Today I find myself reflecting back quite a bit. Slightly more than six years ago is when I had my first miscarriage. It shook my husband and I to the core. We planned that baby and wanted one so badly to have it taken away from us almost as soon as we found out I was pregnant. Our due date was April 1, 2007. I allowed myself to get depressed. I gained weight, I just didn’t care anymore. Three months after the D&C, we tried to get pregnant again and we did. The result was the birth of our oldest son. We were so happy to finally have a baby in our arms. Yet, whenever that due date of our first baby goes by, I get into a mini-funk but I snap out of it because we do have two wonderful children.
Now, as we wait for this miscarriage to actually happen I am determined to not get depressed or gain weight. With this pregnancy I gained about 3 pounds and found myself wearing a size up from before I got pregnant. The day before my last ultrasound I actually caved and bought maternity jeans and a maternity tank top because nothing was fitting right anymore and I needed something to wear for a Welcome Home party for our Battalion that week. There were some other tops I longed for but something held me back.
The next day at the ultrasound I felt guilty for buying those clothes. I wore them to the party that night. I tried to slap a smile on my face around all those people. It was really hard. At entrance to the party, those of us drinking were given green bracelets to wear. I took one and my husband grabbed me a beer. It felt odd walking around knowing many others thought I was still pregnant with a live child and here I was chugging back a Corona with a wedge of lime stuffed inside. Eventually, my husband was the one that started explaining what was going on and I was choking back tears. There were a few times I let them fall and quickly wiped them away. We were there to have fun and cheer on our troops for coming home safely after all. It wasn’t supposed to be a sad night. There was dinner there and I ate maybe half the food. Nausea hit me. I still had pregnancy symptoms. It left me frustrated and awfully sad. I requested that we leave early. I just couldn’t be around everyone while I felt sick. At that point I just wanted to be home and curled up in my husband’s arms. We said our good-byes and even that hurt because word had spread at that point or I had to explain why we were leaving early.
That night, I logged into Facebook and let everyone know what was going on. Please know that earlier that day we called immediate family and let them know. I figured sharing the news in that format would keep me from having to re-tell what was going on. There was an out pouring of support and I am so grateful for amazing friends and family.
Even now, as I write up what’s going on with this miscarriage, I have a ton of support. Not meaning to through my site stats at you all, but in less than 24 hours this blog has had roughly 140 hits. No doubt it has grown even more by the time I have posted this. That means 140 people are aware what miscarriage is like. One hundred forty people have a story to relate to. That’s a big deal to me. Yes, there are some people who commented that I do not know who they are, but they got the information they needed. I hope to continue to do so.
Also, if any of my readers are male and have dealt with a pregnancy loss in some way, please let me know. It was hard digging around finding a woman’s perspective; I can only imagine men trying to dig around the net and falling short. If you’d like to share your perspective, drop me a comment with your email address and I will contact you and we can do an interview. It’d be nice to have more than one male perspective because everyone deals with this differently. Each miscarriage within a couple is different too. My husband and I have dealt with this one in different ways than the first one.
Again, thank you for reading and please come back. If you’ve lost a baby, I am sorry and am sending prayers up daily for healing for all of us who have lost a child.
God Bless.
I count my three little blessings I have and I have never experienced the horrible devastation of a miscarriage. Thank you for writing these blog posts. I think it sheds a little more light on a topic that many are afraid to discuss and it has become taboo. I am so sorry for this latest loss of a little gift from God. Reading your blog posts has made me feel a little closer to you even though we live so far apart. HUGS from afar. You are a brave, amazing soul.
Jenn, thank you for your compassion. The taboo is what I am trying to break down. Why should it be wrong for women -and- men to share their sorrow with their family and friends? Is it because no one knows what to say? Or do they think that we all became attached “too early”? I get attached soon as I get my positive pregnancy test.
I find comfort in what my sister told me, our late father has some grand babies with him in Heaven. That phrase brought me peace.
May you never have to go through this sort of pain.