In honor of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day, October 15th, I am sharing a piece I wrote 5 years ago about my journey to motherhood.
I found out I was pregnant the week I got home from Vegas on a girl’s trip. I thought my cycle was just messed up from the travel, so when I took the test I was so sure I would see a negative result. When I saw that positive, my stomach dropped. My heart rate picked up. Can this be real? I can’t be pregnant, can I?! After 4 more positive tests over the next 3 days I was able to believe that it was real. I was going to have a baby, WE were going to have a baby. Good thing we got the 2 bedroom apartment. My bookshelves and hundreds of books would have to find a new home, we were going to need that room for the baby! How am I going to tell Louis? We weren’t planning for this, we decided it would be best to wait until next year once we could upgrade our insurance. But a baby! He will be thrilled right? I have to tell him in a fun way, to really build up how exciting this is and downplay the fear of expense from our poor insurance plan.
It took me about 2 weeks to tell him. I needed that time to really come to accept it myself, I spent years trying to prevent a pregnancy knowing that some day we wanted a big family of our own. Well some day is now. It’s here. It’s real. We are happily married. We’ve been together for 10 years. We both have stable jobs. We recently got this two bedroom apartment. My Rheumatoid arthritis is actually fairly well under control and has been for over a year. It’s perfect! So I went to the store and I bought two onesies. A boy’s and a girl’s that each said something to the effect of “My daddy is my best friend” I wrapped them up and got a card, in that card I professed my love for him and told him not to be scared and explained how perfect it really is. We got the two bedroom apartment! We are going to have a baby!
On our day off together I woke up earlier than him, I always do, and I made him his favorite breakfast of biscuits and gravy. No mimosas though. We usually liked to have mimosas on our rare days off together. Not today, I’m pregnant! It will be 9 months of no mimosas. I will happily do that for our baby. I went into our bedroom with my gift, butterflies in my stomach, shaking, and hand him the gift. Lou was a bit puzzled, it’s nowhere near his birthday, our anniversary is months away, why the gift? I saw it in his eyes when he opened it and registered what he was seeing. He’s happy! He’s excited! We are going to have a baby!!
We are officially parents! We immediately jump in and start planning; I schedule a doctors appointment with a suggested OBGYN, we talk about how we are going to tell our families, we discuss names, nurseries, and start envisioning our beautiful future. We decide to wait to tell our families until after our appointment, it just still doesn’t seem real!
The next week we go to the appointment. My uterus is growing like it should!! I’m told I’m about 8 weeks along!! We schedule an ultrasound for the next week just to see how things are looking. With my RA I am considered high risk so I’m informed we will have more ultrasounds than usual just to keep a close eye. After a congratulatory handshake and a gift bag of samples and Parenting magazines we are on our way. This is happening! We leave that appointment walking on sunshine! We eat a celebratory breakfast and go shopping to buy some “grandma and grandpa” bibs and champagne to tell our parents. We told my parents first, gave them the gift bag, they open it and my mom yells “Are you PREGNANT?!!” as happy tears well up in her eyes. My dad even shed a couple happy tears. Telling Lou’s parents went about the same. Everyone is happy and excited! We gave our parents permission to spread the great news through our families and family friends.
That week is spent talking about baby names, arguing over if we are having a boy or a girl, and quite a bit of morning sickness. I work in a very tight knit salon and couldn’t wait to share the news with my friends that I work with. We had a salon meeting the week of my appointment so I waited until then. I had one of my coworkers who owns a bakery make everyone a cookie that says “Erin’s pregnant!” At the end of the meeting, we handed them out face down and had everyone flip it over at the same time. It was such a happy night!
The next week, the day of the ultrasound, I wake up giddy. We get to see our baby today!!! That will make this so much more real! I am already so over the moon in love with my little bean and I can’t wait to see what he or she looks like! I’m told to drink 36 oz of water before the appointment and by the time we get there I am in pain from trying to hold it! I ended up HAVING to pee and therefore had to wait for the ultrasound, while drinking more water before we go in. I thought of the great story this would make to my friends, who know what a tiny bladder I have. We get back into the ultrasound room, the tech puts that jelly on my stomach and my uterus shows up on the screen, she searches around for a bit. “How far along are you?” she asks me. “9 weeks” I reply. She shows us where baby is, but baby only looks to be about 6 weeks. Are we sure on our dates? 3 weeks seems like quite a large gap…….
At that exact moment I knew it was all over. We weren’t going to have a baby. We didn’t need that extra room for a nursery. We were going to have to tell everyone we lost it. I’ve had no cramping, no bleeding, I’ve had morning sickness, my uterus is growing- how could this be? The tech really can’t tell us anything. Just follow up with your doctor and he will be able to tell us what’s happening. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s over, but I could see it in her eyes, I could hear it her voice. I hated her. How could she drop that bomb on me and not give any further information. We left the room, we stepped outside and the tears and panic came flooding out. Louis tried to be as calm and positive as he could be. Maybe we are off on dates, maybe the doctor will be able to tell us something reassuring. But I knew. It was over. I was part of a statistic. One in 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage. I was that one. My body just didn’t know it yet. It’s amazing how many times you will hear the words “at least one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage” while you are experiencing loss, as if those words are suppose to offer some sort of comfort? Or possibly downplay your grief? Maybe it’s to tell you you aren’t alone? Whatever the reason, I can tell you how it makes you feel to hear those words. Bad. Awful. Angry. Hurt. Stupid. Why am I so upset? It apparently happens all the time? Why am I grieving? So many people have experienced this. Why do I feel like I lost a child? No one else seems to see it that way.
We went to my OB and he explained that we are either off on our dates, some people ovulate at a different time than most, or we are experiencing a missed miscarriage where the baby dies, but my body doesn’t know it yet, I can still have all the signs of pregnancy until eventually I will pass the fetus. If I don’t pass it, we can do a D&C to clean out my uterus. He suggests blood work to check my hormones and then in 48 hours we check them again, they should be doubling every 48 hours to show a healthy pregnancy. I get my blood taken and am told to come back in 2 days and get it taken again. And so begins 2 of the longest days of my life. I knew in my heart it was over, but part of me kept clinging to the small possibility that it wasn’t. That I was still carrying a healthy baby, that I will be a mom and we will turn that extra bedroom into a nursery.
I went to work as usual, everyone reassured me that it could very well just be a mistake on dates! Everything was going to be fine! We had planned a cookout for several of our friends that weekend, we were going to share the good news! But now we didn’t know if there was good news to share. We decided to still have the cookout, it would be a welcome distraction of all the waiting. All of our friends came over and I found I was actually able to laugh and to enjoy myself, while part of me was breaking into so many pieces. 1 in 4.
It was a Sunday morning, the morning after the cookout, when I was to call my doctor for the results. He gave me his personal cell and told me to call him as soon as I woke up, no matter how early, he would answer and give me my results. I woke up before the sun had risen, too nervous to face the day, I just sat in silence in my living room and watched the sun rise. I ate some cereal, drank a cup of coffee, woke up Lou and decided it was time. I called him. I could hear it in his voice once he got logged in to his computer and could see the results. I knew it all along anyway. 1 in 4. I was that one. I was carrying death inside me. We wouldn’t have our baby. I cried harder than I’ve ever cried before.
Monday morning I had to go in to talk to him about where to go from here. I called work. I don’t know when I will be back, not until all of this is over. My mom came with me to my appointment, as Lou had to work and couldn’t get off. The Dr. asked if anyone was here with me, she should come into the office with us, I won’t be able to fully process and remember everything he tells me. I had a really terrific doctor who knew that I wasn’t just 1 in 4, he knew that I was a mother losing her child. To be honest, he was right and I have no idea what he said in that office. I knew that I was losing my baby, and at some point soon I would “pass” that baby or come in for a D&C to do the passing for me. Mom stayed with me at home until Lou got out of work. We sat in silence, maybe I had the tv on.
Over the course of the next couple of weeks, every day I would wake up, remember that my baby was gone, wonder if today was the day I would pass it. I cried. I screamed. I got so angry that I wanted to break things. I listened to very angry and loud music. I cried. Another thing you hear a lot when you experience loss is “everything happens for a reason” I understand this is well meaning, I even started saying it myself when talking to people because I thought this is how I was suppose to feel. But what does that mean? What could be the reason that my baby died, while so many people that don’t want babies, or shouldn’t have babies, like those who’s babies are born addicted to crack, get to have theirs. Friends and family called to check up on me. Flowers and cards were sent. I felt lucky that I at least had such a big group of support. Every time I went to the bathroom for 2 weeks, I wondered if I would see blood. It’s a very strange thing carrying death inside of you. It’s all consuming, I just wanted it out but that would mean the pregnancy was over, I would have to somehow pick up the pieces of my shattered self and go about my life as if nothing happened. After all, 1 in 4 pregnant women experience this, you have to keep on living.
I don’t know if my doctor told me this or not, like I said I really have no idea what he said in that room, and my mom was also in shock and grieving the loss of her first grandchild so maybe he mentioned it, maybe he didn’t but what I was not prepared for, what I did not realize is that I was going to experience labor.
One night, when I was 11 weeks 5 days along, I started feeling some cramping. Almost like menstrual cramping. I thought, is this it? Is it starting to happen? The cramping would come and go. I went to bed that night, with still nothing happening. I woke up at some point in the middle of the night to the most excruciating pain I had ever felt. Like someone had tied my uterus, my stomach, my ovaries and intestines in a knot and kept twisting and twisting the knot tighter until I thought I would pass out or vomit and then it would start to release and the pain would subside…until it started again. Getting closer and closer together. I didn’t know that what I was experiencing were contractions. I didn’t know that I was in labor. I spent that night writhing in pain, sweating, crying, wondering when this would end. Lou had to go to work that day, he left about 5 in the morning. His job is not very forgiving and he can’t just take off days. If we had known that I was going to be in labor that day, we would’ve made sure he took off and was home with me. But we didn’t know. The day I “passed” my baby I was alone, and in more pain than I have ever experienced- and I have lived with a severe case of Rheumatoid arthritis affecting every part of my body from my jaw to my toes and everything in between since I was 14-I know pain. I wanted to camp out on the toilet. I couldn’t stand up straight, I couldn’t see straight, I couldn’t talk, the contractions were getting so intense and I was only getting a few seconds in between. And the blood. So much blood. I had no idea that this is how it was going to happen. I labored for about 12 hours, at one point my mom came to check on me and walk my dog on her lunch break. Terrified by what she saw she called my dad to come over and take me to the doctor. We had to stop twice on the way, I was in so much pain. My sweatpants were ruined. I was bleeding so much, the doctors office bathroom looked like a crime scene. He said everything was going how it should be, that I would pass it soon. Just go home and try to rest. He prescribed me some norco for the pain. I didn’t take it though, I knew from experience that all those fancy prescription painkillers do is make me extremely sick and vomit without any relief from the pain. Lou left work and met us at the doctor to take me home. He held me while I cried the rest of the night.
I was no longer pregnant, I was no longer carrying death. I still wanted to scream and cry and break things. The world was grey. I didn’t want to step foot inside that extra bedroom that held all of our books and wouldn’t become the nursery. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, or see anyone. Everywhere I looked people were pregnant; celebrities, people I knew from high school, clients at work. I would never ever wish what I had just gone through on anyone, not even my worst enemy(if I had a worst enemy) but it still hurt to see their happiness, because it reminded me of my sadness. I was broken. How was I ever suppose to return to my daily life?
I decided it would be best if I started work back up on a Sunday, that was my favorite day of the week to work, and I would only have 2 days before I was back at my “weekend” so it would ease me in to my normal life. The Sunday I started back was Mother’s Day. My first Mother’s Day. But I didn’t have a baby or even a pregnancy to show for it. I was going to announce to Facebook that day that we were expecting. “Happy Mothers Day to all the other moms out there!” With a picture of my ultrasound. But my picture from my ultrasound showed a lifeless fetus. No one wants to see that. Work with my favorite people would be my distraction for the day. Lou was working anyway and I couldn’t sit home alone feeling sorry for myself.
The next few weeks were filled with so much anger and sadness on the inside but I tried my best to be my usual happy and positive self on the outside. When I broke down from time to time, people were shocked! “You seemed so fine, so I thought you were” I just lost a child, I just lost a beautiful future, I am not fine. I will never be fine. I immediately started researching. What are the odds of a healthy pregnancy following a loss? Do I have to wait before I get pregnant again? I want that baby! I want that future! I want to not feel this darkness anymore. I want to see that my body can carry life. I don’t want to feel like a failure as a woman. Recent studies were showing that you didn’t need to wait to get pregnant like they once thought. You may actually have a better chance of carrying a healthy baby to term if you get pregnant sooner, within 6 months of a loss. I want to stop feeling like this is my fault, I want to prove to myself, and everyone else that I can do this. Maybe I caused this loss, I did go to Vegas before I knew I was pregnant. The doctor told me that is absolutely not what happened, but how do we know? How am I not suppose to feel this way?
About a month and a half after I lost my baby, I was late. I took another pregnancy test. I was shaking nervous, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted that test to say. I waited two minutes and went to read it. “Pregnant” I knew I was, I recognized all the signs that I had and overlooked before. I broke down. How can I do this again? What if I lose it again? Can I survive that? But…what if it works? What if we need that extra bedroom for a nursery? What if we have that beautiful future. We could become parents with a child instead of the broken shell of childless parents that we were. This will work out! I immediately continue my researching, only 2% of people experience two consecutive miscarriages. I like those odds!
I see my doctor, we believe this one will go much better. My uterus is growing! Things are looking good! I didn’t tell Lou in any cute fun way this time, I sat him down and with tears in my eyes I told him. We hug and hope that this one will be different. We have an ultrasound scheduled. We agreed to do this one with a little more caution, and superstition. We didn’t tell anyone about this pregnancy. We would keep it to ourselves until we were in the “safe zone”.
The morning of our ultrasound, we were obviously terrified. We go in, knowing I’m 6 weeks along. It may be too early to see a heartbeat. It’s the same woman as before. I still hate her. Even though she was just doing her job. She puts the jelly on my stomach, my uterus shows up on the screen and there it is. Our baby. Measuring one week off but that is common since I had only had one cycle since the miscarriage. All dates could easily be off. My due date is March 17th. My birthday! This is a sign, a glorious sign! I am going to have a sweet and sensitive little Pisces baby. I see the rhythmic lines on the monitor, “that’s your baby’s heartbeat” my baby is alive and well and has a heartbeat! I’ve been doing absolutely everything right this time. No trips to Vegas, no drinking, I cut out all caffeine, I was getting my rest, eating all the right foods and drinking plenty of water. I was going to have a baby. We could not contain our excitement!
That night we had friends over, still agreeing not to tell anyone, although we both wanted to so badly! We had a picture of our baby! Our live baby with a heartbeat!! We had another ultrasound scheduled for one week after this one to see baby again and make sure things were going well. I’m still high risk because of my RA but now also because of my miscarriage. But we saw a healthy heartbeat! I got the blood work done and everything was looking as good as it could! We ended up sharing the news with my 3 best friends because we literally could not contain our excitement. And we saw a heartbeat! Chances of miscarriage drop to less than 5% after you see a healthy heartbeat!
The morning of our second ultrasound Lou had to work, so he couldn’t be there. I didn’t want to go alone so one of my best friends came with. We both had to go to work right after so she went with me, then we would grab lunch and go to work! I was excited to see my baby again! See that heartbeat again! It was the same lady again. My uterus shows up on the screen, there’s my baby. I’m feeling giddy. Elaine and I are making jokes. The tech is searching around, taking pictures with her monitor, marking things down. After a couple of minutes, she stops, looks me in the eyes…”I can’t find the heartbeat.”….And the room faded away from me, the joy was gone, the hope was gone. I was back in my black hole with no way out. I am a failure. I can’t do this. I can’t survive this. How is this happening? Why is this happening? For the second time in 4 months I am carrying death inside of me.
My uterus is a funeral home.
My body is a black abyss of failure.
I hear things from well meaning friends and family like “at least you know you can get pregnant” I think in my head that getting pregnant doesn’t mean anything if I can’t carry the child. “You’re young still, you have plenty of time to have a baby” as if my age (26) had anything to do with my heartbreak and loss. I understand people truly don’t know the best thing to say when someone is going through heartbreak, sometimes you just need to know that you don’t have to say anything other than “I’m here for you in any way you need”.
The next couple of weeks I tried as best I could to go about life as if I wasn’t carrying death once more. I didn’t see color. I saw varying shades of grey. I wondered if this was my lot. If I would never have a healthy live baby of my own. If my extra bedroom would always be just that. An extra room. One night I got to work, set up my stuff, and had a meltdown. I would not survive this. I left work that night and said I didn’t know when I would be back.
A few days after it all started again. 11weeks 6 days along. The contractions, the labor. All the same except this time I had my husband with me. At least I wasn’t alone. This time I held my tiny little lifeless baby in my hands. Once my brain allowed my eyes to register what I was seeing, I panicked and freaked and before I knew what I was doing the little lifeless body was gone. Sitting on the floor of my bathroom sobbing, I’ve officially hit rock bottom. I literally wanted to die.
At my next doctors appointment we decided to do some testing to see if there was a reason this was happening. They did blood work from me and Lou. We would get the results in 4-8 weeks on whether or not the two of us were compatible to have a baby. Something like 4% of couples can’t conceive a viable pregnancy together because of chromosomal abnormalities. Meaning we would never be able to have a biological child of our own. For 6 weeks we had to go about our daily lives in the back (or front) of our minds wondering what those results would say. 6 weeks is a long time to wait for results like that. Especially after the 6 months we just had. We understood our chances of that happening were pretty small but at this point small percentages meant nothing to us. We really had no idea how this would turn out. I was in such a dark place I felt like I would get the worse news possible. I thought about what I would do if we found that out. Sure adoption may be an option but would we ever be at a point in our lives and stability to show on paper that we were capable of adopting? It’s not an easy process. As selfish as it sounds too, we wanted our own biological child. We wanted to see our genes mixed up to create a beautiful little being. Our little green eyed red headed Mexican that we liked to joke we’d create. I thought about how maybe I should just leave him and give him a chance to move on and start a family with someone else. Someone who wasn’t a failure as a woman. Someone who could carry his child. It was a dark period. I’ve never been so angry, depressed, or anxious as I was in those days. I had breakdowns daily. Most in the privacy of my own home with no one around to see what I was going through. People have got to be sick of my misery by now. Lou and I didn’t talk about it. I don’t think we could.
When I got the call after 6 weeks of waiting telling us that our results came back fine it was the first time in several months that I felt hope again. We felt like one large weight was lifted and that maybe we could carry the rest of the weight together. It became somewhat bearable. The next test I had to do was an HSG fertility test. I would go to the hospital and my doctor would use dye to view my uterus, Fallopian tubes and ovaries. If the dye spreads through all it would show that I didn’t have any blockage to prevent pregnancy. It was an uncomfortable, somewhat painful test. I could see what was happening on a screen. One side the dye flowed quickly and easily, the other side it stopped before going through my left Fallopian tube. The doctor had me reposition to see if we could help it along, which was pretty uncomfortable but it worked, slowly and surely the dye flowed through showing that everything looked fine and there were no blockages. At the end of the testing it was concluded that at this point the only reasoning we could find for my consecutive miscarriages is either bad luck or my rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease. My body attacks and destroys healthy cells and tissues by mistake. My body isn’t recognizing these pregnancies as a healthy thing. I have a 50% chance of this happening again. For about the millionth time since I was diagnosed so many years ago, I felt hatred towards my body. It continues to fail me. My glimmer of hope has become some sort of detached indifference. I just don’t know how to feel. If I didn’t have this disease those two pregnancies could have blossomed into beautiful babies.
The day of my HSG test, Lou and I left on a road trip to try and celebrate our 2 year wedding anniversary. We left straight from the hospital to Tennessee where we would stay a few nights in Nashville and Memphis and try to escape the horror we had been living all year. It was autumn, by far my favorite time of year. I always have thought of it as a fresh start as the leaves turn colors and fall off before they come back fresh and new and green in the spring. A time where the air is so crisp it brings clarity. As it turns out that trip was just what our souls needed. It was filled with beautiful friendly people, delicious soul food and live music at every turn. We found ourselves feeling light and truly happy for the first time in months. I tried to soak up every second of that feeling so I could recall it when we got back home to reality. My husband has been my rock, my support, my biggest fan, my best friend and truly my soul mate for half of my life. We pretty much grew up together having met when I was 14. We could overcome any obstacle.
A couple weeks after getting home I felt those increasingly familiar signs again. I bought another test. I felt like I didn’t even need to, I knew. “Pregnant” I don’t know how to feel. I’m afraid to feel hope. I’m afraid to feel anything really. My “big reveal” to friends and family went something like this “so I’m pregnant again, 3rd times a charm right?” My best friend convinced me to tell my husband in a fun way, after all this could be the one that sticks! She was right, I would regret it if I didn’t and this one stuck, she felt like this one would stick. I left post it notes all over our apartment stating the many reasons I love him. I was out walking our dog when he got home to read them. I walked in and he was smiling asking what possessed me to do that, I lifted my shirt and on my stomach “you’re the father of our child” he sees it, his eyes light up “are you serious? Again?” For the third time that year I found myself pregnant. Seeing his smile I started to feel those unwelcome glimmers of hope again. I can’t help it. I don’t want to feel it, I don’t want to be let down again. It will break me. But….what if?….a past me would’ve thought this to be a great sign, we conceived this little double rainbow on our anniversary trip to what became our favorite place to be, Memphis. But present me doesn’t know how I feel about “great signs” anymore. We realized that no matter how hard we try, our hopes are going to be high for this. We want it so bad. This could be the time it works, after all, our tests showed there is no reason this shouldn’t work.
I call the doctor. The whole office knows me by name now. My nurse and doctor both say “you must be feeling pretty scared right now” that didn’t even begin to cover it. My doctor has high hopes for this one. Uterus is growing. My due date is June 30th. Ultrasound shows a heartbeat. One week later, here we are, another ultrasound. If this goes well it will be the furthest we’ve made it. Intense morning sickness has kicked in. I wouldn’t call it morning sickness though, I would call it all day and all night can’t keep anything down sickness. I welcomed it. Nausea and vomiting are a good sign things are going well. So here we are at our second ultrasound in 2 weeks with the same tech that I was starting to get over my hatred for, she was just doing her job. There it is! A heartbeat! A strong heartbeat! Baby is right on track. Due date June 30th. We start to feel more of that hope, a little bit of joy. We could actually have a baby at the end of this!
For the next 10 weeks, I can barely keep any food down. I am throwing up several times a day. I can’t step foot in my kitchen, even if it’s spotless, because food is prepared there and the thought sends me running to the toilet. I can’t handle the smell of any food cooking. I can’t handle the smell of candles, lotions, perfumes, shampoo(which is making my job as a hairstylist increasingly difficult) I am starting to feel more hope than doubt, an uncomfortable feeling. I am having doctors appointments and ultrasounds weekly at first, the night before every appointment my anxiety and panic set in, tomorrow I could learn its all over. Tomorrow could be the day that breaks me. I would have dreams, fairly regularly, that were so vivid and so realistic. Dreams I would be cramping and wake up in blood. I would wake up crying and depressed only to realize that it was a dream. I’m still pregnant. There is no blood, I’ve had no cramping.
I would talk to my rainbow baby every single day. I would plead with her to stay with me, tell her what an awesome mom I would be, how much happiness she would bring me and Lou. I would sit in silence and solitude with her every single day and picture a bright white light of healing and comfort in my uterus. I knew she was a girl. I needed her to stay with me. I envisioned growing big and pregnant with her. I envisioned holding her in my arms, I could feel her weight and warmth in my arms. I loved her so much and we needed her here.
As the weeks passed by I would feel more certainty that I would get to meet this perfect little miracle. Yet the night before each appointment, that panic would set in again. Every odd pain, every odd feeling, I believed it was over. It can’t be over. This one will break me. It was winter, one night I was walking Appa. I slipped on some ice and went down hard. Butt first, then head. I lay there on the cement crying, I felt a wetness. Did I just lose our baby?! I was so afraid to go in the house and go to the bathroom. Shaking and crying I made myself go. To my surprise, no blood! I just peed a little, and I found that gloriously hilarious. That’s such a pregnant thing to do.
We made it to 14 weeks! My doctor said he felt confident in us sharing the news. He kept reassuring me that he felt this was the one that would stick. We told our extended families at christmas. Most of which still didn’t know of our second loss. They were all very excited and hopeful.
The first time my doctor tried to use the Doppler to hear a heartbeat, he assured me it was early and if we didn’t hear it, it was because it was too early to pick up and not to worry. He felt good about trying it though and so we did, that was the day I heard the most glorious sound I had heard to date. My baby has a strong heartbeat. My doctor and I had tears in our eyes. We smiled and just soaked up that sound. I couldn’t wait for the next visit that Lou could make it to, he needed to hear this sound. I started showing pretty early, after all my uterus was pretty used to the whole expanding for a baby thing so it was similar to women who are pregnant with their second or third child. Every time someone asked me if this was my first, I felt a little sharp stab in my heart. I felt feelings of guilt that I was allowing myself this happiness without honoring my lost babies properly. I missed them and their promised futures but I was really starting to believe that I would get to meet this rainbow inside of me.
I did not have a very easy or even very enjoyable pregnancy. My nausea and vomiting kept up regularly until about 22 weeks, and I would still get sick every once in a while up until the end. I couldn’t handle the smell of basically anything until the end. I had more food aversions than cravings, I was not one of the lucky majority of pregnant women with RA that went into remission so I was sore and inflamed. I had a very severe stabbing pain in my rib cage from about 19 weeks until she dropped at 37 weeks, and I was so exhausted I couldn’t do much of anything outside of work. I felt extremely guilty thinking of how much I hated being pregnant, and yet I also felt so blessed that I was pregnant that I welcomed all the pains and discomfort. It was a very emotional and conflicted time. I had the most incredible support from my family, my friends and my doctor and staff. I still had the terrible dreams every so often but they were becoming fewer and farther between.
I was induced at 41 weeks, I went through 21 hours of pitocin induced labor at the end of it all, at 1:05 in the morning on July 6th, I held my perfect little double rainbow miracle baby in my arms. Esmé (meaning beloved) Margaret Arellano. 7lbs 10oz, 20.25 inches of absolute perfection. I already knew her, we’d been talking for months. She was my angel, my everything, my reason.
If you made it to the end of my very long story, thank you. Esmé is 14 months old now and I found myself needing to tell it. I am a long way from being healed. I think about my lost babies every single day and probably will until the day I die. I found myself struggling with severe postpartum depression and anxiety following her birth, thankfully with no ill or weird feelings toward her, but toward basically everything and everyone else. I found myself waiting for something to take her away from me. I have never loved anything or anyone in the way that I love my daughter. When you are young and know you want children some day, you think it just happens when you decide you are ready. Unfortunately for so many this isn’t the case and maybe we could be better prepared for the alternatives, whatever they may be, if it wasn’t considered such taboo to talk about loss and infertility. Maybe well meaning friends and family would have a better idea of how to be there for you. We need to break the stigma and the silence. I never felt more alone, I tried joining pregnant after loss support groups online but found them inactive. I don’t know of anyone who experienced a missed miscarriage and I blamed myself and my body for them. Talking about my experience is the only thing that has helped my healing, but I feel guilty always burdening the same few people with my problems. Many people have no idea what it feels like to lose a baby, or even understand that losing my pregnancies as early as I did IS losing a baby. My first Mother’s Day with Esmé was the hardest day yet since she’s been born. Most acknowledged it as my first Mother’s Day, but it was my third. I am working through my depression and grief. My anxiety is at an all time high and I have a long way to go, but I have the most amazing little girl that is here to patch up all the holes in my heart with her breathtaking smile. Watching her experience each new thing is such an overwhelmingly incredible thing to see.
Sometimes after a storm, when the clouds part and the sun comes out, if you are lucky enough you may see a double rainbow. I got lucky enough, Esmé is my double rainbow. Thank you for reading. #donttalkaboutthebab