Our First Miscarriage (2014)

This is the story of our first baby that we lost to miscarriage, it happened in 2014 in our first year of marriage. I hope this post celebrates the life, shares a bit of the excitement, sorrow, and finally peace we felt and that it can help someone going through similar circumstances to know they aren’t alone. 

While we were on our honeymoon in Mexico, we were eating breakfast in the dining room and chatting about NFP (as you do) and we decided that we were okay with becoming pregnant. Some people had told us it would be better to wait, get to know each other as husband and wife first and all that. We decided that although advice like that is good, we knew deep down in our hearts that our desire was to have babies and we didn't have a real reason to wait. After all between my husbands two older brothers there were already 5 kids and one on the way (spoiler: there are now 11!) and the week before our wedding my twin sister announced her pregnancy. Why not give our child close cousins? Since getting married only 6 months apart, my sister and I dreamed of having our babies as close together as possible. God willing of course.

This was October. For the next months, we practiced our NFP (if you don't know what Natural Family Planning is, it is a natural method of tracking and interpreting your fertility symptoms to achieve or avoid pregnancy) to the best of our ability to “achieve” pregnancy, and after a month of waiting and then getting my period again and trying again and being disappointed again, I began to become discouraged. For all of the NFP rules there are for avoiding pregnancy, I thought that it would be super duper easy to get pregnant, I mean look at all those unplanned pregnancies that keep popping up, surely someone who was actually trying to get pregnant would have a better chance than someone who was certainly trying not to!!

I was doing everything, cutting back on caffeine (is this a thing? I'm not cutting back now at all! Must look into this), taking prenatals, taking pregnancy test time and again but no pink line. Kyle was away during the week at Police College and was only home on the weekends, so NFP aside, we had just left it up in the air, because there is not much planning one can do when you only have the weekends. So weekends it was. 

A few months later. March. Only five months of trying to conceive, which now seems like such a short time, then it seemed like much longer of a wait. A good friend and I were chatting about what if I was pregnant and everything and it was the day before Kyle would be home for the weekend. I thought it was a long shot because Kyle and I had barely seen each other and I had given up buying pregnancy tests because it's rather expensive (tip: the dollar store sells them, it's way cheaper) when you could just wait a few more days for your period… anyways I forgot about the conversation.

I was at superstore the next day getting groceries when she texted me to ask about if I had gotten my period or not. Close friends, you can ask those type of things, especially regarding possible babies!! I said I hadn't but I wasn’t going to get a test today and I would just wait. However before I got my shopping done I realized I had to pee so I caved and went to the pharmacy. Then I held my pee in check out and all the way home! I was dancing around reading the instructions (that I had read a hundred times) to make sure I did it exactly right, and while I was washing my hands it was sitting on the sink…my eyes are playing tricks on me… no…it is a line! A line is a line, no matter how faint!

Yay! I didn’t know what to feel because I simply didn’t expect this to happen! I was happy!! I thanked God, and then I had to think up a way to tell Kyle! I was going to his families house for a family gathering…I think someones birthday maybe? So I would have to sit through all that and wait to tell him! I decided the best and funnest way to tell him would be with baby clothes because Baby Gap amiright? So I left a tad early and hit up the Gap… and locked my keys in my car…"hey everyone I’m late for dinner because I am at the Gap." Good thing everyone already knows I like Gap? I ended up only being 15 minutes late thankfully! I picked up some cute little baby onesies with a mama gold fish and a baby goldfish that says I love mommy and a corresponding one that says I love daddy and wrapped them up. I awkwardly accepted wine and poured myself an embarrassingly small glass because when do I ever refuse wine? Finally Kyle gets there and we sing happy birthday and then finally it became time to go home!

As soon as we got in the car I gave him the package and he opened it and paused and then looked at my huge grin but was still like…really? I had to clarify YES I am pregnant! He drove straight to a convenience store to pick up a box of two tests because he had to see for himself. I took another when we get home and one in the morning. The line was a tad fainter the next morning but still a line is a line. Kyle was hesitant to tell people, but he knew I wanted to, just family, and so on Saturday we told them all and all were very happy. My parents live far away so we were going to wait to tell them in person, then decided that wasn’t soon enough so we would tell them on the weekend when Kyle got home for the weekend, then he left back to college for the week.

I went to work Monday with a spring in my step. I told one person, another EA who I was close with.  I had to tell someone or I would go crazy! I took it easy during gym class. Then on Wednesday, around 10:30 I went to the bathroom and found I was spotting, not what a pregnant woman wants to see! I immediately thought no, no, no! My boss was a saint and let me just go home, I told her I really wasn’t feeling well and she let me go. 

Got in my car and started bawling and called my sister. Cried all the way to the clinic (in hindsight there is really not much they could do for a loss this early). They took my urine and I waited for the doctor. She came in and said this was totally normal during early pregnancy for most women (but is it really?), I told her I was about 5 weeks (she didn’t ask any other information) she reassured me and talked to me as if I was pregnant. I asked about the urine test, she hadn’t gotten it so she left the room and when she came back she told me straight out, you aren’t/weren't pregnant. She said she didn’t think it was a miscarriage and that I wasn’t pregnant at all and that it was possible to get a false postitive and pregnancy tests can be faulty (but can they really?)…. this made me feel so sad and confused… I had been charting, I knew my cycle, I've always been regular so I knew I couldn’t have gone up to 6 days over..it just didn’t make sense to me. I felt really hurt that she didn't believe me. She did get me a requisition to test my blood so I went and did that.

I got blood taken and went home and sat on my couch and cried. Talked more to Amanda and my mom and then to Kyle (he had long days at college and I could only reach him once he was available). His mom also called me, bless her, because he told her I went to the clinic. 

Man though was I heart broken! I only knew this tiny, tiny human existed for five days!! Five days. I never thought this could happen to me, yet it had a huge impact on me. After a couple of hours though… I knew I couldn’t be stuck in the state of devastation for very long, it’s just not in my nature. I began to feel peace, and even the rumblings of joy, even if they were far off rumblings. I sincerely, through tears, said thank you to God. And I meant it. I knew that what he was doing was for our good, and in His own special timing. I know this may not be the case with everyone, everybody deals differently with loss and it's also okay to be angry and wrestle with God. It's ok to be mad. It's ok to feel exactly what you are feeling. For me by the grace of God, it was peace. Also it was the Feast day of St.Joseph, who is really special to us as a couple, so I knew God had this all in His hands, and that our baby was with Him (and St.Joseph).

It was hard and humbling to tell everyone (even though it wasn’t our fault and all but I always feel bad giving other people bad news) We got through it though and it sincerely brought Kyle and I closer together which I am thankful for.  

This is the story of our first precious soul that was given to us. If you are going through this I am so sorry, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. I am always open to talk and listen as I know I felt very alone at the time, I simply didn’t know anyone who had gone through it until it happened to me, and this is why I share my story. 

This is a prayer/reflection that deeply comforted me throughout that time: 

https://www.ewtn.com/devotionals/prayers/miscarriage.htm