Mr. Cereal and I have talked a lot about having a third child. It feels like something I need to do, something I can’t really explain. I want to have three living children, three little people that are mine, who look alike and act kind of alike and love each other. Like our own little pack of people. When I met Mr. Cereal, I knew I wanted children, and once we got pretty serious and got married, I knew three was my number. When we had our first loss, I was terrified that I would never be able to have children. Like that was my one chance, and it failed. And then I had LeLe, my little rainbow, and I felt powerful and blissful. We got unexpectedly pregnant again with Little Bug, and again, I felt amazing that it happened. I felt like my body finally did what it was supposed to do. Like I could do this amazing thing, make another human. Having my children has changed me in so many ways, but mostly, it has made me feel like I am special. I am special to have been given these two amazing people to love and to take care of and to be the best mommy I can be for them.

I found out this last week that I was expecting again. I was terrified, like shaking scared. Not because of the pregnancy, and certainly not because of having a third child. But because I was scared that Mr. Cereal would be upset, or angry even. We were not being careful; we were kind of halfheartedly preventing pregnancy, and we slipped up. The positive pregnancy test was a surprise, a shock. It took me a few minutes to stop freaking out and to really think about what life would be like with a third. And I was happy, like really happy. I told Mr. Cereal immediately and he was shocked too. And a little upset, but not unhappy. Just worried about how we were going to do it all. Three kids is a lot — a lot of money, a lot of time, a lot of worry. Heck, two kids is all of those things.

I am a worrier by nature, so I wanted to test progression of my tests. I went out and bought a bunch, and started testing each day. The lines got a bit darker each day, then plateaued by the fourth day and stopped getting darker. I panicked and starting googling like crazy, and everything that came up said chemical pregnancy. I started to prepare myself for this not to work out the way I wanted, and when my test the next day was still the same shade as the previous two days, I called my midwife to get my blood levels checked. The results came in that night, and they were low, really low. If I was where I thought I was, the levels should have been much higher.

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So I googled some more, and found stories of hope, and I tried to convince myself that it was going to be ok. That I was a slow riser, that everything would start to increase and it would be fine. And then the next morning I started spotting and by Sunday morning, I was bleeding a lot. I’m going to be very honest — I was devastated. I am devastated. I spent most of the day in bed, working on a project for work and trying not to let myself think too much about it.

I have so many emotions going through me right now. I’m sad, really sad. And angry. I’m angry that this is happening again, that my body failed. I feel like this was my only chance to have a third child. This may be silly, but it feels like because the decision was made for us, rather than us having to hash everything out and try to decide, it was easier and meant to be. And now, we are forced to have these conversations that neither of us want to have and neither of us are prepared to have. I think the worst part right now is that I let myself believe that because I have suffered a miscarriage before, and had two successful pregnancies since then, that it wouldn’t happen again. And here I am, now with two losses and so much uncertainty. I don’t know what to do now, what to say, how to feel, what to do next. I feel stuck, bogged down by emotion, wondering, confusion.

I know people go through this every single day. And that people go through much worse than this. I recognize the fact that I am one of many, and actually this brings me some comfort. My body hurts, my head hurts. I feel beat up, emotionally and physically. I feel stupid for believing that I would be able to have another successful pregnancy just because. And now, the question of where to go from here.