I had a miscarriage.
That is a really hard to line to write, but at the same time it feels good to have that much of a grip on things. Because I certainly do know that things can be much worse.
I didn’t realize it had been as long as it had since I had written on this blog. I’m not really sure that people read it, but it is a place for me to document what I have going on in my life, and this is certainly something that has been going on.
It has been so long since I have written because I didn’t want to talk about what was going on.
It was Thanksgiving Day and Jason and I were in Charlotte with my dad’s side of the family and as we watched Anna and all of our cousin’s children run around, Jason turned and look at me and said, ‘I’m ready when you are.’ We were ready to have a baby. Both of us know we want a bunch of them and we knew we’d start not incredibly long after getting married. So around Christmas we started not doing things that we had previously done to prevent getting pregnant. (I’m trying to beat around the bush, here, without getting graphic about things that everyone knows about!) Well January came and went and nothing. February came and went and nothing. All we did was talk about babies and think about babies and plan for babies. We didn’t want anyone to know that we were trying for a few different reasons. First of all ,I think it is disturbing that people know that you are having sex all the time with the intention of getting knocked up. I don’t want anyone hesitating to call because, ‘I wonder if they’re rolling around right now and I shouldn’t bother them.’ I believe that is no one else’s business. Secondly, not that we thought this would apply to us but we were playing the ‘just in case’ game (little did we know), that if it took us a while we didn’t want anyone to have to feel sorry for us or worry about us. So we romped away and dreamed of all the little things that babies need. We argued about names and nursery patterns and car seats. But we didn’t want anyone to know. So no blogging for me. This consumed all of our time, so I had nothing to talk about!
Well March came and went and about mid-April, I was a day late. Jason came home the night before with a couple of sticks for me to pee on. One was a spiffy digital one that was relatively fool-proof. So that Friday morning I got up and peed on a stick. I came back to bed and handed it to Jason and drifted back to sleep. I had kind of stopped getting my hopes up. Every single time I had sworn I was pregnant. I could feel myself getting more and more tired and I just knew my face was breaking out because a little one was stirring around in there. This time, though, I really did feel different. I could have sworn I felt the implantation and had a little implantation bleeding. My nipples were killing me and I was EXHAUSTED. So a few minutes after I handed Ja the stick he checked it and after a few seconds he rolled over with THE biggest grin I’ve ever seen and said, ‘We’re having a baby!’ We were beyond excited. We were even late for school that morning because we just laid in bed and planned and talked and dreamed. We knew we wanted to wait until my first doctors appointment before we told anyone, so we needed to bask in it alone and then be able to hold it in. Over the next couple of weeks, the news slowly leaked. My friend Carrie knew without me saying a word. We went to Concord Mills to buy a crib and ended up telling my college roommate, Katie. All of my college roommates and some really good friends came and stayed with me for the weekend and they found out quickly when I wasn’t drinking. Jason told his friends at work and a few friends back home. We swore all of them to secrecy and had the best time carrying around our secret.
Well I went to my first doctors appointment and everything went really well. We talked about what to do, what not to do, what is normal, what is not, how I don’t need caffeine because my heart has palpitations. I walked out of there happy as a clam with tons of dreams and plans.
Next we told Leslie, Will, and Anna. Then slowly we let a few more people know, but not letting the cat totally out until our parents knew. We had this grand plan of waiting until Mother’s Day and giving them a card with someone in it about having a baby.
Well we did make it until the weekend before Mother’s Day, when my Mom came up to Winston for the weekend. Jason and I were at dinner with Mom and Anna and we just couldn’t hold it in anymore. So we told her sitting in the middle of Jason’s Deli. She cried. We cried. We laughed. We all forgot to breathe. It was the best night. We took her to Babies ‘R’ Us to finally be able to share some of these plans we had worked so hard and so long on. Then Mom said she couldn’t keep this secret, so we went back to Leslie and Will’s and Skyped Deddy and told him. Then we called Greg and Jeffro and told them. Everyone was so excited for us.
In order to prevent Ja’s parents from finding out some other way than from us, we hopped in the car the next morning and drove to Jacksonville. We told his parents and brother and within a few minutes, the entire Eastern coast new! Everyone was beyond excited. We took them to lunch and to Babies ‘R’ Us to show them what we had been looking at.
By the time we got back to Winston, the cat was out of the bag on facebook. EVERYONE knew within an hour or so. We did a little damage control and made sure our good friends got at least a text or email from us so they didn’t find it on facebook.
That was probably one of the greatest weekends of my life. There was nothing but excited and pure bliss over the news of us having a little one.
That happiness was quickly smashed to pieces.
Monday we got up and went to school and everyone was so happy for us. Lots of our friends had seen on facebook and I was getting congratulated left and right. I taught through the morning and ate my few snacks to keep myself from feeling sick. Right before lunch I started cramping a little bit. I cramped from the beginning, so I figured it was nothing. Cramping is normal. Well at lunch they hurt so bad that I went to the bathroom to check to see if anything was coming out. It was all clean down there, so I just assured myself I was being paranoid. I asked my friend Carrie about it and she told me that unless I was doubled over in pain, cramping is not a bad thing. Well, by about 6th period I had to sit down and bring my knees up to my chest. They were the most painful thing I had ever felt. I went to the bathroom right after 6th period – and there it was. When I wiped, I saw the red. The beginning of the end.
I immediately started panicking. I started bawling and shaking. After a few seconds I knew I needed to get myself together and call the doctor. As soon as the nurse answered the phone I started crying hysterically. The sweet nurse said they could get me in in 30 minutes. I immediately packed up and went to the car. I called Ja on the way out. I tried to tell him I didn’t want him to miss practice and he told me to shut my mouth and that he’d see me in a few minutes. As I was pulling into the doctor’s office a woman who was obviously 7 or 8 months pregnant walked in front of my car while she was smoking a cigarette. I wanted to scream out ‘F*** YOU!’ as I was pulling in having a miscarriage. I had done everything right and this was happening to me and you don’t give a shit about what you do to that baby and you are going to pop one out in a few months. I walked in to the doctors office that was such a great place just the week before and now I hated it. I went to the bathroom once I got checked in. As I was walking in I was PRAYING as hard as I ever had that nothing would be there. That this was normal spotting and maybe a result from our romp Friday morning. When I sat down, there was no denying what was happening. There was a gush a blood and blood clots. Again I started bawling and again I got myself together after a few seconds.
They called us back to the room and I had a transvaginal ultrasound. That is when the tech told us that it was bad news. This is when I lost it and didn’t get it back together for over a week. I started shaking and sobbing and squeezing Jason’s hand as hard as I could. We both cried. We both squeezed. Our dreams were being crushed. Someone was playing a really bad joke on us. We had just announced our great news to everyone. We had gone into this Monday on the high of our lives. And now we were knocked down to lower than I’ve ever been before.
So I went home and bled and cried. I would be ok and then I would just start sobbing uncontrollably. Jason and I laid in bed and just cried and cried together. He held me as close as he could as I got his shirt soaking wet from the tears and the snot. He was stronger than I could have ever asked for and he was absolutely perfect. I loved him before this happened, but our love has gone to a different place now. Going through this together has made us stronger than I ever knew we could be. I truly do thank God for that.
I took a week off of work and just talked and prayed and cried. I tried to go back for a half a day and I realized that was a mistake. As my mom told, ‘You can’t badass your way through this. You’ve got to deal with this and go back when you really are ready.’ That was the worst week of my life. I have never been depressed before that I know of, but there is no doubt that I was depressed for those awful days. I was unmotivated and just really sad. I would cry and cry and cry and cry and never ever did it make me feel better. I would get really mad and go get a beer because I could drink a beer now and then I would sob and sob because I didn’t want to be able to drink a beer.
Over that week I had lunch with Leslie a couple of times and we talked. I apologized for things I had said to her as she went through her miscarriages. When it happened to her I had told her that if something was wrong, it is better for something to happen now than later. I had told her that this happened for a reason and that one day she’d understand.
That is all bullshit. That doesn’t do a single damn thing to make her feel better. That makes me feel better. That helps me deal with what my sister is going through. There is absolutely nothing you can say to make someone going through this feel any better. Nothing will take away the hurt. Nothing takes away the pain. Nothing takes away the fact that every time she goes to the bathroom for a week and has to wipe away blood that is she is wiping away the remains of her child and the dreams and the hopes and the fears that went along with it.
I never felt my baby move. I never heard a heart beat. I didn’t know if it was a girl or a boy. So I have come to realize that when I had my miscarriage, it wasn’t necessarily that little baby that I was mourning the loss of. I didn’t name that baby and I didn’t save anything to remind me of his/her life. I do believe that babies have souls once they are created, but apparently God needed that soul more than I did. What I was mourning was the loss of a dream, the loss of hope, the loss of innocence, the loss of absolutely pure emotions. Pure joy when we read the pregnant on the stick. Pure joy when I felt nauseas. Pure joy at the thought of what was to come for us. Pure joy when we looked at nursery bedding. Pure joy when we told people we were pregnant. Sure, my sister had had two miscarriages, but that wasn’t going to happen to us. She has been unfortunate and my heart absolutely breaks for her, but I wasn’t going to be scared the whole time just because of what had happened to her. We weren’t going to wait until the second trimester to tell because this was something that didn’t happen to us. Just people that you know of.
Never again will I feel pure joy when I have a positive pregnancy test. Never again will anyone feel pure joy when they find out we are pregnant again. Every single cramp and every single pain will scare the shit out of me. I will not feel pure joy until I have that healthy, happy baby in my arms for the first time. Only then will people be truly happy for us.
And I hate that. And I’m angry about that. I’m angry at God. I’m angry at pregnant woman that I see walking by. Especially those that look really happy and carefree. I’m angry at women I see playing with their little babies. All of this anger was building up and not going away. So I emailed my minister in Wilmington. I told him the same things I am writing right now. His response was perfect. He went through the good things and the bad things of what is happening. Then he said, ‘God can handle you being mad at him, but be easy on the pregnant women.’
I laughed and cried at the same time as I read that. That pretty much summed everything up really well. It was at that point that I began to get ok. I feel like the positives are beginning to poke their way through all the bad and I’m glad for that.
I’m still really angry at God. I’m angry for him letting this happen. I’m angry because it happened the day after we told everyone our perfect news. I’m angry because it will never be the same. But there are some things I have learned from this.
First of all, please don’t feel like if you are around me and you are pregnant I wish you weren’t or I wish anything bad for you. Or if you have little children. I don’t want them to go away and I don’t want anything bad to happen to them or to you. You have your own babies. I don’t want your babies. I want my babies. And I just can’t have them yet.
Secondly, I know it is going to be impossible to know what to say. You don’t have to say anything. Just say that you love me and that you are sorry this happened. I don’t need you to try to fix it. There is no fixing it. Anything else you say, unless you have been there, is going to be bullshit to help make you feel better. So if you need to do that, that is ok. Just know that it is going to mean nothing to me.
Lastly, there is going to be a baby that is going to be made by us that is going to be loved beyond belief. That baby is going to be sweet as can be. She is going to have chubby cheeks and be sassy as hell, just like her mama. And he is going to have curly ringlets on the top of his head that fall down into his big blue eyes, just like his daddy. And that baby will be loved every single day of her life. Because of who he is and what we have been through. And we’ll all be better off for it.
Someday.
I can take the rain on the roof of this empty house
That don’t bother me
I can take a few tears now and then and just let them out
I’m not afraid to cry every once in a while
Even though going on with you gone still upsets me
There are days every now and again I pretend I’m ok
But that’s not what gets me
What hurts the most
Was being so close
And never knowing
What could have been
And not seeing that loving you
Is what I was trying to do
-Rascal Flatts
‘What Hurts The Most’
