Miscarriage: The Unspoken Heartbreak

You pee on the stick because you “just had a feeling” that you should test. Or maybe you’re exactly nine days past ovulation and in your last google search you found hundreds of Big Fat Positives this early.

You’re nervous as you wait for the results. Then, that line shows up. Maybe it’s so faint, you have to look so close you can smell the drying tinkle, but you don’t care because you’re so happy. Maybe you have a fancy digital test that just reads YES. Your face flushes and your fingers and toes tingle. You can’t wait to tell your significant other because they are going to be so excited. You both want this baby so so much. Your love for this tiny ball of cells multiplying inside you is already growing.

You look up YouTube videos for cute ways you can surprise your S.O. with the news. You could put the test somewhere S.O. will find it. But does S.O. even know how these things work? Will S.O. even understand what the plus sign means? What about sticking a bun in the oven and telling S.O. to go look inside? That’s cute. Whatever it is, you choose the perfect way and S.O.’s reaction is exactly what you expected. Maybe S.O. is hilarious, or stunned, or cries, or screams. Either way, at the end, you both embrace, happy and excited for your next adventure together.

Of course you’re a little nervous. You pee on however many tests you still have in the house to see if the line keeps getting darker or just to make sure that yes, you really are pregnant. You call the doctor, but they won’t see you until 8 weeks, so you wait. Anxiously. After you run out of tests you vow not to buy more, but of course you do (On Amazon though this time because you can get the cheap sticks that cost a few cents each.)

Already you feel different. Maybe you do feel different physically. Your stomach rumbles and you imagine your bump. Your boobs are sore, and you imagine breastfeeding. Or you if you don’t feel different physically yet, you do mentally and emotionally. Suddenly everything you put in your mouth, you consider more carefully. Am I allowed to eat this cheese? Can I eat sushi if it’s low mercury? Should I not eat at the $7.99 all you-can-eat Chinese Buffet anymore?

You just feel more… responsible. And suddenly you begin asking existential questions because life is about to change forever. You are happy it’s going to change, but it also brings up some anxiety. Am I really happy in my career? What will I be like as a mother? Am I ready to give up my freedom? What religion are we going to raise are kid? Where will they go to school? Oh my gosh what school district are we in? Holy shit do we need to move, buy a house but how will we qualify for a loan and where would we buy and how do you find a realtor you trust anyway omggg this is too much!!!!!!!!!!!!

But it’s not too much, you realize. Maybe it’s the hormones. Because when you start thinking about names, buying toys, getting to ask your SO for pickles in the middle of the night and bringing the baby home, you get so so happy.

Whether the first few weeks are a breeze or you’re puking your face off every hour, you hang onto the fact that you are still pregnant and that is what matters. Deep down, you know you can do this.

You go into the doctors office early because you’re high-risk or at the standard eight weeks for an ultrasound. The black screen flickers on and you have no idea what you’re looking for, but you’re looking anyway. Your heart is pounding. Please, please, please find it.

For some of you, this is when you find out you’re going to miscarry. The technician searches and searches. Her eyebrows furrow and you know it’s not good. You don’t want to ask though because in the silence, nothing bad has happened yet. Maybe if you don’t ask and she says nothing then you can hold onto being pregnant a little longer. Finally, she breaks the silence. “I’m so sorry,” she says.

Your heart plummets into your empty stomach. Tears fall. You can’t look at your SO. Their pain and yours together would be too much. You can’t really hear what technician is saying but it’s something like “empty sac” “it doesn’t look viable” or “no heartbeat.” Devastated isn’t the right word. You’re more than that. Obliterated maybe.

Or maybe that’s not you and you sail past this milestone. The technician moves the wand and a dark circle appears and the technician smiles. You hear quick whooshing sounds and you know your baby is alive inside you because that is the undeniable sound of a heartbeat. You walk out of that appointment with a black and white picture of a blob but it’s your blob and it’s the most beautiful blob you’ve ever seen.

Seeing the heartbeat calms your nerves, but again you google miscarriage odds. You see that with every week that goes by, the chances drop significantly, and your chance of miscarriage after hearing a heartbeat is so so low.

You start talking to your stomach. What should WE do today? What do WE want to eat for lunch? Should WE make Daddy/other Mommy get US some ice cream? Sometimes you just touch your stomach and feel grateful. Your love for your baby is now over the moon.

Then one day, you go to the bathroom and you see pink. You call the doctor immediately. They tell you some spotting is normal. Your uterus is stretching. You’re still worried. You know the worst thing you can do is go on google but you do it anyway. You look for only positive stories about spotting. "I spotted all the way through my first trimester and my beautiful 8 week old is sleeping next to me!” You read that post over and over. You hang onto it like a lifeline. But the spotting continues.

Whether you already knew you were going to miscarry after an ultrasound, or you were fairly sure when it was going to happen because you took the pill to hurry it along, it still feels like surprise. Perhaps your heart wants so desperately to keep the baby inside that it makes the miscarriage register as a surprise. Your mind says, “No, no, I don’t want to let go. This isn’t suppose to happen.”

Maybe there’s blood first. Maybe it’s pain first. Both begin as a trickle. A little blood, then a little more. A little cramps, then a little more. The pain becomes deeper and longer and come in waves, as if something as powerful and uncontrollable as the ocean is pushing out the remanence of your dreams. There’s so. much. blood. You don’t know if you’re crying because it hurts or you’re crying because it hurts. Everything hurts. Your body, your heart, your soul. Blood turns to clots, clots turn to tissue, tissue turns back to blood.

Or if it doesn’t pass naturally, you have to have a procedure. A D&C. You go into the office so that they can clear the tissue from your uterus surgically. You get angry they call it tissue. It was my BABY.

Afterwards, you feel empty. When you’re not in excruciating physical or emotional pain, you feel numb. Or maybe you numb on purpose. Pass the drink, give me the phone, turn on a bad tv show. Anything to not feel this pain.

You feel angry that no one says the right thing even though theres is nothing anyone could say that would feel right. You feel angry at your body even though your body was probably doing exactly what it was supposed to do. You feel angry at yourself even though the doctors say it’s not your fault.

Still, you look for answers. You ask yourself: Did I exercise too hard? Am I too old? Am I too fat? Am I too skinny? Did I not take the right supplements? Is there something wrong with our genes?

You don’t find any answers though because the doctors tell you there is nothing to find. They won’t do tests after the first miscarriage because they are so common. You wonder: Common? Why haven’t I heard of more women I know having them?

Then you realize it’s because you don’t want to talk about it either. It hurts too much. At least right now. You want to mourn but you feel silly because it was just some cells. Was it a life already? You didn’t meet this person. And yet you loved them so much. You ask yourself: Am I crazy for loving those cells so much already? Should I not be this sad? You drive yourself crazy going back and forth between feeling what you feel and then feeling wrong about it.

This war in your mind makes you feel isolated and alone in your heartbreak. Your SO can’t know exactly how you feel either.

It gets easier though. Your body heals and slowly your heart does too. You feel hopeful because you’re going to start trying again soon. You start to feel excited again… and then…

Someone announces their pregnancy on Facebook! Or your sister has her baby! Or your friend tells you they just got knocked up!

You feel a whirlwind of emotions. Happy, sad, angry, resentful, excited, loving, jealous. You curse yourself for not feeling purely the good feelings. Guilt takes over and suddenly you feel like a terrible person for also being sad for yourself. You imagine how life could have been if you’d stayed pregnant. You think to yourself, “We could have all been pregnant together!” And cry your face off in the closet.

Then, your closest friend forwards you someone else’s miscarriage story. Or maybe you googled one. You lay awake in bed with the glow of your phone illuminating your face as you read someone else’s story that’s also yours. For the first time, you realize that you are not alone, not crazy for how you feel, and totally understood.

The spoken heartbreak allows you to embrace your experience and define it for yourself. The excitement you had about the pregnancy means your ready, your crazy googling ways means you care (though you vow to set some boundaries for yourself around that), your sadness means you’re capable of loving deeply, and your jealously and resentment means you’re human. You find that you can genuinely be happy for others while also honoring your own grief.

Sometimes you think about the due date and wonder what it’d be like to have had a healthy pregnancy. You look at children from the mothers that were pregnant at the same time as you and think to yourself, “That’s how old my baby would be.”

And you hope that the little soul, wherever it is, knows that you are grateful for the joy it brought to you, even if it was for such a short time.