Remembered: The Pregnancy That Wasn't To Be (Trigger Warning: This is a Detailed Story of Loss)

This is a hard post for me to write. I’ve been putting it off because it’s so hard. I’ve actually had this post open on my computer for over a week. This weekend marks 5 years since I lost my first pregnancy. 

In the summer of 2011, Honey Graham and I decided we were ready to be parents. I went off my birth control and we just let nature take over. We were surprised and elated when I became pregnant very quickly. We told the whole world right away and started shopping and planning and immediately threw ourselves into the world of parenting. I found a midwife who I fell in love with immediately. I had already decided I wanted a natural homebirth. 

Everything seemed to be going fine. I started having nausea and soreness at 7 weeks, right on schedule. Then the next week, everything started going wrong. I started spotting. I figured that some women just spot when they’d normally have their period, talked with my midwife, and we just decided to wait and see. We scheduled an ultrasound for the next week though just to be sure and to ease my mind. 

The ultrasound was pretty vague and we did not get any answers. It was still pretty early to detect a heartbeat, and they had trouble locating the baby. They did some blood work to check my HCG levels and also gave me medication for a UTI. My HCG levels looked good and we scheduled another sonogram because the technicians said that we weren’t as far along as I thought I was since the HCG levels were rising. I was very sure of my dates since I was always 28 days on the dot. 

Meanwhile, I kept spotting, but not a lot. I went to the sonogram the following week and we were very discouraged. They could see the amniotic sac, but there was still no heartbeat and they could not find the baby. They did not say I was miscarrying, but they really did not say much of anything. My midwife just told me to wait and see and helped me begin to realize that this pregnancy may be ending. She was very sweet. 

I collapsed into Honey Grahams arms that night. We had already started to work in the nursery and I just closed the door to the room because I could not deal with it any longer. My world was crashing down. We named the baby Emerald because she was due in May (I was convinced that the baby was a girl).

I kept bleeding. My parents came down to visit because they had some vacation time. This vacation for them had been scheduled for months. We walked around and spent time together and Honey Graham did a lot of work to find the routes that involved the least amount exertion (i.e. stairs, etc.) for me. I prayed that I would not lose the baby while my parents were with us. Thankfully I did not. 

I kept working. I kept doing my job. I stopped planning for the baby and prepared myself for what I think I subconsciously knew was going to happen. One day at work when I was nearly 12 weeks along, I started cramping and passing pretty large clots. I knew then that this pregnancy was not to be. I finished my day and went home. I took a shower and lost it. I cried through the whole shower and I told my body to let go. I pleaded with my body to let go. I told my body to give up the baby and just get it over with because I knew that my baby was gone. 

I ate dinner and started having some major cramping. I did not feel well. I felt like I was going to throw up. I sat in the bathroom and realized I was in “labor”. I had several nasty contractions and then I felt a huge thing fall out of me. I cried and cried and when I got the nerve to stand up and look, there was a pretty large clot/mass/thing in the toilet. Without thinking, I fished it out of the toilet and wrapped it up. Thankfully, this all happened on a Friday evening so I didn’t have to go to work for a few days. 

The next day, Honey Graham and I buried Baby Emerald. It just felt like the right thing to do. We bought a few little plants and a memorial marker. We prayed and cried and held each other. It was one of the saddest moments of my life.

After talking to my midwife, we decided what I had was possibly a blighted ovum, or an anembryonic pregnancy. It stopped developing around 6 weeks and my body just didn’t realize it until many weeks later. That’s why the test results were always so ambiguous. My body kept thinking I was pregnant when I really wasn’t. But, we're not really sure what happened and I will probably never know.

I had an extremely hard time coping with it, but overall, we both did okay. We had a huge support network and a lot of love and prayers. My midwife told me there’s no reason we couldn’t try again right away and have a perfectly healthy pregnancy. 

I waited until I had one cycle and then we started trying again. The next time I got my period, I cried for three days. That was the last time I’d get my period for quite some time…

I do know that if I had not lost my first baby, I would not have my two crazy, silly, goofy, wonderful little guys. I also know that it was the hardest thing I've ever gone through. 

Have you ever experienced loss?