Infant and Pregnancy Loss Day 2016

To all of you who are aching for the babies you have lost, I hope that this song will give you some peace and comfort today. A friend shared it on Facebook just after one of my miscarriages and it touched my heart deeply. Thank you to Craig Aven for sharing his love and musical gift with each of us!

To Any Mom going through a Miscarriage

To any mom going through a miscarriage, I am so very, very sorry! Please know that you are not alone. While I may not know all of your pain, I do know some of it. Each miscarriage, and each woman is unique. If I could sit down with you and talk face to face, these are some of the things I wish I could tell you:

On Miscarriage & Loss; Healing

Shortly after my miscarriage, my 5 year old prayed to his Heavenly Father to “please, please send us two baby girls.” He explained to me that there are too many boys in our family, and we need baby girls. It’s true…we have had a name for a baby girl since before we got married and I ache to dress up a baby girl in pink dresses, and play Barbie’s with her. And, the girls are extremely outnumbered in our family!

For me, I feel mostly healed. I still hide any pregnancy related post on Facebook. I still tear up occasionally and think about all the hopes, plans and dreams I had formed for my baby. I imagine October 29th might be a hard day for me when it comes. It’s hard to let go.

But, most of the day I am happy. Most of the day I am wrestling with my boys and life is back to normal. The pain has dulled, but I know I will always have that look in my eyes when I tell someone of my loss.

I remember actually thinking sometime last year “I think I could handle a miscarriage…I don’t think it would be that hard.” And I was ignorant! Everyone who has never gone through one is ignorant. There is no way to know how incredibly painful and life altering a miscarriage is until you have one. There is no way to truly know how attached you are to that tiny embryo or fetus until it is gone.

If you know someone who is going through a miscarriage, hug them. Share your story if you have gone through the same thing. Offer to watch their children. Take them food. Keep asking if they are ok. They may seem normal, but there is still an ache there. Ask them what they need.

Don’t ignore them, or pretend it never happened. It hurts more to feel like no one cares about your loss than it does to talk about it.

Just knowing that others around me cared and were willing to help, helped me immensely. Just knowing that I had that support got me through the hardest times. Just knowing that others knew exactly how I felt and that I wasn’t alone gave me immense comfort. Please contact me if you need support…if you need to hear someone else’s story to know you are not alone.

It does get easier.

On Miscarriage and Loss, part 3

This is going to be a heavy, sad week on my blog. I understand if this is too heavy to read, but I truly feel compelled to share my story. When I went through my miscarriage, I needed to hear other women’s stories…to hear about their pain, but also about their healing.

Many friends and family members offered to take my boys any time I needed it, but what I needed most was normalcy. I still broke down randomly and bawled, but at least I could hold my boys and be constantly reminded why on earth I had ever wanted to become pregnant. I needed to do the laundry and dishes; to feel like I had some control over my life.

The week after my ultrasound I went in for the D&C. It was very similar to Jessie Leigh’s experience and I used her post to help me know what to expect. As we drove to the hospital, I turned to my husband and said “it feels like I’m going to a funeral.” There were tears, there were comforting hugs from my husband and the nurses…there was healing.

For me, the D&C provided closure. I could finally move to the next stage of my life…for 5 weeks I had been living with the fear of losing my baby, and later the knowledge that I had lost my baby.

On Miscarriage and Loss, part 2

This week, I would be 18 weeks and finding out the gender of my baby, if there was a baby…

When I was about 8 weeks along, I read Jessie Leigh’s posts about her miscarriage and D&C. I remember reading them thinking “how awful…I’m glad this isn’t me.” But I still felt a great need to read every word, and commit her posts to my memory. I had no idea how much they would help me when I went through my own miscarriage a few weeks later.

At 12 weeks I went in for my first appointment. There had been signs for 3 weeks suggesting something was wrong, but I was still experiencing pregnancy symptoms. When the nurse went to listen for the heartbeat, for some reason I wasn’t surprised to find there was none and left feeling numb.

An ultrasound was scheduled for the next week, where (at 13 weeks) I found out that the embryonic sac was empty and had stopped developing at 6 weeks. There was no baby.

I felt betrayed! My body had lied to me for over 7 weeks. All of the sacrifices I had made for the baby that wasn’t even there went through my mind…all the food I did or didn’t eat, all the naps I had to take from sheer exhaustion, every single prenatal vitamin I took…all of it made me feel utterly betrayed by my own body.

To be continued…

On Miscarriage and Loss

First, I want to start my story off by saying that the main reason I am sharing my experience is my hope that my story can in some way help another woman who is or will be going through miscarriage in the future. I have learned since my miscarriage in April that there is sort of a secret club that only those who have suffered a miscarriage can join, and one that no one would ever choose to join. BUT, once you are in that club, whether you know others who have miscarried or not, there is a connection there. When I shared my pain with others around me, many of them opened up and shared with me the same grief they had experienced during their own miscarriages.

For me, in the midst of my most intense grief, I had a moment where my eyes opened wide and I realized that I now understood. I understood the look in a mother’s eyes when they tell me of their miscarriages. I understand the pain, sadness and fear that so many experience after miscarriage. Miscarriage is truly something you cannot understand until you have gone through it, and I hope that the pain I have gone through will help me somehow ease the pain of another mother somewhere down the road of life when I see her tears and can truly tell her “I understand! I know!”

To be continued…