The Miscarriage Club

It was an ordinary Thursday. We got up. Made breakfast. Zach headed out to help a friend move. I was headed to Costco, but I was so tired and my breakfast wasn’t sitting right with me. I texted Zach and told him breakfast had made me sick. I sat on the couch for a bit. We were headed out of town the next day, and I thought, well, it’s been a bit, maybe I’ll just see. See what the weekend had in store. So I did it. For the first time since September, I peed on a stick. I couldn’t believe it. Before the timer was even up, there it was. That beautiful blue plus sign we had been waiting for these past eleven months. There it was. The answer to the question that had been silently gnawing at both our souls, “Is it going to just be us?” There it was. Zach texted back and asked why breakfast had made me sick. With shaking hands, I sent him a picture of the pregnancy test. “Um??!!!?” “Yep!” I called him. He was sitting on the floor sipping a ginger ale shaking. We couldn’t believe it. It was happening. The thing that we both have wanted so badly all our lives. The beginning of that journey was here. The next three weeks passed so incredibly slowly. It was like time was weighed down by our excitement, our anxiety, and our complete inability to think of baby names we agree on. We made a baby shopping list. We contemplated which room we would change to accommodate our new arrival. We did all the things you do. We even told people. We couldn’t help it. No matter what happened, people were going to find out. Why not share in the happiness? I wasn’t too bothered by pregnancy. I was tired. I could smell everything. The only complaint I had was that I don’t like food enough to be this hungry all the time. But all in all, I had it easy. So the day came for the first ultrasound. As we walked from the car, Zach said, “I’m a little scared.” Me too. But I reassured him that we didn’t have any reason to think anything was wrong. I laid on the exam room table. Answered the tech’s questions as she squirted jelly on my belly. “I’m not getting a good enough look. Do you mind using the restroom?” I skirted to the restroom with a sheet around my waist. Returned to the table. “Did you empty your bladder? See here, that’s it, it’s still pretty full.” My heart started pounding as she moved around my uterus. “I don’t think you are as far along as you think you are?” “Um…yes, I am. “ “Have you had any blood work to confirm this?” “Yes. What’s wrong?” “I’m going to get our physician to look at this.” We waited. Hoping against hope that the tech was as bad at her job as she was at communication. The physician came in, examined me and said, “Yes, see this is just a clump of cells. It’s not a viable pregnancy.” There it was. In two insensitive sentences, she had shattered my heart. We cried. Held each other. Made apologies for what was neither one of our faults. Gathered ourselves and walked over to my doctors office. She said she was so sorry. Said I didn’t do anything wrong. Said we were all so excited about this. And then she told me they would do a d&c and test the “tissue”. Ten minutes before it had been a baby. And now it was…tissue. I walked around in a haze for the next several days. For the first time in my life, I felt like a stranger in my own body. My brain knew that there was no heartbeat, no baby, but my body was still acting like there was. It was the moist bizarre biological betrayal. Never felt like my brain was in an earthly shell until the day my body became a tomb. We left town. Went to Holiday World with our nieces. We cried. We told people what was going on. Zach said that he felt like he had been tricked. Like feeling foolish was his brain’s first reaction to the loss. And we tried to be positive. It is so common. 25% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage. Not 25% of women, of pregnancies. We DID get pregnant. That was all good. But statistics did nothing for me. I don’t care how many people this happens to or how many people go on to have healthy babies. This was our baby. I was ready for THIS baby. And if you have known me at all at any point in my life, you would know the deep devastation this is to me. A few days later, we headed to the hospital. As I waited for the procedure, the nurse said to me, “I’m so sorry this is happening to you. It has happened to my wife and I more than once. It is so hard, but you are going to be alright.” Tears just streamed down my face. Next thing I knew, it was all over. I was being taken back to my recovery room. It was all over. We could go home and grieve and move on. Two days later, my doctor called with the pathology report. “It was a molar pregnancy. We will need you to come in every week for a while and have your blood tested. It is recommended that you don’t get pregnant for a year. If things go faster, we will revisit that.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!! A molar pregnancy. There are two types. One is where there is an egg with no genetic information that is fertilized. The other is when two sperm fertilize the same egg. Either way, it never becomes an embryo, but it still grows. And it can even become cancerous. 1 out of every 1,500 women has a molar pregnancy. Most people have never heard of such a thing. The problem is that you still have hcg (the pregnancy hormone) racing through your blood. You have to wait for it to flush itself out. Your body thinks it is still pregnant. As long as there is the presence of hcg, there is a chance the tissue is still there and still growing. As though the loss was not punishing enough. It was a baby. No, it was tissue. No, it actually was a tumor. A tumor. I fell in love with a tumor. It tricked me. It took up residence inside of me. It grew. And worst of all, it wouldn’t leave me in peace. This story isn’t over. It isn’t over for a while. It changes our timeline. It limits our chances. And it gives credence to the fear that we might never hold a baby of our own. It’s a funny thing having a miscarriage. You sort of join a club. A club that you had no idea had so many members you already knew. Most people don’t tell you they are pregnant for exactly this reason. So they don’t have to go back and tell you their hopes were dashed. Nobody really talks about it. And when they do, it’s not for very long. Your loss is a little undermined, but I’m not even sure why. Because everyone I have ever known, feels this deeply. Anyone that talks about it, talks about it with palpable sadness. My dad said that he never planned our lives. He was just happy we were a part of his. But once you lose a child, you realize that you aren’t just invested in what you can see, and feel, and know. You are immediately invested in their future. Their future that just became inextricably woven into your future. And that love. The love of a parent, it never leaves you. Even if you were only a parent for a few weeks. Once you are in the miscarriage club, you start to hear other people’s stories. You start to share in their grief. You see tears in their eyes for you, for them, for all of us. And you don’t feel so alone. I’m glad we told people. I really am. Telling the story of woe can get a little exhausting. But people shared in our happiness. We got to be excited with friends and family. And they all had an investment in our family. They had the same investment in our grief. They had been on the journey with us. And they grieved with us. What more could you want than people to laugh when you laugh and weep when you weep? Grief is exacting. It is cruel. It has no time limit, and arbitrary triggers. We don’t want to be the “sad” people. We don’t want to have to recover. We don’t want to have loved and lost. And we really don’t want people to look at us like…that. We are just bad at grief. And we are especially bad at miscarriages. I loved the baby we lost. Tumor or not. I loved it. I’m devastated that it never was. And I fear, I truly and deeply fear that I will never know the redemption of a happy and healthy baby. I fear that hope was sucked out of me. But I know a few things now that I didn’t know before. I know that I married a man that doubles and triples his efforts to love and be close to me in hard times, no matter how much he is hurting too. I know that I have the support and love and empathy of an extensive circle of women and men that have experienced this loss. And I know that I am loved by so many far and near that offer deep and heartfelt sympathies. That makes me a very, very blessed person. That knowledge gives me the strength to walk through this with as much grace and dignity as I can muster. So I will wipe the tears away, open my heart to hope, and find greater compassion. I am not alone. People join our club everyday. And they all need us to listen to their stories with tears in our eyes.