Miscarriage: Her Side of the Story

This is a guest post by my wife, Annie, to go with the post I had written a couple weeks back about our miscarriage:

I wrote this about a month ago, just to chronicle what was happening in our life. I’m not as much of a writer as Matt is, but I wanted to get my thoughts and feelings down on paper as we were going through things. As you know from Matt’s posts, we recently went through a miscarriage. Not to keep talking about it forever and ever, but turns out it’s pretty common and we want to shed some light on it. I wanted to share my thoughts and feelings here, with you, as part of the journey that Matt has shared with you. I also wanted to thank this community for all of the support that you’ve given us through this, and other things. It’s appreciated and felt more than you could ever know! So, here goes…

Another chapter in our life has ended…or started, depending on how you look at things. In early December, I had my last glass of wine for a spell, knowing that in the morning I would take a pregnancy test to confirm what I already knew was happening somewhere inside of me. From that confirmed moment, our world completely changed its entire rotation! We’re having a baby!

It took a day or two to really sink in, and then, after telling friends and family, we were floating on a big pouffy cloud of dreams. We talked and talked and covered it all; from changing diapers to who’d get to hold the baby more to how we’d take “him” with us on adventures and show him the world through our eyes.

I could feel it…my whole belly felt alive! It’s sort of possible that some of that was in my head, but maybe not. I felt a feeling that I can’t really put into words here, but will try; magical, special, responsible, beautiful, miraculous, capable, awe-some, humbled.

As wonderful as I felt, I also knew that there was the possibility that I could miscarry. After all, it’s pretty common especially in women that get pregnant at an “older” age. I turned 40 in December, so that puts me in the older category, even though I feel like I’m 25 on the inside!

On a Monday, a few weeks ago our fears were confirmed that I had miscarried. I had some mild cramping and bleeding and then, poof! Our magical, special little package was gone.

Here’s an excerpt that I wrote as this was all happening….

“I’ve been having some cramping and bleeding. I’m scared to death that I might miscarry, but have been assured by google and friends that it’s “normal”. My logical mind tells me that everything happens for a reason, my body will take care of things, I can’t change this outcome at this point. Hmmm, so we wait. We wait to see if this too shall pass and the pregnancy continues, or if it doesn’t and we have a miscarriage to work through. We’re logical people. We know the odds…my age, as well as general statistics say it’s completely common for me to miscarry. I don’t buy it. I don’t want to miscarry. I’m strong, I’m healthy, my body has always served me well and has never let me down. Why should it now? We deserve this, right? We’ve waited so long in our lives to have a child and here we are; faced with the chance of losing our little, tiny miracle. It’s the size if a pea, but has already had more impact on our lives than any other thing ever has.”

I felt an emptiness, not like and aching or anything, just missing that magical special feeling that I got to experience for a week and a half. I was sad, I was disappointed, but most of all, I was okay. Sound weird? Yeah, it might…but honestly, I felt at peace with it. I cried and all that and wondered what happened to make the baby not stay, but I knew I was okay, I knew we were okay, I knew that when things aren’t meant to be, it’s okay to let the dream fly away. There will be another opportunity for me to carry a magical special package when the stars align and things are just right in the world. Then we’ll meet…that baby and us. We’ll look into each other’s eyes and know that we we’re in this together, all three of us.

The funny thing about this miscarrying deal to me is just how common it seems to be. It might just be me, but I never knew that just about everybody we’ve come across has been touched in some way by miscarriage. Maybe I wasn’t listening, but my gut tells me that it’s just something people don’t really talk too much about, not like a dirty secret or anything, just one of those sad and unfortunate facts of life. It makes me want to talk about it more, makes me want to make it known that it’s part of the life process, part of the getting pregnant process. It’s kind of like when you get married and go through all the fluffy wedding hoopla and excitement and then nobody tells you that you and your handsome new hubby might not like each other every minute of every day. That’s just a fact of life, and the sooner you come to peace with that fact, the easier it is to negotiate.

I don’t mean to say that we should focus on the negative things in life, but I just feel like if we bring these kinds of things out into the open then they’re not hidden in the dark anymore and we can actually see what they look like. It’s like they say…we fear the unknown because it’s just that, unknown! Now that we’ve gone through this miscarriage, I know what we’re dealing with as we move forward. We have a whole different outlook on this “get pregnant” thing. Don’t get me wrong, I knew that there could be difficulties, but what we see out in the world are happy, glowing pregnant people with big bellies that we all want to rub, right? We don’t see all the other stuff that potentially goes along with it.

So here we go, moving along on our adventure through life and if the baby gods grace us with a successful pregnancy then we’ll happily take that path. If it’s just not in the cards for us then we’ll have this experience to take with us on a different path. Either way, we’re happy, healthy, and will continue to move through this very interesting life!

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• Miscarriages Suck (just stating the obvious) (matthewliberty.com)