The Big Silent “M”

I have been debating about writing this for a few months.  I finally decided that I wanted other ladies who have been through this to be able to talk openly about what they went through.  I found that more women have gone through this than I had realized and somehow that made me feel a little better… a tiny bit.

This pregnancy was planned.  I have been wanting another child since TJ was born!  I was really close in ages with my brother and sister (my sister and I are 13 months apart and my brother and I are 19 months).  Before I first laid eyes on TJ, I knew I wanted to give him a brother or a sister.

I got pregnant in June.  I found out on July 1st.  I was so excited.  I felt great and couldn’t wait to tell my husband.  I dressed TJ up in a “Big Brother” t-shirt and waited for him to come home.  It took him a second to figure it out, but when he did he was excited too.  Our excitement lasted about 10 days.  Then I started bleeding.

It happened on a Sunday, right after I got back from the grocery store.  I had my first prenatal appointment the next day and I was looking forward to it.  I had been feeling “funny”.  I don’t know how else to describe it.  Something was just off.  I started spotting and then it increasingly got a little worse.  I was told by the doctor to stay in bed and come in first thing in the morning.

At the doctor’s office I took a pregnancy test and it came back negative.  I was devastated.  I was 6 1/2 weeks pregnant at the time.  They took blood to make sure that my levels were going back down.  The next day the doctor called to confirm that I was actually having a miscarriage.

The days that followed were a blur.  While I only knew I was pregnant for 10 days, I still felt like I lost a child.  I felt broken and that I did something to deserve this.  It was one of the worst things that had happened to me thus far in my life.  I searched the Internet for stories of how other women dealt with the loss.  I was lost and searching for anything to make me feel better.  I read a lot of stories and cried a lot of tears.

I don’t know how I dealt with my miscarriage.  I actually think that because I got pregnant again so quickly that I haven’t really dealt with my feelings.  I can tell you that I have been an absolute mess with this pregnancy… waiting for something bad to happen again.  I started spotting a little at the beginning of this pregnancy and thought the worst.  My hormone levels were very low, so I didn’t have a lot of hope.  Well, here I sit 21 weeks pregnant with a little girl.

Recently a friend of mine went through a similar experience.  I found myself at a loss for words to make her feel better.  She told me that talking about it, openly, to someone who had been through it made her feel a lot better.  I hope that if you are reading this and are dealing with the same loss that you can realize that nothing you did made this happen.  It is unexplainable and hurts extremely bad, but it isn’t anyone’s fault.  It doesn’t mean you are broken.  It doesn’t mean you failed.  It is just something horrible that happens to too many of us.