Losing Her
It’s been about a year since I miscarried my first child. I have been torn in writing this- embarrassed and ashamed, angry, wanting to scream it from the rooftops, wanting to pretend it never happened. I think about it a lot though, and it feels disingenuous to not say: This is what happened. This is how I feel.
I found out I was pregnant and found out I miscarried in pretty short order, but I was two to three months along. I was embarrassed to talk about being pregnant because I wasn’t married, because it wasn’t the plan for my life, because I’d only been dating my boyfriend at the time for two years. But at the time we were so happy, and so in love, and we both wanted kids. It wasn’t planned but I was immediately felt like a mom- my mind shifted to what I was eating, whether I could have Tylenol, whether salmon was good or bad for a baby’s brain and how much? But still, I was embarrassed and I didn’t tell my parents or family. I knew they’d be happy with a grandchild and I had fantasies about how I’d tell them, with cute t-shirts that said grandma and grandpa.
But I lost it. I went to the dr bleeding and bleeding but I knew. My body still tested pregnant but I knew it was gone. She said it happens, usually for no reason, and kinda shrugged. I hated her for that. She said it probably wouldn’t show up on the ultrasound and it wouldn’t show on a blood test after a week. It was extremely clear on the ultrasound and it was another month of blood tests before my hormones returned to normal. The ultrasound results read “abortion-one fetus”, incredibly cruelly. Theyd charged me $400 more to tell me they could see the fetus. The blood tests ticked by, lower and lower hormone levels until they were gone.
I found out at work- I knew before they told me, with no emotion in their voice, that I’d miscarried. I sat in a conference room, drew the blinds, and cried for hours. I called my boyfriend and he came over after work. He told me it would have been a happy accident and that we would have gotten married. He was supportive.
A week later he told me he didn’t want to have kids or settle down, and thought we should break up. I “talked him out of it” and told him he was having a hard time with it and we should stay together. The next weeks were the worst of my life- crying on the way to and from work, missing my imaginary baby, avoiding seeing any children, avoiding friends. I’m sure I was difficult and emotional during this time, but he made it harder. He criticized my drinking, suggesting maybe that’s why I lost the baby (I had drank before I knew). He criticized everything and was distant. We had a huge fight, during which I yelled at him for not coming to the doctors appointments, not being supportive, not paying any of the 1000 in dr bills, and leaving me to do this on my own. He admitting that I was right. We tried to stay together and we traveled to weddings over the next month. Things got better and at one wedding he whispered “do you think these couples are jealous of how in love we are?”
Two weeks later he broke up with me over dinner one night, two days after the last wedding he wanted me to attend with him. I realized then that he planned it from the miscarriage. That I should have let him run like the coward he was.
The breakup hit me harder than I thought possible. The miscarriage was horrible, but I still had him. We could still be together and as weird as it sounds, it wasn’t just my grief then so it was easier to deal with. But at that moment it crashed down on me- he was gone, it had always been only my grief, and I was alone.
Afterwards I couldn’t eat, my stomach would just reject anything I put in it. I finally told my parents everything, so ashamed. They came up that weekend to comfort me, but things were a blur. I cried at dinner, I cried in a shoe store, I cried at home. I couldn’t talk about the miscarriage, it was too awkward and too raw. It felt like I had been so stupid. My mom said she felt like she was mourning her grandchild, and I couldn’t tell if that made it better or worse.
I went to therapy every week. I was worried at first that I wouldn’t be able to talk about it but as soon as I sat down it spilled out of me in sobbing waves. Palpable mourning. And I was embarrassed and couldn’t stop saying things like I know people have lost more. I know they have harder problems. I felt so guilty that I couldn’t just move past it- that I was stuck in this bog of grief. And I felt sooo guilty that every time someone announced that they were pregnant it made me (and still makes me) tangibly sad.
Especially women who were due when I was going to be due. As the months ticked by I thought I’d be five months, I’d be eight months, the baby would be two months. And I’d watch other babies at the same ages and think about mine. What they would look like. My ex was black and I would look at biracial babies and wonder if that’s what they would look like. I’m not sure if it would have been a boy or girl but I felt like it was a girl. I actually named her too, just so put a name to the image in my mind, rather than having to think “the baby” or worse “my dead baby”.
Therapy was a huge relief. Friends- real adult amazing female and male friends, comforted me, held me while I cried, bought me food and made me eat, and didn’t look away when I cried. People say I can never repay the debt but I can never ever repay the debt.
Through therapy I learned a lot- that it’s okay to be pissed off, that it’s okay to demand that my ex apologize and pay his share of the bills (which he did) that it was ok to feel the way I felt, and that feelings aren’t positive or negative, they just teach you what you want and don’t want. In my case, I really want a child and I really don’t want to ever go through a relationship demise like that again.
It’s been a year. A lot of good things have happened, for which my friends and family get a lot of credit. But I will never forget the loss of my first child.