My Baby, My Miscarriage

I remember hearing stories of friends who had miscarriages. That term thrown around here and there in close circles, usually a passing conversation. Rarely the story spoken by the person who actually experienced it. When someone hinted at that term, I felt sad for them for a moment and always said "healthy babies are a miracle" and then moved on. That was as much as I knew how to say and embarrassingly to admit now, I couldn't understand how someone could have such strong, long lasting feelings surrounding their experience of a miscarriage. I didn't say baby, because to me it was a miscarriage. I think in those moments my heart and soul couldn't bare to consider that type of hurt, honestly it was too hard for me to know how to feel or what to say. I had three healthy boys with no issues getting pregnant, I could not empathize. I know I said things that were probably hurtful not knowing so. I am sure I complained about parenting challenges amidst women who so wanted to just be able to complain about a healthy child not sleeping through the night. I know I loved my children then and do now, but I had become blinded to the beauty of parenting by all of society's overwhelming opinions and had allowed comparison to create a mindset of survive not thrive. To me parenting was more of a job than an honor, to women who have experienced losing their baby in pregnancy, that honor is desperatley missed- I see that now.

In May, during the pandemic, my husband and I were given a surprising gift that we are thankful for to this day- we were pregnant! We knew adding a 4th child would be exciting and challenging and though we love our boys energy, we both silently held space in our hearts that this 4th child, another miracle of ours, was a girl. There are many more pieces to our story of becoming a family of 6, but one part, the part that I can empathize with now is hearing the phrase, "I want to let you know at this time I am not hearing a heartbeat". My husband and I heard this at an 18 week ultrasound appointment after our genetic testing results returned abnormal with a possibility of Trisomy 13. What I didn't know, is that our girl, the girl we had both secretly hoped for, had died sometime before and I had been miscarrying for probably a week. 

Our parenting journey changed instantly and we began feelings of shock, depression, grief, sadness, dissapointment, fear and for the first time in my life empathy for those mothers before me who too felt this deep, lonely pain of losing a child. Our stories are not about "having a miscarriage" our stories are about losing a child. I slowly acknowledged my own bias about the term "miscarriage"... she is our daughter and I miss her everyday. She wasn't a "miscarriage" to us. Medically my body experienced a "miscarriage", emotionally my heart experienced a loss. My grief was love with nowhere to go. We have other children, but the assumption that it would make it easier or less painful is absolutely wrong. She was a life and she wouldn't be able to live it on her terms. The weeks leading up to the genetic testing results and ultrasound were busy. We had not known her for very long, so by society standards we hadn't had a lot of parenting opportunities or time to grow ample love for her. But that isn't how we experienced her life or her death. My husband and I loved Piper then and love her today. Physical presence does not define being a parent or diminish a child's purpose. I didn't want to be in this village of loss that is so unique and sensitive that no one really understands, but I was. I didn't want to tell anyone how far along we were because I worried they would disagree with the magnitude of love I had grown for her. That terrified me.

A woman becomes a mother the moment she decides she wants to be one. Sometimes a motherhood journey continues with a healthy baby or babies, trouble breastfeeding and sleepless nights. Sometimes a motherhood journey is plagued with infertility or loss. However, being a mother is ALWAYS scary, beautiful, humbling and the child we hold in our hearts or our arms hold equal space in our soul. Its hard to know how to support someone who has lost their baby in pregnancy or soon after because if you haven't experienced it, and you don't live in that person's brain, you might be scared to try. Its hard for mothers to explain an early pregnancy loss because we feel confused by what we know to be a miscarriage and what we now know to be our child who died.  As a mother who holds her only daughter in her heart, please hear me when I say, I want to know that someone cares about her. I want to know that someone can step aside from their own life for a moment and walk beside me, silently, physically and compassionately. We are mothers, we love our children deeply, we feel our losses differently, we ALL remember our babies. These babies have names, they all have a story, they each are part of a motherhood journey and they peacefully hold space in our world as we remember them.