This isn’t a story I ever could have imagined would be mine to tell. I’m fully aware that just because someone has already endured a traumatic experience does not mean they’re immune to experiencing any more trauma. Bad things happen to good people for no reason. People can lose more than one baby. This isn’t lost on me. Yet, when I stared at those two pink lines for the third time in my life in back early February, I never thought I would be here today with this story.
Nothing about having children has been easy for me. I don’t say this because I feel like I need sympathy or attention because it’s hard for a lot of people, but it’s unfair. Absolutely every step has been a mental and physical battle, but I desperately want another living child. My desire to have a healthy, living little sibling for Evelyn and Nora has outweighed my anxiety and fear of trying to have another baby. So when getting pregnant was finally easy, it felt like the universe was cutting me a much needed break. I needed an easy pregnancy after the devastation of losing Evelyn and the pure fear I experienced through my entire pregnancy with Nora.
I deserved this.
Things progressed normally. I didn’t feel how I felt when I was pregnant with both girls, so I was convinced this pregnancy was different because it was a boy. We saw the heartbeat on the ultrasound at 6 weeks. I heard it for the first time at 8. I wrote my due date on the calendar and started picking out baby names. I imagined Nora and this new baby together at the holidays this year. I told myself that this pregnancy would be fine and I would celebrate every minute of it and not be consumed with the knowledge that so many things have to go right in order for a baby to be born healthy.
At exactly 9 weeks pregnant, I woke up early to blood.
I checked for bleeding every single day I was pregnant with Nora, right up until the day before she was born. I let my guard down with this pregnancy, and there it was along with cramping. I knew right there I was losing this baby.
We went to the ER on Sunday afternoon. I had prepared myself for the doctor to tell me my baby had no heartbeat. I was already grieving. But my baby had a heartbeat— a strong heartbeat. They told me I had a subchorionic hematoma which was causing the bleeding. It could result in loss, but often it resolves itself and many people go on to have a healthy pregnancy.
I had hope.
I went home knowing I would just keep bleeding. It was scary but manageable. My baby was okay. I would deal with the bleeding. It would resolve itself. It wasn’t ideal, but I had information. I could get through this.
I went to work on Monday even though I didn’t feel great. I was exhausted from being in the ER all day, and I was bleeding and the cramping felt worse. I Googled a lot, all consistent with the diagnosis. I went about my workday.
In the middle of teaching a CPR class I felt a gush, and I just knew. I knew whatever I felt wasn’t something that could happen and everything would be fine. The world around me started to go blank. I grabbed my things and ran out to the bathroom.
I share this next part with lots of hesitation but with a great sense of obligation to tell others who have been there that no matter what you did with your baby, you made the choice that was best for you. Or maybe you didn’t have a choice, and I’m so sorry. Everything that happened to me in that bathroom that day was by far one of the most traumatic things I have ever experienced. I also want people to understand the reality and the horror of pregnancy loss. I’ve said it before and I will say it again here: babies do not just disappear.
Evelyn was much bigger and I had a full hospital labor with her. This little baby was passed in the bathroom while I was at work. I held my tiny dead baby in my hand, sitting in a stall at work while passing golf ball sized blood clots and tissue.
I don’t know how I got from that point to getting myself home, but I made it. I sat on my kitchen floor with my tiny baby who I wrapped in a paper towel and put into a container because I read about it somewhere before. I sobbed and screamed and apologized to my baby that this happened, that I couldn’t keep them safe.
My husband and mom came to take care of me. The nurse at my OB’s office told me I needed to go to the emergency room with the amount of bleeding I was experiencing. My husband drove me the half hour to the ER connected to the hospital where my OB practices so they could have access to my records from that day. I know I needed to be seen, but I absolutely regret going to the ER. I waited for a room to be available in excruciating pain in the waiting room. They finally put us in a room where I laid on a bed with no blankets and no one to check on me, offer pain relief, or even a new pad. The pain was worse than being in labor with Nora. Having to explain my reproductive history over and over again to anyone new who happened to occasionally pop into the room was like reliving the worst days of my life all over again. They didn’t have the right supplies, equipment, or space to do a pelvic exam in the room. Everything felt like a nightmare.
After ultrasounds, tests, and exams, I was given the option of having surgery or going home with medication to see if I would pass everything and the bleeding would eventually subside. I would have done anything to leave, so we opted to go home. I cramped and bled and went home for the second time in my life with no baby. We turned over our tiny baby to the doctors to do genetic testing. Having to make this choice again opened up a vault of emotions that I thought I dealt with already.
I didn’t know this baby. They weren’t with me for nearly as long as Evelyn and it still all felt so new. I just wrapped my mind around the fact that I was going to have a newborn by the time Nora would be 18 months old. I was preparing to move all the baby things into the guest room. I was making plans to reserve another daycare spot. Everything happened so fast. It’s not the same grief as when we lost Evie, but it’s a reminder that I feel like my body failed another child.
I don’t know how much more grief I can endure. I’m angry that I lost another baby. I’m exhausted from the physical and emotional toll that this loss is taking on me. I feel like I was just getting to know my new self in the world I live in after loss and after becoming a mom to a living child. Despite all this, when things have felt overwhelming these past few days, I have to stop and remind myself that I’ve already been through the worst days of my life and I’m still here. I looked back at a post I wrote called “An open letter to my grieving self” which I shared on 8/8/21. It’s a reminder from me to me that I’m going to make it. A week after I shared this post, I found out I was pregnant with Nora. I’m not trying to “silver lining” myself into feeling better, but it’s a reminder that the intense grief doesn’t stay intense forever.
If you’ve read this far, thank you. Writing is always therapeutic for me, but I also have a goal of painting a realistic picture of pregnancy loss and living with grief for those who need to know that they haven’t experienced these events in isolation. Having two different types of pregnancy loss and losing two different babies in very different ways has changed me in ways I could have never imagined. I’m not sure where I want or need to go from here. My worldview is constantly changing and evolving with the presence of loss and grief in my life.
I have spent the past 10 months in a reality that I never asked for.
I went from being probably the happiest I have ever been in my whole life to completely gutted in a matter of seconds. That’s all it takes. Life is that fragile. Living with the reality that my life will never look like I imagined has been a tough pill to swallow. I know I’ve written before about primary and secondary loss, but the secondary loss of a life for myself, for my family, that will never be has been shattering.
Every day I wake up, I face the reality that my family will never be whole.
I now live in a world where my daughter doesn’t. We won’t watch her grow up and be a part of our family in the way we planned. It’s something that some days, I feel at peace with, and other days, I’m so destroyed by it that I can barely function. We have carefully and deliberately spent time incorporating Evelyn into our every day lives so that she will always be as visible a part of our family as she can possibly be.
Yet, it’s clearly not the same.
If we manage to have healthy, living children that get to stay with us, I will never be able to look at a family picture and see all of my babies. I will never live in a reality where all of my children can exist together with us. Of course, we believe that Evelyn is always spiritually here with us, but never again holding her physically in my arms is the reality I contend with. I feel so incredibly grateful for this current pregnancy with Evelyn’s baby sister, but I can’t ignore the fact that that I wouldn’t have this baby if Evelyn was here. The closer we get to having her here, the more I think of all the milestones we never made it to with Evelyn.
I read somewhere recently that it hurts to want things that can’t coexist in the same life. I would go a step further to say that it’s been devastating to try to accept this reality: If Evelyn had lived, had been born when she should have and been a healthy baby, I would not be pregnant right now. I was almost 7 weeks pregnant by Evelyn’s due date. The mental toll that this reality has taken on me has been exhausting. I could not have both of my girls.
As I get further along and the reality of hopefully bringing this baby home healthy becomes more of something I actually believe, I’m realizing that so many conflicting emotions are coexisting within me, and I can never just feel one thing anymore. Every moment I allow myself to feel excited or joyful about the thought of bringing this baby home, I also simultaneously feel overwhelmed with grief that Evelyn never physically made it home with us.
Joy and sadness just coexist in my life now.
For every happy moment, there’s a sad one. For every moment of excitement, there’s also fear. And for every time I feel grateful for what I’ve been given, I also feel rage for what’s been taken from me.
And I’m learning to let that all be as okay as it can be.
These past 10 months have changed me in ways I never asked for and never wanted. The toll that baby loss and pregnancy after loss has taken on me has been the most mentally and physically intense journey I have ever been on. Most days now, I can function and present myself in a way that society deems acceptable. I have days where I don’t cry at all. I take care of myself and go to work and talk to other people. I laugh and make jokes. When people ask how I am, I say I’m okay. And truthfully, sometimes I am okay. But the heaviness of my reality is always there. The conflicting emotions are always there.
If I dwell on the unfairness of it all, I would be absolutely swallowed up by it. So while I’m bitter when I see others having uncomplicated pregnancies, ignorant to the reality that so many of us face, I also try to allow for grace. Why am I bitter? Because I can never go back to a time where my baby didn’t die. I can never go back to a time where I thought getting and staying pregnant would be easy. And I can never go back to a time where I thought all my future children would grow up together. That reality no longer exists for me, so I have to find a way to function in my new reality.
As much as I try to reject what feels like a cruel hand that I’ve been dealt, I also know that the more I fight it, the more bitter I become. Rejecting my currently reality doesn’t bring Evelyn back to us. It doesn’t make my trauma go away. So I’m leaning into living with a reality that is conflicting. It’s hard to wrap my mind around.
Something people say when you experience a loss is to look to the future. Time heals all wounds. The thought of this is potentially comforting in early grief when every second is flooded with intense pain. The thought that things could potentially feel less terrible in the future is something to hang onto. You can’t live in that intensity forever; we just aren’t built to withstand it.
I don’t want to downplay that the intensity of the grief has lessened. There are days that go by that I don’t cry. I can talk to Evelyn and smile. I can be in groups of people sometimes and not let it completely overwhelm me. I’m finding bits and pieces of whatever “normal” now looks like.
I was optimistic that after we made it past Evie’s due date that a weight would be lifted. In a way, it has. But a new heaviness has set in that I wasn’t prepared for. Getting through the month of September was important to me. It felt once like a far off goal, something unattainable. But it came and went and I was still standing.
But I don’t feel better. The problem with looking to the future is that your child isn’t there, either.
October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. It’s one of those things that you don’t have a full sense of until you become an unfortunate statistic.
1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss.
1 in 160 babies are stillborn.
Now we are these numbers, these statistics. Now we have days and months dedicated to loss related things. I’m truly grateful that we have things like Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. I think it’s important. Our children matter, our invisible children that people don’t see us carrying around. I love the idea of bringing awareness to our particular kind of loss.
But we live pregnancy loss every day.
For us, it’s laced into our whole lives. It’s looking for signs from our baby everyday. It’s holding her keepsakes in her room. It’s looking at our daughter’s ashes in a butterfly urn that sits in our room. It’s glancing down at my tattoo of her tiny footprints. It’s also the occasional panic attack when I’m flooded with memories of the day we found out she was dying. It’s the constant worry that Evie’s sibling growing in my belly also won’t be okay.
I am constantly aware of all we’ve lost. And sometimes, the extra reminders are hard.
Obviously, it’s incredibly important to me to share our story, to share Evelyn’s story. Doing so has also brought us connection and support from so many people, and I’m incredibly grateful. But I’ve felt almost paralyzed by the (self-imposed) expectation that I share this month, this very important month for pregnancy and infant loss. I’m watching my social media feed fill up with stories of loss and wonder why I’m struggling to engage. I had hoped, apparently naively, that September passing and turning to October would bring me some greater sense of peace and possibly strength. Instead, I’m finding myself more filled up with grief than I’ve been in awhile.
No matter what, she’s still not here.
Instead of counting down how many weeks pregnant with Evie I should have been, I’m reminded that I should I now have a one month old. With every changing leaf, I’m reminded that I should be out pushing her in her stroller, showing her my favorite season. I see pictures of families out at pumpkin patches and apple orchards, and I’m reminded that this was finally supposed to be our year to do those things. October has felt so unbearably heavy. My grief combined with anxiety over our current pregnancy has rendered me almost paralyzed. I’m burnt out.
I’m choosing to pass on needing to engage this month. There’s this guilt that loss parents have, guilt over feeling like we constantly need to show up for our children in the most visible way because we’re afraid they’ll be forgotten. We wonder if we’re doing enough, thinking about them enough, carrying on their memory enough. When I allow myself to let go of all that, I know that I’m the best possible mom for Evelyn. It’s okay to rest. I’m enough for her.
So while I’ve looked to time to lessen my pain, I’m constantly reminded of something others have told me and that I’ve had to tell myself: Grief is not linear. The pain of losing Evelyn doesn’t threaten to strangle me every day, but it’s there. I’ve learned to live with it. Just because one day seems okay doesn’t mean the following day needs to be even better. It’s been almost six months without her, and there isn’t one second of any day that I don’t miss her.
I’m doing enough. I’m loving her enough. October is just another month.
I’m assuming that you’re here because you are someone or love someone who has lived through a hard thing. Maybe your baby died. Maybe you’re living through infertility. Maybe both. If you are, I’m deeply sorry. I have lived through these things, and I’m here to talk about them.
When I was in the throes of infertility, I didn’t share about it. I watched others who would bravely share about the world of things like baseline scans, Clomid side effects, and the realities of injecting yourself with hormones. I experienced these things silently, with the support of my spouse and my close family and friends, but all behind closed doors. It’s not comfortable to throw around words like “timed intercourse” with acquaintances, let alone strangers on the internet. No one knew the physical and emotional pain I was living with every day.
When I took that first positive pregnancy test, I was in disbelief. I took 5 more over 5 days. All positive. Every step of the way, I was in disbelief, as if I was outside of myself watching it all happen. As I got further along, I started to believe it would stick, that I would have a healthy baby in September.
I felt lucky.
I thought infertility was the hardest thing I would ever go through. I thought I was different, I was special. The weeks passed. We found out we were having a girl. I loved our baby deeper and deeper. I checked the chart that shows you the probability of miscarriage every week and watched the number go down. We started to tell people we were pregnant. I made it to 20 weeks and breathed a sigh of relief.
A doctor told me one day later that my baby would die soon. The next day, she no longer had a heartbeat.
Her death has left a gaping hole in my life. It has shattered me beyond belief. I have wondered almost daily how I’m still functioning. I think about the person that I used to be and I hardly recognize her. I miss Evelyn in a way I can’t even accurately describe in words. The feeling just swallows me up. Yet, every day, I wake up. I get out of bed. I feed myself. I take care of my dogs. My spouse and I hold each other up. We exist. Some days are better than others, and we can never tell which type of day we’ll have. It’s all new and it’s all unfair. There are some things that help me feel just slightly better. Writing is one of them. I hope to share bits and pieces of my life, of loving Evelyn and losing her. I hope some things that I write may resonate with you or may bring you peace. One of my newest and greatest hopes is that I can contribute something to help just one person not feel so alone. Infertility and loss are isolating and terrifying.
So, again, if you’re here, thank you. Thank you for reading and learning. Thank you for showing up–for people you love and for yourself.
To Heaven and Back 