Tell The World!!!

Knowing what I know now I will act differently in any subsequent pregnancies. I will not hide the fact that I’m pregnant like a dirty secret for the first trimester. There is no reason to hide it. They say that it is so that we don’t have to tell everyone if we have a miscarriage. I found that I wanted to tell EVERYONE when it happened. And I did. I started texting people who I had never told I was pregnant in the first place to tell them my grief.

It got me thinking that there is no reason to hide it. Miscarriages are happening all the time to people all around us. 1 in 4 women suffer a miscarriage in their lives. I am one of those 4, but with the amount of people we know, the likelyhood is that many of the people around me have suffered through it as well. I know about a few but as I share my story more and more women are coming to me and telling me their stories.

Most women suffer in silence. They may talk to a few family members and their partner, but they don’t have anyone else to talk to about it. There are forums and Facebook groups that are terribly helpful, but sometimes you just need to be able to vent to someone who knows exactly what you are talking about. I’m lucky that I have a couple of family members who have experienced similar situations and they are willing to let me talk to them and ask them questions. It’s part of the grieving process.

Not everyone is as lucky. I hope that the movements that have been coming up in the last few years (from what I can tell) to get people to be open about their losses keeps progressing.

Of course I’m not saying that you should share it if you don’t want to or are uncomfortable doing so. It is definitely YOUR decision to make. My point is that it is YOUR decision and not just the communities decision that says it’s taboo to do so.

I haven’t experienced this, but I know that there are people who will tell women who announce their pregnancies early on that they are jinxing it. That they will have bad luck. Simply a bunch of negativity. It simply isn’t true.

We shared the news of the pregnancy with our parents, my siblings and nieces and nephew pretty early on. Then the Friday before we found out the baby had stopped growing we told his siblings and grandma. Doing this did NOT cause the miscarriage.

As I mentioned, the miscarriage was destined to happen as soon as sperm met egg. There was something wrong with one or the other or the combination of both. But there was absolutely NOTHING we could have done to know or to cause or to prevent the miscarriage from happening.

As much as I don’t want people to say these things to me, I know they are true. They just don’t make me feel better or change the amount of grief I feel. 

Ramblings About... My Miscarriage

Exactly 1 week ago (fromt the time I write this) I was finding out that my baby had died inside of me. I have always wanted to have a baby and life has made it so that I finally got pregnant on January 13th, 2016. I found out 10 days later and I saw my baby on an ultrasound on February 16th, 2016. 

My husband and I have been married nearly 2 years, together for over 4. It was time to start since I am already in my 30’s (he is 6 months younger than me). 

I was so extatic when I saw the two lines giving me a positive pregnancy test that I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to hold it in. I had to yell it out loud. But I played it cool and when my husband walked into the room a few minutes later I shoved the little sitck in his face. I took 3 or 4 tests one right after the other to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. They were all very positive. 

We called and made the appointment to see the doctor and there was no going back. I had a little baby growing inside of me. You may call it a zygote or embryo or whatever, but to me, from the moment I saw those two lines it was MY BABY. Our baby. Something we created. I knew life would change but we were ready for it. We have tons of family support (and even some nudging that it’s time to have kids) from both sides. 

Now, with the baby gone. No heartbeat and the baby not having grown past 7 or so weeks, we have nothing and I feel so completely empty. 

I knew it was coming, too. I don’t know how, because I was the one that kept telling my husband that the probability of miscarriage was low since we had seen the heartbeat. But somewhere around 8 to 9 weeks my symptoms disappeared seemingly overnight. I know that symptoms can go away. I wasn’t worried immediately, but as time went on I just felt like something was wrong. 

I expressed this to my mom and my husband who reassured me that everything was fine. I wasn’t bleeding, I didn’t have cramps. There were no signs that anything was wrong. 

If would we knew. Well, nothing would have changed other than I would have had had to carry my baby, already without life, for 3 weeks and 3 days inside of me. I think that is what is painful. That the poor baby was inside of me without anyone knowing he was dead. 

Who am I kidding, there are so many things that are painful about this (and I’m sorry that this is just a rambling post, but I have to get out what’s in my head in whatever way it comes). 

I though, beforehand, that the worse part would be giving birth to the baby. It was, but not the physical pain. The cramps weren’t worse than I had experience in normal periods. The emortional pain of knowing that my baby was sitting in the toilet and would just be discarded is what really got to me. 

Logically I know all the reasons: it’s better this way, God had other plans, he probably had chromosomal defects that prevented him from growing so that he wouldn’t suffer. Mother nature knows best, my body knew what to do. 

None of that matters. My baby is dead and I will never hold him in my arms. I’ll never know what it is to hold my first child. When people ask me how many kids I have (if I am able to have kids, that’s a whole other post) I’ll have to mention that I lost my first. Which I am not ashamed to do. But I know that people won’t know how to react to my statement. I will make them uncomfortable. 

I am struggling. I push through each day, but I have to hold the tears back. I’m back at work (I can’t take more time off). People here know what happened, but no one approaches me. Almost like I’m this weird thing that they don’t know how to deal with.