Hellobee

October is pregnancy and infant loss remembrance month, which is doubly important to me because in October 2012, I miscarried my first pregnancy. It was devastating. I was lost, didn’t know how to deal with it and I felt almost ashamed by my inability to carry a pregnancy.

Mr. Cereal and I decided to start trying for a baby in June of 2012. We really started in April when I went off birth control, but I wasn’t tracking my cycle at that point so it was more like a warm up. I was naive enough to think we would just get pregnant on our first try in June and when we didn’t, I was upset. Each month after was equally upsetting and then in September, I took a pregnancy test on a whim and it came up positive. I was elated, but also terrified. For some reason I was beyond scared about having a miscarriage. Foreshadowing perhaps?

Before I had fallen pregnant I had convinced myself that I wanted a home birth and with that in mind, we found a local midwife who did home births. We met with her the week after I found out I was pregnant and she was nice and made me feel comfortable. When I told her I was scared of a miscarriage, she seemed uncomfortable talking about it and did not even try to reassure me. It was an awkward moment and I cringe when I think of it now.

When I was almost 7 weeks pregnant, I had some light brown spotting. This started on a Thursday and the next day I called the midwife and got her partner instead, who reassured me that brown meant old blood and not to worry. But the spotting continued and it made me nervous. I remember crying during an episode of Modern Family and saying out loud to Mr. Cereal “I can’t be pregnant anymore if I am going to cry at everything.” I played this scene over and over in my head afterwards. It haunted me for a long time.

Even though I was spotting, we decided to tell my parents on Sunday so we went up to their house and broke the news. They were semi-excited but it definitely wasn’t the happy reaction I was hoping for, which was disappointing. Afterwards we headed to a corn maze and spent the afternoon wandering through it, and I remember feeling tired but otherwise my pregnancy symptoms that I had been experiencing before were gone. By Wednesday, the spotting had remained about the same and my anxiety was at an all time high, so I called my sister who was pregnant at the time and told her that I was pregnant, but I had been spotting for about a week. She reassured me as best she could and encouraged me to see my OBGYN the next day for an ultrasound.

I called the office the next morning and they got me in for a scan about an hour later. Mr. Cereal met me at the office and I remember him being late and it pissed me off. We were ushered into an exam room and an OB who I had not seen before came in with the wand and the ultrasound machine. She started the exam and as soon as the screen came up, I knew that there was no heartbeat. Hearing her actually say the words was absolutely one of the worst moments of my life. She was incredibly sweet and encouraged me to wait a few more days and to have another ultrasound, so we scheduled one for the following Tuesday. She hugged me when she left the office and I cried on her shoulder. I will never forget that.

Mr. Cereal and I left the office and we sat in my car together and cried. I felt completely lost and I didn’t know what to do. I was terrified of the bleeding to start and I wished with all my heart that something had been different. Mr. Cereal had to go back to work so he left and I sat in my car and called my sister, who cried with me. I couldn’t take talking to anyone else so I sent a text to my mom and my other sister who were the only other people that knew I was pregnant.

I spent the weekend in bed, and on Tuesday I knew there would be no change and I was right. Still no heartbeat  I couldn’t bear the thought of having a dead baby inside of me so I scheduled a D and C for the following day  I had to pick up a vicodin from the pharmacy to take prior to the procedure, and the pharmacist was so kind to me when I started crying.

The next day I left work at noon and took the vicodin. Mr. Cereal drove me to the office and we sat in the waiting room with a number of very pregnant women, and Mr. Cereal commented about how there should be a separate waiting room for people like us. We finally got taken back into the room where they were going to do the procedure and I started to freak out. The vicodin was doing nothing for me and I couldn’t stop crying. The OB was kind and she tried to calm me down, but it wasn’t really helping so she started the procedure anyway. I had headphones in and was listening to music, but I could hear the OB talking to Mr. Cereal and I could hear the metal objects clanking on the tray. It was painful, really painful. I cried from pain and from sadness and I tried to stop but I couldn’t.

When it was over, I remember standing up and having a drop of blood land on the floor beneath me and I was embarrassed that Mr. Cereal saw that. I talked to him about it later and he said he never saw it, but the image is in my brain forevermore. The OB said we could start trying again as soon as we wanted and I said I never wanted to try again.

The timing of the loss was awful because we had the holidays coming up and nobody knew why I was depressed and upset. My sister was eight months pregnant at Christmas and I didn’t want to see her pregnant belly. At one of our family dinners during the week before Christmas, my mother asked me if I had felt the baby move in my sister’s belly. I felt like she had slapped me. There were so many times when I wanted someone to acknowledge my loss and my pain, but the only person who really understood was my best friend, who had suffered a miscarriage a week prior to mine, and Mr. Cereal. Every month that followed the loss that we didn’t fall pregnant again made me feel like crap.

I finally decided in February to go to a support group and it really changed my life. I met some amazing women who understood me and I finally felt like I was being listened to. Their stories were all different and most of them had losses that were much further along than mine, and they never once acted like my loss was less significant than theirs.  These women have become my best friends. The people I check in with frequently.  he people who supported me through my rainbow pregnancy with LeLe. The people who I remember with every October.

I used to replay the D and C in my mind almost every night as I laid in bed. It was awful and it made me feel like I couldn’t escape the loss for a long time. Honestly, this memory was the last one on my mind every night until I replaced it with the memory of giving birth to LeLe.

Having a pregnancy loss is something that is so weird to disclose. A lot of people don’t talk about it and I was one of those people for a long time. Recently I have started talking about it more and I feel like it is my duty to help others who may not be getting the support they need. I will never forget my loss and the pain I felt. I will always remember the exact date I found out there was no heartbeat, the date I had the D and C, and the date that would have been the due date of that baby. I will never forget finding Mr. Cereal in the partially finished nursery staring out the window and reminding me that it was his baby too. And honestly, I don’t want to forget because that pregnancy and that loss were special and they changed the course of my life.