I had a miscarriage on December 6, 2019.

And I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to write about it. I don’t want to think about it. And I absolutely don’t want to feel anything about it. But here we are. Like Ernest Hemingway said, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

This has been incredibly hard to write about, and I’m not sure why- but it feels important that I do. I’m realizing as I’m dredging up these memories and emotions that there is a deep dark cavern of hurt and damage that it caused. Apparently it’s not healed, and I guess I need the closure. Possibly some of you do too with your similar experiences?

On that note, I’m wondering if maybe you can help me figure out why, after six years, I still cannot reconcile these things:

1. It was just a miscarriage. I was only pregnant for like a week. It’s not like I was further along. It happened so early, does it even really count? Other people don’t think it counts probably. If one more person calls it a chemical pregnancy I’m going to lose it. But it shouldn’t be that big of a deal. If I act like it’s a big deal I’m just being dramatic.

2. It destroyed me and hollowed me out inside, greatly affected my marriage, my mental health, the next several years of my life, and my eventual pregnancy with the triplets and ability to attach to them. *I did not know it was doing this.* It was tightly shoved down into a dark corner, because it didn’t even really count seeing as it was so early.

I have spent a lot of time looking at this picture:

I was pregnant in it, but I didn’t know it yet. I was hopeful. For maybe the first time ever- in well over a decade of infertility- I was allowing myself to be truly hopeful.

You see this was the first time we were doing IVF. Miracles and blessings from other people had happened to allow us to be able to afford it. My doctor was good. Really good. We got more eggs than we anticipated- we had multiple Grade A embryos! For once, everything seemed to be good news.

Even with all that though, I was much too jaded from years of nothing to allow hope to creep in.

But it wasn’t coming from me.

I had seemed to be getting constant messages from God- for months- leading up to the procedure that I was to let hope enter my heart. They were not subtle messages. I could hear them loud and clear- and I was terrified.. but I decided to try my hardest to trust God and do the unthinkable, the forbidden.

Hope.

And wouldn’t you know, it worked?!

After so many years of negative pregnancy tests, I actually spotted the faintest of lines. Then one the next day a little stronger.

Then my blood test at the doctor the next day. He called me with the results and confirmed the pregnancy, but said my hcg wasn’t as high as he would like, so he was going to have me come in 2 days later to re-test and make sure the levels were rising.

I took the second blood test and got on a plane to California by myself to do a weekend of hair at my client’s houses. Shortly after landing and arriving at my in-laws I got the call with the results.

The doctor told me that the levels had dropped even lower and that I was going to miscarry. He said I could immediately stop my estrogen and progesterone.

In other words,

no hope.

I didn’t really hear what else he said after that. The next steps, and what he wanted to test for. I didn’t speak to him again for several years.

I don’t remember telling Jamie, or much from that day honestly. I did my hair appointments, but at the last one that evening I started cramping and bleeding.

I was able to get back to my in-laws before the worst of it, and shut myself in the back bedroom/bathroom where I was staying. I didn’t want to be with anyone, talk to anyone, think about anything. I put The Office on my laptop and spent time with Michael Scott, who seemed to be the only person allowed to be with me in my pain.

I flushed my baby down the toilet that night.

Along with all of my hope, and any trust that I had in God.

I canceled the rest of my hair appointments and flew home a different person.

Part 2 will be published tomorrow