I Don’t Have a Cute, Catchy Title for This. Sorry.
Dear Andy:
Today, October 15, is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, and I am the face of miscarriage – I lost my first child at 11 weeks of gestation.
I have struggled with how to talk about this. I have no idea how to do it without making it sound like I’m throwing a pity party or want a bunch of sympathy, or making it sound uncomfortable or awkward (talking about losing babies is a horrible topic. always). You can talk to a hundred women who have suffered through a miscarriage, and our experiences will all be different. I have friends who have suffered through ectopic pregnancies, first trimester spontaneous abortions (the lovely medical term for miscarriage), and even one who has endured the loss of twins midway through her pregnancy. It doesn’t discriminate between rich or poor, young or old, black or white – it can happen to anyone, even if you do everything ‘right.’ This is my story. And I never got the chance to have this conversation with you, so I’m going to do it now (sorry it’s so long). This is what miscarriage was like for me.
On July 22, 2011, we found out I was pregnant. I scheduled an OB appointment as soon as possible, given our family history with Jessie’s HPE. I had been taking folic acid and prenatal vitamins because we had been trying for almost a year and I was doing everything within my control to prevent any problems.
My first prenatal appointment was August 4 (quite early in the pregnancy, as I was only 6 weeks along). Everything went well, and we got a picture of our little blob as well as a projected due date of March 30, 2012. Yep, March 30 – the day that I lost you was going to become the day that I finally got to hold my own child in my arms. Talk about mixed emotions! I was so happy about this sweet baby, yet so sad that you were not there to share in the joy – you always talked about how you would be the coolest uncle ever.
We did all the things that expecting parents do: We started stocking up on a few essentials like onesies, boppy pillows, and, of course, bedtime stories (I’d been stockpiling children’s books for quite some time, and this just gave me motivation to get even more – Cupcake was going to have a library that put our childhood reading selections to shame). We thought about how to reorganize the house to transform the spare bedroom (‘your room’ – even that was an emotional experience, knowing that someone else would be calling that room their own). We also began brainstorming names. Your name was going to be in there somewhere if Cupcake was a boy, so we played around with different names to pair with Andrew. My initial boys’ list was: Jasper, Garrison, Elliott, Emmett, Caleb, Noah, Wyatt, Gage, and Isaac. For a girl I had: Meredith, Daphne, Claire, Abigail, Bianca, Adelaide, Anne, Corinne, Laura, and Madeline.
Early on, my hormone levels began decreasing instead of increasing and I was put on Crinone, a progesterone medication, to try to get my levels to go up. I had appointments at least once a week as a precaution until I made it out of the first trimester. I definitely felt pregnant – I had never been so tired in my life! I almost fell asleep in the middle of one of my first grade classes – right in the middle of teaching (I probably shouldn’t admit that, but I did – if I wasn’t at work, I was at home asleep)! I also cried over stupid, ridiculous stuff; one night I was fixing supper and crying because I really wanted a chicken sandwich from McDonalds but didn’t want to drive to get one and didn’t want Kyle to get me one. Sierra Mist was also my BFF – I wasn’t really nauseous; it was just the only thing I wanted to drink. McD’s sweet tea was absolutely disgusting to me for the first time in my life. And around week 9 or 10, I had to do the old hair-tie-around-the-button trick to make my pants feel comfortable – I was already starting to get a bit of a baby bump. It was so exciting!
My doctor said that week 12 was kind of the ‘safety zone’ and that once we heard a heartbeat, there was only a 10% chance of miscarriage. I first heard the heartbeat on August 19, and it was MAGICAL. We were slowly getting out of the woods and everything was going to be fine! I even have a sonogram picture with that tiny heartbeat scrolled across the bottom.
Unfortunately, things quickly went downhill. I began spotting heavily during week 11, 5 days shy of our week 12 safety zone. They say spotting is normal in the first trimester (and it wasn’t the first time this had happened), so I really wasn’t prepared for what I hoped and prayed was a routine trip to find out the baby was fine, just normal prego stuff, to instead be the day I found out that beautiful heartbeat I just heard at my appointment the week before was now undetectable.
Like buying a brand-new car and getting it totaled by an idiot who t-bones you right after you drive off the lot.
Like building the home of your dreams and having it burn to the ground the day after you move everything in and now you’re left with nothing.
Like everything in Alanis Morissette’s song, “Ironic.”
Yeah. Except I’m not exactly sure how those really compare, because I’ve never had any of those things happen. But I will tell you this – it hurt worse than losing you. And it hurts to say that, because losing you was the most excruciating thing I have ever experienced in my life. Losing you was emotionally painful, and yes, I lost sleep, couldn’t eat, had nightmares, all that stuff that comes with the shock and trauma of losing ‘your person’ (for all the Grey’s fans out there) in a sudden accident. Losing cupcake was different.
There was definitely emotional pain – all this excitement that just kept building and the hope that after just one more week things would be fine, had instantly become shattered dreams. Despite all my efforts to save my child, I felt like I had failed. Nothing I did had worked. And it was so hard to process the loss a person I never got to see.
There was mental pain – What if I had chosen a different doctor? Had I really done everything I could? Was I a carrier for HPE and had I done this to my child? Why did I have to be the 1 in 10? There was a heartbeat, and everything was supposed to be fine after that.
There was physical pain – that night after the appointment, my cramps kept getting worse, and I realized that I was having tiny little labor pains as my body was trying to remove this now foreign object from its system. How’s that for wretched and horrible (because that’s how I felt that night). I’ll spare the rest of the details. I want so badly to give them, just so you know exactly what it was like, but I won’t. I didn’t have to have a D and C (which is apparently a good thing, but at the same time, since I passed the baby naturally, there was no way to do any tests to find out if there was something wrong with Cupcake that caused the miscarriage). However, they drew 9 vials of blood, which was a horrible ordeal for me because I can’t stand having blood drawn (another one of those things that moms buckle down and do because they love their children…). And along with all the other post-miscarriage stuff I had going on, I also had to take doxycycline to prevent infection – this is the worst antibiotic I have ever taken. No matter whether I took it with or without food, any time of day, I was doubled over with stomach cramps that felt like someone was slicing my guts open, which is apparently a common side effect… A few weeks later, I had to have a histosonograph (sp?) to make sure there was nothing physically wrong with me that would have caused a miscarriage. There are some places saline solution should never be injected – that’s all I’ll say about that.
I laid on the porch in my pajamas for a week and cried. I cried because my baby was gone and I would never get to cradle them in my arms, kiss their skinned knee, or help them with homework. I also cried because all I wanted to do was talk to you and hear you tell me it was going to be okay, but you weren’t there to do that.
All the test results came back clear. Sometimes, these things just happen. That really didn’t give me any comfort or closure. The doctor is supposed to have a reason for this medical stuff – not tell me “I don’t know.” It was so excruciating knowing that I had done EVERYTHING right, and things still went wrong – for no apparent reason.
People gave advice – name your baby. My baby is named Cupcake. I don’t have to give it a ‘real’ name. Yes, my child was just as real to me as if I had held it in my arms, but I am still holding out hope that someday I will have a Jasper Andrew or Daphne Claire. I don’t need to give it a ‘name.’ That’s cool if it helps some people, but it didn’t really help me.
A couple months after I lost Cupcake, shortly before Thanksgiving, an immediate family member told me that I needed get over myself because I wasn’t the only one hurting from my loss – they hurt and felt the loss just as much as I did. I may or may not have completely lost my temper over that comment.
What has really hurt, though, is that I got divorced a couple months ago, and very well-meaning people trying to give words of comfort are kind of accidentally overcompensating because I don’t think they really know what to say and have said things like, “Well, maybe it’s good that you didn’t have kids.” or “See, look, it’s a good thing you lost the baby – divorce is really hard on kids, you know.” I smile and give a polite response but deep down it really, really, really hurts. I think about all those morning and evenings I took the progesterone and choked down all those nasty prenatal pills. I think about all the sonogram photos of my precious Cupcake. I think about what I went through the night I lost the baby, how sick the doxycycline made me every time I took it, and how humiliating the bloodwork and follow-up tests were. I also think about our own experiences as children of divorce – I hated dad for a decade because I was stupid enough to choose sides and I watched you become an alcoholic before the age of 21, which eventually brought your death. I am the last person who needs to be told how hard divorce is for children. I KNOW.
The pain I endured in losing my child was NOT good. My experience as a child of divorce was NOT good. Losing you was NOT good.
I was starting to let those ‘comforts’ anger me, wondering how in the world any of that could possibly be considered good, and so I began praying and seeking God about it. I had come to peace with the fact that although losing Cupcake was not what I wanted, it was perhaps in mine and/or Cupcake’s best interests – there are many other things that could have happened: What if something would have happened to me later in the pregnancy or during delivery that would have left my baby motherless? What if my baby did have HPE and was instead ushered oh-so-quickly into the arms of Jesus to spend time with Uncle Andy and Aunt Jessie instead of suffering with seizures, NG tubes, shunt surgeries, and countless medications and hospital visits? None of those would have been good either – in fact, more people would have suffered.
All I know is this: I don’t believe that miscarrying my child was a good thing, any way you try to slice it. I just don’t. Just like I don’t believe losing Jessie, or mom and dad’s divorce, or losing you, or my divorce, was a good thing. The death of a young person for any reason is never a good thing – ideally, people should live long, fulfilling lives. Divorce is never good – marriage is intended to be a lifelong commitment. Those are bad things – painful experiences that we can never change but must learn to accept. However, I do believe that my experiences and what I have learned from those events can be used for good. I can find comfort and peace knowing that God has never left me as I faced each of those trials, and I believe that someday, somehow, God will allow me to use those experiences for His glory. Whether they allow me to bring comfort to someone else facing the same struggle, or simply draw me closer to Him, that is the good in those situations.
Romans 5:3-5 (NLT) says, “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope WILL NOT [emphasis added] lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love.”
2 years later, my arms still ache with emptiness, but my heart rejoices that my sweet Cupcake is safe with you in the arms of Jesus, and you have the niece or nephew you so eagerly anticipated while you were here.
5 years later, I still so badly want to have our daily conversations about nothing in particular, but I rejoice that this life is but a vapor and we will soon carry on those conversations for eternity, like we never missed a day.
20 years later, I still regret the decade of my youth that I denied myself and dad and my grandparents, but I rejoice every single moment in God’s power to heal broken relationships and in His grace to give us the ability to forgive and reconcile those past hurts – today, they are the three people I lean on the most.
24 years later, I still wish I had gotten to grow up with a sister, but I rejoice that God gave me the two best brothers anyone could ever hope or dream for and I cherish each and every single memory I have made with you, Zach, and Jessie.
No, losing Cupcake was not a good thing. And please don’t try to tell me that. The good thing is that, in all of the trials I have faced, I have learned that God will never leave me or forsake me, and the same is true for losing Cupcake. I can’t do anything to get my child back while I am here on this earth, but God will not leave me helpless to suffer blindly through my hurt. And eventually, I will see my sweet baby. Just not now.
“Blessed is the one that perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” (James 1:12, NIV)
My crown is waiting, and so is my Cupcake.
All my love,
Jenny
Miscarriage affects an estimated 1 in 4 pregnancies. I am the face of that 1 in 4.
Dear Andy: 