Pregnancy After Loss.

**Sensitive post–mention of PAL. If this is triggering to you, if you’re in the thick of all the infertility and/or loss of it all, please protect your heart and dip out. Hit mute on my posts. I’ve done this many times with many people. It’s about protecting your mental energy. I know and understand this well. **

When I was pregnant with Evie, Bill and I made a decision together to not announce our pregnancy publicly on social media for many reasons. The main reason was that I had spent many days regretting opening up my phone only to find a pregnancy announcement that would leave me devastated. I’m of course happy for people to have babies and grow their families and would never wish this pain on anyone, but those who have lived through infertility and loss will tell you that pregnancy announcements are especially triggering. When you’re in the trenches of it all, it’s really hard to look at other people who have what you’re so desperately trying to achieve. I didn’t want to make anyone else ever feel what I had felt, so we kept it to ourselves.

Society also tells you that you shouldn’t announce a pregnancy before you’re out of the first trimester “just in case”. What this reinforces is that, if you have a miscarriage, then people don’t want to hear about it. That it’s easier to just silently lose your baby and act like they never existed. Evelyn died well into my second trimester, and I’m here to attest that babies can die during any trimester of pregnancy. It’s not a guarantee. Waiting until you’re 12 or 13 weeks pregnant doesn’t make it “safe”. We thought we were safe at 20 weeks, and we weren’t. Saying the words “I’m pregnant” out loud doesn’t jinx you into a miscarriage, just the same as loving and wanting your baby with all your heart can’t keep them safe.

I understand for some people that they wouldn’t want to share if they had a miscarriage. I was honestly on the fence about publicly sharing our stillbirth experience when Evelyn died but I felt that not sharing was denying her existence. It’s up to everyone individually how they do or don’t share loss. It’s incredibly personal. I sometimes regret not sharing more in a sensitive way that I was pregnant, because all we had was a death announcement. 

When I think of now how to announce a pregnancy, I consider a few questions: How would I share if it doesn’t end with a healthy baby? Who would we tell? At this point, I’ve decided to not be silent about our journey to have children anymore. After experiencing infertility in relative silence, I now know it’s important for me to share my experiences so others don’t have to feel the same need should they choose. Experiencing loss in silence wasn’t something I was meant to do, and in choosing to be more public with our story about Evelyn, I’ve found incredible solace in the loss community. 

All this to say—I’m pregnant.

Today I am pregnant. We don’t know how this is going to go. I’m terrified every day. It’s easily the scariest thing I’ve ever done. It’s very overwhelming, and I have a lot of feelings that I’m still struggling to process. Pregnancy after loss is a lot of things that I can’t yet define. We know the reality of what could happen, but we are cautiously optimistic. 

I’m not sharing when we’re due with this little one as due dates are incredibly triggering to me now. Having to cross Evie’s due date off all my calendars was just another reminder of everything we had planned for our lives with her. We just made it past her due date early this month, and it’s been really hard to say the least, especially being pregnant with a different baby at the same time. Just because we’re anticipating a baby’s arrival near a certain date doesn’t guarantee they will make it. We will hold our breath until that time.

I also won’t be sharing pictures of a positive pregnancy test or ultrasound photos. Both of these elicit an intense reaction for me, even pictures of my own tests or ultrasounds. I can’t explain it, but if you’ve been where I’ve been, where so many of us have been, then you know. The last ultrasound pictures we have of Evelyn are from hours before she died. Coming across ultrasound photos since she died has been incredibly painful. 

This all might sound morbid to anyone reading this, but when your baby dies inside your body you don’t really have another course of action to protect yourself. In no way were we expecting that this could happen so soon for us, and honestly my brain isn’t really catching up. There are a lot of things we did and are doing differently, but that’s a post for another time. 

I haven’t had the mental energy to tell everyone I have wanted to in person, so I’m putting it out here now. It’s also been stressful to hear people be so excited for us and to congratulate us. I honestly don’t know how to process that. We appreciate everyone who has matched our energy level and that have expressed that they recognize that this pregnancy brings up a number of very complicated feelings. I’m trying my absolute best to connect with this pregnancy and be excited, but I’m usually just terrified all the time instead.

So, today, I am pregnant. That’s what I will tell myself every day that I’m lucky enough to carry this little one. In this moment, everything is okay. We are incredibly grateful that we’re at this point, but it’s also terrifying. I’m currently pouring all my mental and physical energy right now into taking care of myself and our little seahorse. It’s sometimes hard for me to differentiate between this pregnancy and my pregnancy with Evie. Grieving Evelyn while simultaneously processing the possibility of having another baby is incredibly complicated.

This is what pregnancy after loss is like.

One day at a time.