Tuesday, October 03, 2017

A Lost Pregnancy Announcement

A month ago, I was already planning a cute pregnancy announcement to post on Facebook for early October. But when we went to our first prenatal appointment last month, my midwife couldn't find a heartbeat with doppler. She sent me for a formal ultrasound, which confirmed that there was no cardiac activity - the baby (embryo, really) had died about two weeks prior. I spent the following week feeling oddly half-pregnant, impatient for the pregnancy to pass, anxious about what it would be like. Eventually - with little warning - I completed the miscarriage in a public bathroom at the hospital.

I know intellectually how common first trimester losses are, and since I've been sharing the news with friends and family, I'm even more aware of how many families just in my little local circle have gone through this. But I rarely see those announcements on Facebook. There's a taboo around even telling people you're pregnant until you get to the second trimester and you're out of the "danger zone." Hence this post - a little flag to say "This happened to us," and an invitation for others to wave and say "Us too!"

I think one of strangest parts of this has been the feeling that people around me - Mike, my Ob providers, friends and family, are more saddened by this loss than me. There were times the first day I found out that I could have cried, but I didn't. The only other time I wanted to cry was about a week after the miscarriage, when I saw a young woman in clinic for a confirmation of pregnancy visit; when I got out the doppler, she and I listened to the fetal heartbeat galloping along at just the right clip. "I wanted that," I thought to myself.

Mike took it pretty hard; it would have been his first biological child, and he was experiencing fatherhood - with Clark - in new ways because of it. Overall I've felt disappointed, but not devastated. Maybe it's because of my privileged seat within medicine; I was working on labor and delivery the month we found out we were pregnant, and I was reminded during every call shift how fragile a pregnancy is, and how many women had experienced miscarriages themselves. Maybe it's because losing an embryo felt ten times easier than losing a husband (and please know, this is not to minimize anyone else's pain and grief - there's no comparing suffering). Maybe it's because Mike and I were fortunate to get pregnant very soon after we started trying, and we're already blessed with a perfectly health son; I have reason to be optimistic about our future chances. I really do have faith in the timing of the Universe; our time will come, if it's meant to be.

Enormous thanks to those who have offered support, and who have told us "us too. And a huge thank you to Mike for sharing his grief and processing, for being vulnerable with me in very new territory.