A Personal Story

Trigger Warning:

This story speaks in depth about miscarriage and loss. This story contains somewhat graphic details.

James and I first decided to try for a baby in August of 2022. This was just one month after Serenity was killed. Shock and depression reigned supreme in our household, and James could not bear the thought that his only biological child was gone. I never longed for pregnancy. I never wanted to give birth. I certainly never thought I was fit to be a parent, despite the fact that I was holding down that very job for the previous three years leading up to that conversation.

No, I always believed Serenity would be it for me. In fact, I remember telling her years ago after she wrecked her car that I was terrified that she could have been killed. My voice was shaky expressing the vulnerability with her when I said that to me, she was my daughter. That someday I saw her and her own children in my life, and I would love them and care for them as my own grandchildren.

As an only child married to someone a decade older than me, I often have the fear of dying alone. With James and Serenity in my life, I grew accustomed to the thought of having a family as I aged. That vision shattered when she died. I remember one of my shock-driven thoughts from that very first week: that I now had to make a decision I never thought I would have to make, do I want to have a baby? I suddenly felt very pressed for time.

Not long after that, James and I were on our drive out west spreading Serenity's ashes. Trauma and shock do interesting things to the body and mind. If I did not have photos from that trip, from that entire summer really, I would not remember much of it at all. But one thing I was not able to black out from that trip was my agreement to have a child with James. We scheduled a vasectomy reversal first thing when we got home.

Soon after the reversal was scheduled I mentally went off the rails. To this day, I still do not believe that society is understanding of what the body, mind, and soul endure after trauma or loss. I myself did not understand what was happening in my own body, mind, and soul. What I did understand was that I had a very strong desire to run far away. And as I have spoken about many times on this blog, I did just that.

Escapism is a powerful tool for evading pain and reality. I drank my life away in private and maintained good spirits in public, because God forbid anyone know I was struggling. In the end, therapy brought to light that I needed to remove the baby conversation from the table for one whole year. More than that, I needed one whole year to heal. To get my head on straight. To deduce what it is that I want out of this life. To evolve as a human being. To grow my marriage.

One whole year to get my shit together.

So I quit my job. I took my year. I did my time. I sat in uncomfortable spaces. I put in the work. I pursued shit I never thought I would pursue. I found hobbies, and interests, and purpose outside of productivity and monetary value. I evolved. James evolved. We, as a partnership, evolved. And one year later we made a much more confident decision, from an entirely different place in our lives, to have a child.

It is the most thoughtful and intentional decision I have ever made in my life.

We were not sure what would be possible with the vasectomy reversal, but five months later, I was pregnant. There is no real way of describing that feeling of seeing a positive pregnancy test for the first time. The entire world shifts on its axis. Suddenly, you can see years in advance like you have been gifted sight by some ancient God. Every decision from the second you see the second line is no longer a decision for you, but a decision for you and this baby. Everything changes, yet in that moment nothing has changed. You're still just sitting on the toilet, legs now going numb, staring at this test.

That's what society seems to see after early miscarriage. You. Sitting on the toilet with your positive pregnancy test. Nothing has changed.

A woman's body is an amazing creation. No one could see that I was pregnant. No one would have known unless I had shared it with them. But I knew. My body, brain chemistry, soul, everything - knew. I was planning and preparing and eating (or not eating) everything I could to help my body provide the right environment for this baby. I worried I would lose them from the second I knew they were there.

For five weeks I knew that I was pregnant. I learned at nine and a half weeks that I had lost the baby at seven. Five weeks after my entire world tilted on its axis, my entire world shifted again. My body had not physically miscarried the baby. I went home and chose to handle the miscarriage naturally.

At ten and half weeks I physically miscarried the baby. For the week that I spent at home waiting for this process to begin, I desperately combed the internet for stories or advice or expectations or quite simply anything that would help me prepare. I found nothing but generic information spewing the same thing repeatedly to expect "heavy bleeding and cramping." I was scared of the unknown. I knew many women who had lost babies in years prior to me. Each of their stories were different. Mine was different from any of theirs. I am sharing this story here because I know there is a purpose in it. I believe it will resonate. I hope it brings awareness, and I also hope it encourages women to tell their own stories because this is not discussed often enough.

Despite the fact that my baby died at seven weeks of growth for a reason I will never know, my body did not begin to lose tissue until nine weeks of gestational pregnancy. It began as small, flaky pieces, which prompted me to get an ultrasound. At home leading up to the loss, I processed grief for my baby and grief over the loss of Serenity. I was scared to death of the actual process and wondered constantly how it would happen. On day five, I felt tears coming and let them flow while I verbally told myself that it was okay to be scared and it was okay to be sad - that my body knew what to do. I repeated this for over an hour as I cried. I believe when I mentally surrendered to the process is when my body finally began to move forward.

I spent four hours in the middle of the following night glued to our toilet passing not only copious amounts of blood, but very large pieces of tissue and clots up to the size of lemons. The cramping was not manageable with over the counter pain medications, but it was manageable with breathwork and support from James. Eventually, the pains ceased and bleeding slowed. I was able to get some sleep.

I woke up the next morning with contractions. I did not realize they were contractions as I had never given birth and did not know what that felt like. Around one hour into this, I recognized them as contractions and that they were picking up. I spent one hour in true labor on the toilet, losing more blood but smaller clots than the night before. Again, over the counter pain medication did not work for me. James moved me to our tub to help manage the labor pains in my back. I labored in a pool of my own blood and tissue for another one and half hours when I finally felt it was, "time." I have no other way to describe my knowing, but I did know that when I moved back to the toilet to pee is when I would pass the baby, and I did.

Immediately after I passed the baby, I was overcome with shock. James moved me to the shower and bathed me head to toe while I sat on the floor and wept. I spent the next two weeks in shock and grief, yet again. We buried our baby here on our home property.

James and I are no strangers to the complex thoughts and emotions during the loss of a child, but there is a very real feeling of self-blame that accompanies a miscarriage as a woman. I poured over every decision I made since conceiving. What did I eat? What did I drink? What exercise did I do that I should not have done? Did my baby decide that I was not a fit mother and leave of their own accord? Maybe I am not meant to be a mother, as I cannot keep them alive... Here I am having quite literally labored and birthed this baby, taken on the role of mother to a teenager for years, and still I am not a mother. I am not seen as a mother to the world around me. I no longer have anyone on this earth who calls me, "mom." I start to wonder, what is the point of it all - I can't keep my children alive, should I even be alive?

All I wanted to do six weeks ago was to drink. To run away and to fall off the face of the earth. But I did not. The intimacy of the experience with James being present and caring for me during the process was unmatched to the intimacy we have shared during any other instance in our relationship. He witnessed the experience, he helped me to grieve and to process in the aftermath. My recovery without his support would not be the same.

My body was slower to recover. Everything you will read on the internet will have you believe we, as women, bounce back physically from the miscarriage in one to two days. This is not true for me. My body bled for another two and a half weeks, then attempted to have a period three days after that, where I bled for another two and a half weeks. My pelvic floor muscles are still in recovery, six weeks later. My organs are rejecting my normal breathwork as they are all traumatized from the event, six weeks later. I am still weeping over the loss of my unborn child as I write this.

Six weeks later.

I chose to write this story because I believe it's important. I remember my experience vividly and therefore I want to share it. Details on this subject are hard to come by when you are a person like me that seeks to have all the information. There are some women who are not able to remember these details about their own miscarriages because shock, grief, and physical trauma shroud the memories. And despite the fact that we are waking up to how common these experiences are, it cannot take away from how devastating they are to us as individuals.

No one knew that I was pregnant.

I knew.

No one's world flipped on its axis.

Mine did.

There was nothing that I could have done differently to change the outcome of my pregnancy. I did not pull the trigger that killed Serenity, just as I did not kill my baby with my morning cup of coffee. I am not to blame for the loss of my children, who I loved.

You are not to blame for the loss of your child, who you loved.

There is nothing you could have done differently to change the outcome of your pregnancy and miscarriage. There is no timeline for shock, grief, depression, despair, self-blame, trauma recovery. Physical recovery is different for everyone, as everyone's circumstances are different. Give yourself grace and patience. We live in a world where people seem to believe they are entitled to understand us and our lives, but there are many things that cannot be understood without experience.

If you have experienced a miscarriage or are in the process, I hope this story brings some level of comfort. If not comfort, I hope it brings you any additional knowledge you seek. If nothing else, I hope it brings some awareness to those who have not experienced this or know someone who has. No words can carry the weight for the loss of a child, but a deeper understanding, empathy, and compassion, will aid in recovery.