You just got pregnant. And you have heard stories about awful nausea, you’ve heard stories about head aches, you’ve heard stories about swollen boobs that hurts and you’ve heard stories about back aches and hip pains. But then you have a miscarriage, and you realize that there’s a gap where the stories about miscarriages should have been. If one out of five women experience miscarriages, then how is it possible to feel so freakin alone when you end up being one of them?
I was over the moon about being pregnant. I had waited my whole life to start a family. I had worked so hard on my fear of hospitals prior to the pregnancy and was finally feeling ready to do this. All the way from the start though, I had this gut feeling that this pregnancy was not going to last. It felt unreal in a way that was beyond the unreal thought of having a baby for the first time. It was as if I could feel in my body that it was not going to happen. I didn’t get nauseous, which is totally normal for some women, but I just knew that I would not be one to get pregnant without nausea. A few weeks later I found out that I had a miscarriage. And my heart just dropped.
For me, the miscarriage didn’t pass naturally. The doctors did not know for sure at first if it was growing or not, so I had to do an ultrasound and come back a week later to see if it had grown. And let me tell you about a week that felt like a year. It was not just waiting to know, because I already knew. But you can’t take an abortion pill to end a pregnancy that you ultimately want, if the doctors can’t confirm that it’s dead already. So for me this was a week of waiting, just to get to start the process of ending a pregnancy that at this point stood in the way of getting pregnant again. I shot a wedding during this week. I remember how nervous I was for the miscarriage to start passing naturally during the ceremony. I was holding my breath for 10 hours.
It didn’t matter that I had only been pregnant for 8 weeks when I finally had the miscarriage. The feeling of loss was still very real. I wouldn’t say that I was grieving the loss of an unborn child, it was more a sense of losing hope. And it didn’t matter that the doctor told me about how common miscarriages are, because no one talks about them and that led me to believe that something was wrong with me and that I would not be able to keep a pregnancy. I remember that the hardest part was that while everyone was telling me to take some time for myself, I knew that the only thing that would help me through the sadness was to get pregnant again. To see that I could get pregnant again and keep it. I did not need time to grieve the loss of a child, I needed to feel hope again.
Getting pregnant again happened quickly. Although it felt like the time stood still. Being pregnant again after a miscarriage brings on a lot of anxiety, which is a whole story on its own, for another time. However, just like I had known, it wasn’t until now that I actually healed from the miscarriage.
During this time I searched high and low for miscarriage stories that I could relate to. I had no one around me that had gone through a miscarriage (or at least no one was talking about it), so I turned to podcasts and blog posts for support. I read the same blog posts over and over again, and I listened to the same podcasts more than twice. I remember the distinct feeling of not being able to stand something coming in our way when we were finally ready to start a family. And I had a huge need of finding stories by other women sharing that same feeling. I just wish that we could all start to speak up about miscarriages. It is so common, and still, when I needed someone to relate to I had to look online for it. There’s no shame in miscarriages, it is something that is beyond our control, so why aren’t we talking about it?
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Emily, thank you so much for sharing your story. This happened to me as well and it was needless to say devastating for me and my partner. It’s interesting that you received similar responses of support from your family or friends like “take time for yourself”, I received the same types of responses. But really , the only thing that made me feel like I could get through the loss was to grieve openly with my partner, family and friends. Being able to talk about the hope and excitement I had to begin a family was something I so desperately wanted to express to others but felt like I needed to hold back my feelings quite often. I don’t know what it is but I did feel that many family/friends just didn’t know what to say or how to support me. I know they were sincere but for whatever reason it made me feel like I couldn’t open up about my experience. For as common as miscarriages are, it MUST simply be talked about that way women and partners can start receiving the support they need to get through their loss. You’re paving the way!
Thank you Claire for sharing your experience! I wish I would have been able to hear this back when I so desperately needed it. I agree, I also felt that it was hard for people to know what to say. And I feel like because it happened pretty early for me everyone treated it just as “this is so common”, and kinda made me feel like as if I ‘shouldn’t’ be that sad. Hopefully it will be easier for people experiencing this in the future! And hopefully women start talking about this more, and partners too about their experience. Thank you!