Pregnancy After Loss

I've waited so long to write this, because every time I would start in my head, all I could think of were a million and one disclaimers. Am I allowed to focus on my own experience of a hardship, when I look around and see so many more urgent sufferings in the world that deserve attention? Am I selfish to feel and express my pain, when in the end, I get a "happy ending"? Part of me is embarrassed to share the entire inner depths of my psyche in regards to becoming a mother and the journey it has been for me.

But, I'm endeavoring to record it, because in the midst of my times of struggle, I have been encouraged to read the accounts of others who have walked through similar experiences. I recognize that we all take a different path when bringing life into the world, and it's likely that my experience won't be super relatable to a lot of folks. However, I desire to share it, in the hopes that someone might hear about something I've gone through and feel less alone.

So, here's my story of becoming a mother. 

On the one year anniversary of our marriage, my husband and I found ourselves in Europe for a 3 month travel adventure. Being the romantic that I am, I thought 'what better conception story could there be than creating a baby in the fertile farms and fields and ancient fairytale cities of the old country?' So, we "kinda tried" to start conceiving those 3 months. To be more specific: we stopped using protecting around the time I was ovulating. Some days we would fire the canon in my fertile window, but then the next day I'd hesitate and get scared and think: what if I get morning sickness for the rest of our trip, so then we'd pull out. So it wasn't a total shock that we didn't conceive during that summer. When we got home we undertook a cross-country move and during the fall we were homeless and starting a whole new life on the West Coast. Once again my brain felt unsettled and it didn't feel like the right time to bring another human into our lives. Around Christmas though, we both had jobs, and were living in a lush Cherimoya Orchard in a tiny off-grid shed with ocean views; there was stability, and a rosiness to life, so we started trying again. It took us 3 months.

I remember feeling calm and secretive, while trying my best not to get too excited. I had begun to worry when we didn't conceive "RIGHT AWAY", thinking there might be something wrong with my body, so I felt cautious, and a little distrustful of my ability to grow a human at first. We didn't tell folks til I was about 14 weeks. That whole time I tried distracting myself until we got to a point of more certainty. I wonder if everyone worries a lot during their first pregnancy, or if I just did a little extra because that can tend to be my default.

But fast forward to 41 weeks, & our son Ozark was born! He was a big baby who had tucked himself so cozily inside me, that we had a real time getting him to come into the world. After many hours of pushing however he gushed thru me and onto our bed in the most surreal moment (while also splitting my vagina open from front to back, leaving my nether regions one giant hole - a 4th degree tear). I was stuck in bed for two months afterwards, wondering if my body would ever be the same. I spent time reading all the horror stories of mothers experiencing this sort of birth complication, and feared that I might never be able to have enjoyable sex again, or that I'd always be pooping myself... Thankfully only a short 6 months later, I felt totally healed and back to normal, and had forgotten the intensity of my labor and recovery, and we eagerly started trying for baby #2! 

It had been a dream of mine for as long as I can remember to have my first children close in age. I always said, once I start having kids, I'm gonna be all in, and submerge myself in the babyland. I thought it would be easier in the long run having them close together, even if it might be more difficult in the early years, it would pay off having well bonded lifelong playmates. This isn't to say having kids close in age will guarantee that they become besties; I've seen amazing relationships between siblings with greater gaps, and kids close in age clash hardcore, but needless to say this was my vision and hope and dream for my family.

It took 3 months for us to conceive the second time as well. Anyone who has spent any time trying to make a baby knows the disappointing feeling of "failure" when a period starts. It's a mind game between relaxing and telling yourself it's normal, while maintaining hope and openness that things will happen in perfect timing. When it did happen for us, life felt too good to be true! Our second baby was created on our first family camp out after a good friend's wedding; it just felt like a good omen, and satisfied my romantic heart. It wasn't long before we started sharing the news! I wasn't worried this time around. I knew my body could carry and birth a baby to term; all that first time pregnancy anxiety dissipated and we experienced 3 (almost 4) blissful, excited months of carrying our second son. 

At my 15w check up, after my Provider had sat and answered my long list of my questions, we got up to do a routine check of the baby. At first she couldn't find the heartbeat with the doppler. I took a deep breath, everything was okay, I told myself, no need to panic. I was sure the baby was just in a funny position, the provider even said she hadn't been using a lot of dopplers due to Covid and was out of practice, so she suggested we do a quick ultrasound just to check everything out, but assured me there was likely no reason for concern as we had heard and seen a heartbeat twice already, most recently only a few weeks back. 

I went into the ultrasound room, and the doctor came in this time. She started the ultrasound and was quiet for a while. "Hmm... Madeleine, I don't like what I'm seeing," she finally spoke "I'm not finding a heartbeat." It's strange when truth hits your mind before it hits your heart in a weird kind of delay. "This is very unusual," she continued "it's rare that this happens when someone is as far along as you. I'm not sure why this happened, but I'm very sorry." 

I walked out through the waiting room in a daze, and drove home. My husband and son weren't at the house, so I walked towards where I thought I might find them. We live by an elementary school, and I found my boys at the far end of a outdoor corridor. Three years earlier, I had taken a long walk down a different narrow isle to marry this man, and here I was again, walking somberly toward him with my full focus, my whole heart. This time it was heavy... but in both instances time had stopped and eternity felt near.

I didn't say a word as I entered into his embrace. "What's wrong?" He asked. I think he knew. "There was no heartbeat" was all I could say. We were both silent. We had just experienced the joy of our little one's first birthday, he'd have no little brother joining him in the summer. "It's harder," I said "Because we know how wonderful Ozark is. We won't get to know this one like that."

There are lot's of details I could go into as far as what transpired in the next few weeks. I'm really happy to talk about them with anyone who would ask! But for the sake of not making this tooo long, I will try to summarize and say that is was another 2 weeks before I physically miscarried our son. We continued to see people and have dinners and go shopping, and meanwhile my little guy was just waiting inside me, to come out and find his final place of rest in the earth. I learned there are so many options about what to do when you learn you've miscarried, and they can depend a lot on the circumstances. I was getting so much information, and went back and forth a few times about what to do, but I am very grateful that in the end, I got to give birth to our Little Whippoorwill, hold him, see him and finally lay him to rest under our cherry tree. 

A quick note to say that my physical experience was not painful and lasted only about 2 hours or so. I had heard many stories of really excruciating, labor-like miscarriages, and I was surprised and grateful that my body gave me a gentle experience. From 2am-4am, I stayed in the bath and passed tissues, blood and a sweet perfect 4 inch baby. He had his little head tilted back with his mouth slightly open. Around 5am I crawled back into bed (thankful to not have hemorrhaged or needed to go into the ER), just before the time Ozark would usually wake up to nurse. On seeing his head tilted back in sleep and his mouth ajar, I thought to myself that they looked so much like brothers. I cried knowing they would not get to be.

The next few months are hard to write about, because in large part, I still don't think I've fully processed them. But I'll do my best to share about that time now.

I was advised to wait a bit before trying, but there is nothing I wanted more than just to be pregnant again. Everyone told me to take time to heal, but I felt like the best way for me to heal and move on was to immediately have another baby. It became my obsession. As hard as I tried to exist normally in the world, our loss (and my desire for more children) was always on my mind. Month after month we didn't become pregnant, and my sorrow grew deeper. I recently heard a quote that said: "trauma is a memory we can't narrate ourselves out of." It certainly felt like the merry-go-round of despair would not let me off.

I was so sensitive, and I'm sad to say I became reclusive and pushed other mothers away. They would kindly reach out to get together, but if they were pregnant or had had their second baby, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Little things would set me off. I remember visiting my brother's house and a baby barbie had been left on their bathroom vanity. It was the exact size of our dead baby, and I was irrationally angry that it had been carelessly left there to trigger me like that. Helplessness grew with the continuing pressure of a ticking clock, louder with each passing month. I was always recalculating a new age gap, as nothing happened for the next 9 months.

Our baby's due date came and went. I had hoped I'd get pregnant before then, so that at least when our new baby would be born, I could rationalize that their existence wouldn't be possible if we hadn't lost our little Will. I wanted so much to make sense or find some meaning or purpose in his loss. We never got medical answers as to why it happened. People would say trite cliche things like: "everything happens for a reason", and I'm sorry but I'm still not on board for that. I really do believe that sometimes terrible shitty things happen, and there is just no cute way of tying them all up with a moral bow. If people can do that, good for them. But this Pollyanna has not reached that point in her life. 😏

In all this, my questions about God, the Universe and the Balance of Life expanded to new depths. To be honest, in the last years my list of uncertainties has only grown. However this experience brought my beliefs about God's goodness and involvement in all things front and center. As a kid who had pretty much good things happen all her life, it's easy to attribute that good fortune to "god's favor", but then when something bad happens, who's fault is it? Coming from a culture that had hammered the belief of a benevolent God in control of all things...  My default was to believe that this had happened because I had either done something to deserve it, or that God was actually not involved, or not actually kind. I'd hear reports of people who had "prayed for a sick child, and the child was born healthy." Did this mean I didn't pray enough or the right way, and therefore my child was forgotten? There was a lot of "why me?" and "what could I have done differently?" There was a lot of mental bargaining. An incessant desire to crack the code for receiving god's blessing.

One of the hardest things has been sitting in the non-answers. I think another reason I've put off writing this is because I still don't have them. After we got pregnant the 3rd time, a lady was sharing with me about how her church had been talking about the story of Joseph and how he'd suffered so much and been thrown into slavery, but then "it all worked out in the end, because he saved his family from famine." And she got all teary-eyed saying how my story reminded her of that. Like: our son died, but now it's all okay, because we're having another! I know she meant well, but I don't want to look at life like that. It feels way too simple, and leaves out so much... the suffering of all the families NOT saved from famine... all the years Joseph lost, the hurt of betrayal... It's not that I don't believe in redemption, it's just that I don't believe in making light of the cost of pain, either.

One thing that was most helpful to me in the worst moments of my darkness was finding others that were in a similar place... or oftentimes an even harder place (although one thing I've learned is that it's dangerous to compare our grief. We often use differentiation as a tool to have some sort of control - to measure or gain perspective of our situations. Someone somewhere will always have it worse or better, no matter what. But I don't believe we were created to be each others' sadness police. And I think there is a real beauty when pain acknowledges pain without recognition of a scale).

Maybe now I could maybe do a little segment on what is helpful vs hurtful when talking to someone who has experienced a loss. Mostly we received so much support and I found I was most touched when people expressed that our son was loved and valued. I do believe everyone always meant well, but it didn't always feel great when they tried to find a possible cause or fix, or said things that started with an "at least"... "at least you can try again," "at least you have one child", "at least it happened earlier rather than later." I've said these things to myself as well, but hearing them was not always helpful because again, it felt like a way to brush over or make light of the hurt. In this I would teeter-toter between the pendulum of feeling extreme gratitude, then utter discontent.

Maybe after sharing all this, I'll be perceived as wallowing or egocentric. I'll admit I struggle with these things. But it feels better exposing myself for what I am than putting on any kind of front, or attempting to stuff myself into a mold that isn't genuine. Of course I wish I was a steady, strong and wise pillar of positivity, dressed in a tapestry of silver-linings and radiant steadfast hopefulness, not so easily drug down by the waves of life. Maybe this kind of beauty lies in my future, but for now, I think it's just better to be real about who I am, and how I have handled these experiences.

Okay, but to continue with this story... 

About 8 months after the miscarriage, so perplexed and disheartened that we hadn't been able to conceive again, I became an expert google doctor and self-diagnosed myself with a rare condition. I became convinced that since I had received a D&C afterwards to remove retained tissue, I'd developed uterine scarring (this sometimes transpires after such a procedure). This would finally be an answer to all my weird post miscarriage symptoms, which included: really light periods, lots of uterine cramping and discomfort all throughout the month, and of course an inability to conceive. I shared my theory with my Ob, who ran some inconclusive tests. At one point she found some calcification and something she referred to as "schmutz" in my uterus, but said that in order to know for sure what was going on in there, we'd have to do an exploratory surgery (a hysteroscopy and laparoscopy for you nerds who care😀).

I went under hopeful but also so nervous because thanks to the internet, I had been warned that those with this condition should only be operated on by specialized surgeon, and since I didn't know what would be discovered, I didn't know if it would be treated then (and possibly unsuccessfully) by my Ob, or if I would have to go on to hunt down one of the very small handful of surgeons worldwide to treat me. Oftentimes women with scarring and adhesions can never bear more children even after attempted treatment. When I finally came to I looked suspiciously at the clock on the wall that had barely moved 40 minutes when a kind nurse told me the 'good news: they had discovered nothing wrong and that I had a perfectly healthy uterus!' The pain meds started to wear off and I began to cry: then what was wrong with me?!

I felt like a crazy person after that. Even though the outcome was good, it didn't give me any answers and I felt like a fool working myself up and then putting myself through something "unnecessary". FYI: recovery from these surgeries isn't very fun, you're in pain for about a week, and for me it also meant loosing another month to try to get pregnant. I was so discouraged.

I was even more discouraged the next month, when I did ovulate again, because I ended up getting a UTI  (oh by the way, I should have started this blog entry with a graphic warning label, hehe), and felt our chances had been ruined yet again! At this point I had pretty much surrendered my dream of having kids close together because of all the time that had passed. I was just hoping that someday, somehow I could have another child. I had an appointment with a new doctor a few months down the road who would look further into running more hormone tests for me, but the future seemed pretty bleak, and I felt pretty broken.

Here's a little fun fact a doula friend told me: Sometimes a UTI can help keep your cervix open for the little swimmers to get through! Which I guess is exactly what happened! This wasn't a little baby romantically conceived in a french field, or a mountaintop after a wedding, but our little UTI baby was and IS a miracle!! 💙

Lot's of people have asked me how this pregnancy has compared to my priors. What I always say is that it's been harder, but I don't know if it's the symptoms themselves that have made it harder, or the way the extra stress has contributed to my symptoms. In the very beginning I carried a lot of guilt. Like, I didn't allow myself to feel happy because it felt unfair. I had been on the side of longing and wanting for so long, that it felt like I had cheated somehow, like I had short cut my grief and abandoned my fellow barren or mourning mama's back in the trenches of despair. I felt undeserving (in the same way I asked 'why me?' in my pain, I asked it also in my joy). What cosmic equation had I finally gotten right? I was scared to somehow jinx my blessing. What was the catch? I had come to a place of accepting Nature to be Nature. I wanted to trust that I could rest in Life's incessant desire to produce more life. And yet, the rug had pulled out from under me before. I wanted to hold on to some sort of anchor, but the only way I felt I could anchor myself, was to surrender to the open sea sprawling before me, hoping to somehow receive safe passage to the other side.

At 11 weeks, I was visiting my parents out of state. The night before, I had arrived and surprised the family with the news. The next night, at 3 am I woke up thinking I had peed the bed. I shown a light on bedsheets drenched in blood. I got up, peed, and while doing so, a golf-ball sized blood clot fell out of me. Here was the catch. It was happening again. Again?! Seriously?! How could I go through this again? Would my body, mind and heart ever be able to recover now? WHAT DID I NEED TO LEARN THROUGH THIS?! WHYY??! I collapsed in numb frozen overwhelm and fear.

The next day we finally tracked down an ER doc who did an ultrasound and saw that little brother was still inside me... with a heartbeat! I had often heard stories of women bleeding in pregnancy, but I never imagined it to be with such volume, and so gruesome. I haven't bled since that day, and if there is something that I have learned through this experience it's that it's not merely strength that I need to find  that keeps another being alive. He is a force of his own, allotted the gift to have made it this far, and I can rest in accepting his separateness from me. The fact that he too is drifting in an ocean overwhelming, and yet is still alive; as I am, and you are, and we all are together right now. I can focus on the miracle of the mystery of life (while at the same time not denying lost life).

We're about a month away from meeting this child now, and I've finally let myself get excited! I believe in the beauty that is ahead, redemption, second chances and altered paths... I believe there is still time for my unanswered questions to find more responses, and for sorrow and joy to continue to coexist. I believe in accepting good gifts and that strength does exist out there for those with broken hopes, in moments that feel impossible to bear.

But in the moments I really let myself dream wild... 

I picture 3 little boys romping together someday in the green grasses of paradise, and then laying down beside me to sleep, their tender mouths slightly ajar, and heads thrown back in sweet gentle rest. Three brothers all happily together, made from love. Even with all my uncertainties about Life and the Universe, I know someday I'll get to witness this scene, in a place as real as any in the great beyond. 💙