in love with him. I hate what has happened and I'm heartbroken by it, but as long as I have Dave I am going to be ok. WE are going to be ok-because we have each other. It's what I cling to in the dark moments, and there are plenty of those. I was 8 weeks pregnant when I had the miscarriage and though it doesn't seem like much time it was enough to start loving our little baby growing in side me, it was enough time to start planning, it was enough to start thinking about names, about who we would be as parents. If this hasn't happened to you you'll never understand this loss. Even now I feel like this was such a personal thing for just me and Dave to go through. I know our families and friends were affected by it-but the honest truth is I don't care. If that sounds cruel, I'm sorry, but I just don't have enough emotional energy to care how anyone else but Dave is handling this. And I shouldn't have to. HE is my concern as I am his. This was OUR loss, no one else's. It's weird how I feel about him now, like it's even more so us against the world.

Even though I'm angry at God right now I'm still hopeful for our future. I'm praying that we have another opportunity to be pregnant and that when we are that I am able to carry our baby to full term.

Through this our family and friends have been amazing. No one knows what to say or do but here is what I came up with.

There is nothing you can do or say to make it better, so just be there and tell them you love them.
Do NOT cry to them. If you want to be upset, do so at home. Be strong for them.
Don't talk to them in a whisper voice. You will not break me by talking normal and acting normal-that's what I need a little normalcy because my world has been turned upside down.
If you don't know what to say and don't want to invade-send flowers with a little note to let them know you're thinking of them.
Acknowledge their loss. But don't dwell. If they want to talk about it with you, they'll bring it up. But don't ignore it-something happened, acknowledge that.

There's nothing anyone can do, not Dave, or even myself to lessen this pain. It's just going to take time. It's going to take getting pregnant again and getting past the mark when I miscarried. It's going to take holding our baby in my arms one day.

A lot of our family and friends know about the pregnancy and our loss but there are still people that don't know. And honestly I'm torn about whether to share or keep it private. On one hand I want to acknowledge what happened and don't want to feel shamed into keeping quiet or feel like I have a secret from everyone, but on the other hand it hurts to talk about sometimes. I guess I'm just playing it by ear and seeing how I feel day to day. If I feel the need to tell a friend I will because talking about miscarriage shouldn't be a banned topic in our society. Especially because so many women and men are dealing with losses and we shouldn't be alone. There needs to be a community where we can go and speak freely without whispers. And maybe that starts with me, with our loss. Maybe that's what will help me, helping and being there for other that are going through similar things.



*This was written a few weeks ago so forgive the angry overtones. Dave and I are doing much better lately, but can still use prayers. I would have been 12 weeks along today, coming close to ending my first trimester, and we would have started sharing with others that we were expecting. It's a sad day for me and I'm hoping to not continue to count where I would be in the pregnancy, but I had this date on my calendar, so I am reminded of it.