Moving on.

It’s been 4 weeks since I found out our baby no longer carried a heartbeat, 3 weeks since I had the procedure to remove him from my body. I know I’ve grieved and processed enough to move forward when I can walk through the baby section of Target and not devolve into a puddle of tears.

I’m doing OK.

Obviously, the loss of life is the most devastating aspect of what happened, but I think I equally mourned the loss of all the hope and anticipation I had unreservedly allowed to balloon inside me during my first trimester. It was cancelling the gender reveal party we planned that weekend for family. It was texting the same friends I had excitedly shared our good news with early on a much different message. It was removing my registration on pregnancy apps so I would stop getting notifications that my fetus was “now the size of a lime”. It was remembering how hard I cried seeing a positive pregnancy test for the first time in my life. It was realizing (and dreading) that I would have to go through another round of poking myself with 3-inch long needles and inserting pills into my vagina twice a day. But worst of all (and I am still tearing up as I write this), it was finding out what happened during our 12-week ultrasound, the ultimate milestone that was supposed to herald us in to safer pastures and the one I was most excited to share with Darrin.

I read that men often don’t connect with the pregnancy until they actually see the baby and hear the heartbeat for the first time, so I was SO excited that Darrin could be in the room with me and meet our baby. I told him to record a video so we could share it afterwards with our families. It was a vaginal ultrasound and we looked at the screen and there he was…a little gummy bear of a thing. I distinctly remember thinking, “huh…he looks a lot smaller than I would’ve expected,” right before the nurse quietly asked Darrin to turn off the video. I still have that video on my phone and honestly, I still can’t bring myself to watch it. I just can’t.

She told us that he was measuring at 9 weeks and that she couldn’t find a heartbeat. I don’t think I fully registered what she said for a good 10 seconds until she said, “I’m so sorry”. She left so I could get dressed and then Darrin and I sat in that room crying and crying and crying. I think a huge part of this was the shock. Because I KNEW that 25% of pregnancies result in a miscarriage…but I thought with IVF since they do all the genetic testing BEFORE transferring a chromosomally healthy blastocyst into the uterus, that risk would be significantly lower, if not almost zero. So even though I knew the first trimester was considered the ‘danger zone’, I carried that knowledge like a shield against any sort of anxiety. Now I know, and part of the grieving process was also recognizing that the next time won’t feel as buoyant. I know my heart will be more guarded and the celebration of each passing week will be marred by dread and anxiety.

After we found out about the miscarriage, the only thing I could think of was getting the fetus out of me as soon as possible so we could move forward and try again. The procedure is called a D&C and involves the doctor going in and forcibly dilating your cervix in order to remove the fetus / uterine tissues (all under anesthesia of course). But when I came to, my immediate first thought was, “he’s gone”…and I lay there in the recovery room sobbing. The nurse came by and asked if I was in pain. I shook my head “no,” and saw that she was about to ask why I was crying before she checked my chart and realized what kind of surgery I had had. She rubbed my arm and said, “I’m so sorry” and then let me have my privacy. Although I had been wanting this procedure for the entire week leading up to it, as soon as it was over I felt so empty. He was really, officially, no longer any part of me.

I’ve had friends who experienced miscarriages before, who have gone through this procedure before. My heart goes out to every single woman who has had to experience this. I could never have empathized with something like this without going through it myself. I’m in a better place now, though some days are still harder than others. I’m able to find genuine joy in my life again; I can smile and laugh. I know I’m OK because I started to be able to think about others again. When you’re in pain, all you can feel is your own pain. There’s no room in that gaping hole of a heart to let anyone else in. I can now feel so grateful for the friends who showed us they were thinking of us through text, gift deliveries, prayers. I was listening to a podcast about how there’s going to be this whole year’s worth of people whose death’s sort of get “lost” socially because we can’t hold funerals for them during the pandemic. And the way that we remember these deaths is to check in on the people who lost their family members 3 months from now, 6 months from now, a year from now. Just a text to say, “hey I was thinking about your dad the other day.” I truly understand that now, and am so grateful for the friends (especially the ones who CAN empathize) who still text me 3-4 weeks later just to say they’re still thinking about us / praying for us. I wish I could’ve done the same for them.

So, just like in my last blog post, I am back in the process of waiting. Darrin and I recently finished this show on Netflix called “The Good Place”. It’s about (spoiler alert) the afterlife and how these 4 people THINK they’re in the Good Place but are actually in the Bad Place, and a demon devises for them their own personal versions of hell. I was thinking about what my version of personal hell would look like, and I think mine would have to do with patience / waiting. Maybe it would be perpetually waiting for Amazon packages that never arrive…or a planned vacation where the expected departure date just keeps getting pushed out…or waiting at a restaurant for a friend who keeps texting to say they’ll be there in “10 more min”.

There’s something cathartic about the process of writing these reflections and sharing them publicly. When they’re so raw and emotional, I hold them close. But after I’ve processed them, I’m ready to let them go and release them into the wild. They’re now no longer just mine and as cheesy as this may sound, sometimes these thoughts undergo a metamorphosis out there and come back to me in unexpectedly beautiful ways via others and their shared experiences. So…I think I’m ready to let this chapter of our story go and continue to move forward. The nurse who took care of me in the prep room said she went through 4 miscarriages but now has 2 kids. I follow this one Instagram account (@annagetscozy) who shared her 8 year infertility journey but now has a beautiful baby girl. Friends and acquaintances reached out after my first blog post to tell me about their own long road to pregnancy. I find hope in their stories and in their strength. I’ve stopped asking God “why” and am just asking Him “how”. Our journey is not over yet and I’m fucking in this.

One day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through and it will be someone else’s survival guide.

Brene Brown