Miscarriage | My Hearts Untold Story

Mommy & Baby's First Selfie's

you filled a space in my heart that I did not know was empty. 

Among women who know they are pregnant, approximately 15% of those pregnancies end in miscarriage- with 80% of those miscarriages happening in the first 3 months. After much research on miscarriages and some healing I wanted to take some time to be vulnerable and  open up to what I have been going through the past couple months. 

My fingers are numb as I write the word, miscarriage. I should be putting the crib together and making space in the closet for your clothes. I should be preparing for little sleep, late night feedings. I should be trying to pick the perfect name for you sweet Angel. I should be sharing in joy with friends & family for your arrival. Yet, I am left alone with grief and fighting the demons of losing you, my beloved child.

December 3, 2015- My life changed. My heart broke in ways I never thought possible and I felt feelings I never could image a person feeling. When something bad happens to you, it’s hard to shake the feeling that other people think you did something to bring it on. But when I had a miscarriage, the worst culprit of this reflexive blaming was myself.  If I were consistent in taking my prenatal, stop-drinking caffeine, stressed a little less, and a million other reasons would my baby still be here? And the worst thought I thought was if I hadn't questioned whether or not to keep this baby would God have let me keep it? 

But wait, let me rewind to the moment Dr. Shah whispered “I am so sorry Elena, your baby lost it’s heart beat. I’ll give you some time to get dressed and when you are ready we can talk about your options.”

        

It was December 3^rd 2015 I was anxiously awaiting my appointment at 9:30 a.m. I was scheduled to hear my sweet baby’s heart flutter for the second time. And if it was anything like the first time I knew I was going to ball like a baby again. It was the moment everything was so real for me it was the moment I really realized I  (Elena) was  growing a human. The nurse (Vanessa)  came out and call my name and I leaped out of my chair and the lady next to me said “Congratulations, Good Luck.” I smiled and gently said “Thank you! You too!”

Vanessa walked me into room 3- explained to me the protocol before Dr. Shah was to come in as if she hadn’t told me before. She then began to weigh me and I gained a whamming 6 lbs. I never thought I would be so excited for 6 lbs!! But, apparently that was great news! She then took my blood pressure and immediately her face had concern all over her. She said “Elena, you haven’t made any improvement with your blood pressure since your past three visits.” I wasn’t sure why and to be honest I knew I needed to get that under control but all I could think about was what was about to happen.

So she handed me my cover and said, “Go ahead and get un-dressed from the waist down and Dr. Shah will be in soon.” So that’s what I did I was so nervous, anxious, scared and to be honest lonely. The baby’s father decided that he was going to set this one out & that I could contact him after the baby was born or not. (But, that is a whole different story)

Moments later Dr.Shah came in with his student shadow and I was all ready to holster my feet up get my baby up on the screen so I can see my little human. He prepared the sonogram for me and we were off. I saw my baby and he said “alright Elena, lets show you your Christmas Miracle.” Once he turned on the Audio we heard nothing.  Immediately, tears started forming I was so scared. I glanced over at Dr. Shah and he had the same look on his face. 

Dr Shah asked his student to take the probe and move it to see if readjusting it would show anything and nothing… nothing but silence. Nothing but the facial expressions of both the student and Dr. Shah flooded the room. And in that moment I understood the expression “silence is louder than words.” He continued to look for what felt like an hour but, was 5 minutes and he pulled the probe out and stood up as I adjusted myself to sit up position already crying he whispered “I am so sorry Elena, your baby lost it’s heart beat. This is no longer a viable pregnancy I’ll give you some time to get dressed and when you are ready we can talk about your options.” Immediately I thought “wow, that’s got to be one of hardest jobs. To Tell a women that her baby died.”

Baby's Last Photo

As he walked out of the room and closed the door behind him I literally fell to the ground. I couldn’t believe what just happened. I wasn’t prepared for that. I didn’t want to get dressed I wanted him to come back and find my baby’s heartbeat. I wasn’t ready to just accept that news. But, a part of me knew I had to I knew I had to get dressed and hear him out and as I picked myself up off the floor and took a look around the room I saw nothing but baby photos. I mean how un-fair was that. How was I supposed to look at those nearly moments after hearing my baby did not make it? I got dressed sat patients table and waited for the knock from Dr. Shah and his student to give me my options...

Nearly 15 minutes later. A knock came at the door, Dr. Shah walked in with sadness on his face and said “Let’s discuss your options.”  Emotionally I was in shock. I didn’t want to sit down and discuss options. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what the options could be. He explained to me my two options. He said I could have the D&C Procedure  which meant I would get the baby "vacuumed" out of me or I can go ahead and have it naturally. That meant I would go into “mini” labor and I could do this in the comfort of my own home. Well, I decided that I would go ahead and have the D&C Procedure.  Something about having it naturally scared me. Because, I knew I was going to be alone. I knew the baby’s father wasn’t going to be there, my family couldn’t make it and it would just be the dogs and I. But, just in case I would go ahead and have him fill me the prescription for painkillers. He recommended I do that. Because the baby could come before the scheduled procedure and I would need some assistance.  So that was that we scheduled my procedure for a week later. He handed me my sonogram photos and said he will keep in touch & to call if I started bleeding.

I walked out of that room pissed off at the world. I was angry at my body! I questioned why I was malfunctioning- why had my body had betrayed me! 
I had to walk through the waiting room looking at all the smiling faces of mothers knowing that I was in that spot just a few moments ago. 

I went back to work and struggled with the harsh news. But, I thought if I continued my day as if nothing happened then everything would be okay right? Well, no not exactly. Because, at that point everyone already knew what I was doing already knew that I went to go see my baby. But, what they didn’t know is when I would come back all I would have left was the feeling of carrying a dead baby in me.

I was forever changed. I was heart broken. I felt empty.

But this is my truth. This is my reality.

It was three days after my appointment.  And it was hard. I didn’t want to get up, get dressed or even face the world. I received an abundance of text messages from friends and family who knew about the baby but even that was not enough.  But, then everything changed…

The morning of December 8^th 2015 I woke up about six times throughout the night. It felt like my body was performing a task that it was not ready or capable to perform. And that’s the polite way to put it. To really describe what had happened, which felt like extreme food poisoning combined with the worst menstrual cramps of my life, back aches that felt like someone was hitting you with a bat, with adding vomiting, fear, sadness and heartbreak.  Anyways, in that moment I realized that it was happening. I realized that the baby was coming whether I was ready or not and I was going to become a mother to a baby that was no longer living.  In that moment I remembered Dr. Shah saying you will go through “mini” labor- which isn’t a good word because when I slowly got out of bed and rocked my hips back and forth I was in agony. I crawled into the shower it was the only place I could get comfortable and I wanted to spend some one on one time with my baby before it made its appearance. I believe I sat in the shower for almost an hour. Praying, talking, crying, laughing, dreaming of what could have been. I knew it was going to happen soon so I made myself as comfortable as I possibly could in bed and at that moment my body was aching it was hurting it needed rest so I slept and when I woke it had happened. In that moment I saw so clearly what my heart was breaking for. What my life could have been. What baby would have called me MOMMY.  

In this experience, I longed for faith; I longed for a sense of something bigger than myself, something to fall back on.

It was hard walking around with my “secret” sadness. The whole thing was bizarrely isolating, mostly because it was so physically intense and full of uncertainty.  People at work and my friends would say, how are you? And I felt weird saying; well I am having a miscarriage. So I just put a fake smile on and said, “I’ll be okay.”  It was awful. I spent much of the day trying not to cry and still running to the bathroom to vomit. Cruelly enough, the pregnancy symptoms don’t resolve right away. The morning sickness, the mommy tummy, the tender breast…They can take days and even weeks after a miscarriage to go away. 

What hurt even worse is some people’s comments. I heard lots of ‘You’re young, you can try again,’ ‘that baby wasn’t meant to be,’ and sometimes even well meaning stuff like ‘God called them home,’ or ‘You have an angel watching over you.’ None of that ever brought me any comfort. Because all I wanted to say to those people was “its easy for you to say that because God didn’t ask you for your Angel.”  A simple ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ was always the most perfect thing I could hear — something that showed you sympathized with me and cared. I didn’t need rationalizations or anything of that sort. Just an ear and some compassion went a long way.

It’s been a wild adventure and I am so blessed to have the people that I do have in my life for support. I wouldn’t have been able to make it through some of the worst days I have experienced without there support & love.  There will always be that hovering ghost. This will always be apart of my story and my family’s story.

Perhaps if more people spoke out about how common pregnancy loss is, I wouldn’t have been so blindsided and I wouldn’t have felt so completely isolated in my pain. I think many times in life we can be naive to think that these bad things won’t happen to us. Then they do, and you’re left trying to pick up the pieces of what feels like your shattered life while hiding your pain from the world around you.

Its been a little over two months since I lost my sweet miracle. I have done everything I can to prepare of the hurt that is still to come. Like when the anniversary of the miscarriage rolls around or the unmarked due date of a delivery that will never happen arrives.  I have heard that’s when it begins to hurt harder, because at the very core they are the absence of something important. I entered the after loss broken and shattered. It’s like I had this bag of fragments I once called life and dumped them in the middle of this new world and said, “Here. This is all I’ve got left. What can I do with this?

I never had the chance to truly know my baby, but I loved it and I will forever love it. It is the baby I will never truly know.  I know now that some mothers get to hold their babies, tuck them in and watch them grow and others only get to weep over the babies they loved and lost. But, I hold true in my heart that just because my arms are empty does not make me less of a mommy.

"Miscarriages are labor & Miscarriages are birth

To consider them any less dishonors the womans womb who carried life, however briefly" -Kathryn Miller

I will never fully understand the depths of they million-dollar question “why” but, this is my reality and this is my truth.  

 Baby's Memorial Tattoo

Mommy’s Little Angel

Expected due date: June 11, 2016
Day by day, I move a little closer to recovery... though I know life will never be the same
Love- Mamma