Something Came Up

*Disclaimer: Early pregnancy loss

Yesterday marks 2 years since I was in the ER.

Alone, at the start of a pandemic, watching life drain from my body.  I’ve spent a lot of time, energy, and intention healing from the emotional impact. Processing, changing perspective and being intentional with my healing process.  

This is one more step to recovery.

Recognizing the Need

This past weekend we decided to have a garage sale.  We’ve been holding on to a lot of our son’s outgrown belongings thinking, planning, and wanting another kid.  It’s been 9 years since he was a baby, but thoughts of our next one left us asking “what if we need this?”

-What if we need a stroller? 

-What if we need a pack n play? 

-What if it’s a boy and we need clothes and can have years of options ready and waiting for him?  

The first time around we were young, barely married, and broke.  Babies have a lot of needs and it took everything we had to cover just the basics.  Thinking about starting from scratch brings up all the fear-based memories of making ends meet with the bare minimum. In spite of that, I made a conscious decision to let everything go.  Going through all the onesies and toddler jeans, little boy shoes and tiny shirts, something came up.  

The deeper layer of the need is the feeling that we need another child to make our family complete.  We never planned to be a one kid household.  We both grew up in large families. When we met we laughed at how we have the same families, except opposite. He has 2 brothers and 1 sister.  I have 2 sisters and 1 brother.  He’s black, I’m white. We’re literally yin and yanging it out here.  My siblings are one of the things I am most grateful for in this life.  I am fortunate to have a close relationship with all of them, including my in-laws and their spouses (even though there’s a lot of physical distance, the love runs deep).  My siblings and I get each other in a way that no one else can.  Holidays, trips, wine nights; my siblings are my people (in-laws included ;). I want that for our son.  We want that for our son.  And in April 2020, we thought it was finally happening.

Remembering the Past

When I found out I was pregnant with Jayce, it was a giant surprise.  

We’d only been married 3 months and kids were in the future, but the distant future, or so we thought. When I started feeling off and took a test “just to be sure”, I immediately took two more because I couldn’t believe my eyes. 

Positive.  

The doctor’s office had us schedule an ultrasound to come in and gauge how far along I was because I honestly had no clue. We were still feeling excitedly surprised when we went to the appointment, but our surprise turned to shock as the doctor announced 

“it’s twins!”.  

First pregnant, now twins?! 

We had about 6 weeks where we thought we would be needing two of everything.  Around 11 weeks we announced to our families that we were expecting by handing out two presents with two different ultrasound pictures.  It was fun to see them slowly put together that we were having two babies. 

I went in for my next appointment around 13 weeks and in another surprise, 

I found out I had my first miscarriage.  

Physically I was okay, my body pretty much absorbed Baby B without any need for intervention.  I was terribly sick my whole first trimester so it was hard for me to know what was atypical.  Mentally, I guess I was numb. I unconsciously chose to feel nothing.  But I distinctly remember someone saying to me 

“Well aren’t you glad? Twins would be a lot”.  

And even though I knew twins would be a handful, I had been mentally preparing and emotionally loving them for weeks.  I thought that was a pretty fucked up thing to say, but I didn’t have the cajones to tell someone that then. Between riding a giant hormonal roller coaster and reeling from all the surprises, I had to refocus all of my energy on supporting Baby A, I couldn’t focus on how I felt.

-But when we go to family gatherings and a relative asks, “when are you having more kids?”, something comes up.

-When my friends have beautiful new babies and I am so excited for them, something comes up.

-When someone makes an “only child” comment, “only children are spoiled”, “only children don’t know how to share”, “only children must be bored, how sad it is for them”, something comes up.

-When I think about what my idealized version of what our family looks like, something comes up. 

Respecting the Loss

Devastated.  I know exactly how I felt about my second miscarriage, I was devastated, and something big came up. 

Just like everyone else in the world, we were home quarantining in April of 2020. With only a month of Covid Confinement under our belts, we were living our best lives.  All 3 of us were home working and schooling together, and we thought life had momentarily slowed down and were embracing this “temporary” change in routine.  I started feeling off again and again took a test just to be sure.  This time when it said positive, I was filled with excitement.

For the first 4 years of parenthood, we weren’t ready for another kid, for many reasons.  But when our son turned 5, we decided, yeah, we could do this again.  When a couple of years passed, I was starting to wonder if and when it would actually happen. I underestimated how excited I would be when it finally did.  Jayce had been asking for a sibling for a while now and I was so pumped to tell him it was actually happening.  I savored the secret for a whole day just to myself, enjoying the sweetness of knowing we were finally growing our family.  

I sat the boys down and told them after dinner and filmed the whole thing.  Their unified shock was adorable.  After many “Are you serious’s?” from JT, he finally realized, yes I was dead serious.

We spent the next few weeks talking together about the future.  We prayed for the baby in our nightly prayers with our son.  We told a few close friends and family.   I was looking forward to being pregnant during the pandemic and hoping I would be able to spend the majority of my pregnancy at home.  This time I knew exactly how far along I was and had figured it out around 6 weeks.  I wasn’t in a rush to get to the doctor, they would only see me virtually anyways because of Covid.  

The week of my first virtual appointment, I had started spotting.  Of course, my mind went to the worst-case scenario, but I talked to several people who said it’s normal and often happens with baby #2.  On Friday the nurse confirmed that yes, it was normal, but asked if I wanted to come in on Monday to get checked out.  I said yes and scheduled the appointment.  Throughout the weekend, I was consistently seeing spots of blood.  I was anxiously googling everything I could about miscarriages, what to look for and what was normal.  By Sunday I was a wreck and by Monday morning, I was a full-on bleeding basket case.

I knew it was over before I called the nurse, there was so much blood.  I had my appointment scheduled that day and I wasn’t sure if I should come in or not.  When I described my symptoms and what was happening to the on-call nurse, she confirmed with an OBGYN and said I needed to get to the ER. Now.

I couldn’t think straight.  My husband was frozen.  I just started yelling at everyone that we had to go.  We packed up my son and dropped him off at my in-laws, not knowing how long we’d be gone or what to expect.  

Going to the ER during a pandemic was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life.  Masks were new then but we had ours on.  We couldn’t sit near anyone in the lobby.  I checked in, and after waiting 15 minutes with my husband, they informed me that he couldn’t come to the room with me.  I was crushed. I didn’t want to go through whatever was coming toward me alone, but I had no choice but to grin and bear it as the check-in person assured me it would be okay.  

 Everyone kept telling me it was going to be okay. The first nurse that checked my vitals dismissed most of what I said and told me not to worry saying ‘everything will be okay”.  When the doctor came and I recounted everything that happened and was happening, she said, “I’m sure everything is fine, but we’ll run some tests to be sure”. It felt like no one was listening to me.  In the greater scheme of emergencies in the ER I can sympathize that a miscarriage is relatively low on the totem pole, but the way everyone kept making me feel like I was overreacting was maddening.  I waited, bleeding on a bed pad, for over an hour for the first tests, blood draws to check my hCG levels.  There was a TV and the scene from the Sex in the City movie where Big leaves Carrie at the altar was on.  Carrie was sobbing as she smashed her bouquet over Big’s head and I was silently crying as I sat alone in a sterile room waiting to find out if I was as lifeless as she felt.  I took a picture of myself to see what I looked like. I looked empty.  I remembered thinking how weird it was watching one of my favorite movies during one of the worst times of my life and contemplating if I would always associate the movie with this moment moving forward. (*spoiler alert: I do.)

Another hour after my blood was drawn, I was wheeled in my bed to the ultrasound room.  Vaginal ultrasound, topical ultrasound, and pictures were taken from every angle. 30 minutes later they wheeled me back.  I waited for another 2 hours, alone, before anyone had any information.  Finally, 3 and half hours later, the doctor came in with my results.  This time her entire demeanor had changed.  She was extremely sympathetic as she confirmed what I already knew was true, the baby was gone.  I never wanted to leave a building so fast, but it was another hour before I was discharged.  Almost 5 hours later, I was finally walking to meet my husband at the car.

The next week was quite frankly terrible.  I had intense cramps and heavy bleeding. I lost the embryo sac on day 1. At 9-10 weeks the developing baby is almost fully formed inside the sac, but very tiny.  Membranes from the placenta need to be expelled. Everything your body had spent weeks creating needs to come out.  The description you hear and see everywhere is that a miscarriage is like a heavy period. That really pissed me off.

I don’t think that description does justice to the experience and diminishes all of the physical and emotional processes a woman is going through.  I described it as mini-labor.

When it was all said and done, someone said to me “at least you only knew for 3 weeks”.

It was “only 3 weeks” but we had waited almost 3 years for it to happen.

It was “only 3 weeks” but my body was already changing and continued to change for weeks after.

It was “only 3 weeks” but we still had to tell our son the sibling he was hoping for wasn’t coming.

It was “only 3 weeks” but we had started emotionally prepared for a lifetime.

Reinventing How to Heal

The prevalent advice to women is “miscarriages happen, don’t share you are pregnant until 12 weeks”.  I think that is complete and utter bullshit.  

Why are we telling women to keep their trauma inside? Why are we refusing support and refusing to acknowledge women’s real pain in the loss?  Why are we told to keep it quiet? 

To avoid uncomfortable confrontation, that’s why.  A patriarchal society wants you to keep it quiet so you can keep working, keep mothering, keep acting as if everything is fine and dismiss your needs to continue to put others first.  

It works for them, so we’ve been silenced to keep the peace.  But it’s time for us to be loud.

As women we deserve the right to speak up, share our stories, demand people to pay attention.  If not for them, for us.  To support eachother, to be there through the pain, to make visible what we are told to keep quiet.  And to heal, together.  Just like Carrie being supported by her girls from the emotional heartbreak with Big, we all deserve to be supported from the emotional traumas of motherhood.   If this is you: I see you, I am with you, I am you.

Releasing the Need

When we had the garage sale, something came up.  This time, I took time to recognize the need. To remember the past. To respect the loss. To know I’m reinventing my healing. And to release the need.  I was making a physical decision to let go of the need that another child will complete our family.  The want is still there, but the need is being let go.  There’s a lot of possibilities in the future. Maybe we’ll adopt, maybe we’ll foster, maybe we’ll get pregnant again.  But for now, I am finally embracing where we are at without needing anything else to complete me.

My second miscarriage sent me on a deep emotional healing journey.  I started therapy.  I started reconnecting with my body.  I deepend my spiritual practices.  I started to challenge myself to sit with my emotions and not ignore them, hide them, deny them or numb myself from feeling them.  When something comes up, I am finally trying to figure out what it is.  
For me, healing is a dark business and one filled with a roller coaster of ups and downs. I am deeply grateful for the lessons, but they’ve been far from easy. It’s been two years of honoring myself enough to take the time to heal, and I’m just getting started.