“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you.” – Maya Angelou

Today, I would have been 14 weeks pregnant.

I would have been in my second trimester, and we would have been finding out our baby’s gender this week at a fancy 4D ultrasound.

This was supposed to be a different kind of post, a happy one. I envisioned announcing our pregnancy in some adorable witty way, with our sweet little man accepting his new role as big brother. As you can see, that’s not the case. Instead I’m forced to write different words. I’m here to deliver different news.

MISCARRIAGE

A word I never thought would define me…… and yet here I am. The heartbroken mother of an angel.

 

The Backstory:

My husband and I had a plan. But you know what they say about plans, “man makes plans and God laughs.”

Aaron and I had been anxiously waiting for June to roll around this year. June has always been our month. We started dating in June 2013, we got engaged in June 2014, we got married in June 2015, we welcomed our little Gannon Beau into the world in June of 2017….. and we hoped to make June 2018 every bit as special. In June of 2018 Gannon was turning ONE! As exciting as it was to be celebrating our baby boy’s first year of life, we also felt that this was the perfect time to grow our family once again. With our GanMan quickly morphing into a toddler and our deep desire to have our babies close in age…. this was it, go time!

On June 18, 2018 God quickly answered our prayers. I had received very positive ovulation tests on both June 17th and 18th, and on the morning of the 18th I swore I could feel myself ovulating and that tiny miracle being created inside of me.

Well, I was right! My body had been blessed with another little life growing within me and we couldn’t have been more thrilled about it!

On June 27, 2018 we had received our very first extremely faint positive pregnancy test. We took pregnancy test after pregnancy test every day for the next 5 days, and sure enough, those two pink lines became darker and darker with each day that passed.

Our plan was perfectly on track for a due date of March 11, 2019, and an age gap of 21 months between our new little babe and our GanMan. Yep, we were thrilled! Slightly nervous for the whole “two under two” thing….. but totally and completely thrilled!!

Thrilled to be growing this little life, thrilled to have a tiny newborn again, thrilled to be giving Gannon a sibling/best friend, thrilled to become a family of four. We had so much to be thankful for and felt so incredibly blessed.

Although it was still early, I felt like I wanted to do something, anything, for our new little one. I was 8 weeks 4 days pregnant, and our first prenatal appointment was scheduled at 9 weeks. Time had been crawlinggg and I really just wanted to do something to help pass those final few days. Aaron and I decided our adorable shabby chic guest room would make the perfect nursery. We spent the entire weekend prior to our appointment, cleaning, decluttering, and reorganizing the many random items being stored in that room. Our thought was to empty out the guest room little by little, so by the time we found out the baby’s gender, we’d already have a blank slate to make Project Nursery a GO!

As our appointment grew closer, fear began to creep in. I was obviously excited to see our sweet babe and hear the beautiful sound of his/her heartbeat…. but I was also becoming nervous. Something in the back of my mind had started haunting me with horrible thoughts of the baby not having a heartbeat. I’d ask Aaron things like, “Do you think the baby is okay? Like you think the baby has a heartbeat, right?” Aaron always replied confidently with things like, “Stop worrying. The baby is going to be fine. Everything went perfectly with Gannon.” And he was right! Everything did go perfectly with Gannon! I really didn’t have a reason to think something could be wrong with this baby, so why was I so scared? I don’t remember ever feeling this kind of nervous during my pregnancy with Gannon.

 

The Heartbreak:

Monday, August 6, 2018

It was FINALLY time to see our baby! Aaron works 4 10 hour days, so he always has Saturday – Monday off. We were excited that this baby’s “bump date” fell on a Monday because that meant Aaron would be able to make it to ALL of our appointments!

I woke up extra early that morning to grab a jumpstart on getting myself ready – ya know, before my toddler woke up ready to rock n’ roll. I managed to get myself completely ready before I even heard a peep out of Gannon, or Aaron for that matter. (GanMan had woken up at some point in the night and I ended up bringing him into bed with us.)

Around 7:15am I went in to wake up my boys, both sound asleep in pretty much the exact same position. Our appointment was at 9:30am and we live about 45 minutes – 1 hour away from the doctor’s office/hospital (depending on traffic). Since it was a work day for most people, I wanted to be sure we had plenty of time to cook breakfast, feed Gannon, get them ready, and arrive early.

We got to the doctor’s office shortly after 9:00am.

By this point I was more excited than nervous and tried telling myself that I had no reason to worry. We rode the elevator up to the second floor. I changed Gannon’s diaper, he snacked on some cheerios, and had fun cruising around the waiting room talking to people. We were finally taken back to a room around 9:45am. As we waited for the nurse, Aaron and I did our best to entertain big brother.

When my nurse practitioner came in, she was so sweet and excited to see us back in the office (same nurse I had when pregnant with Gannon). We talked a bit, did a quick pelvic exam, then discussed whether or not we planned to do genetic testing with this baby.

Finally the moment we had been waiting for…

We were taken into the ultrasound room, I was given a gown to change into, and I snapped a few photos as we waited for Nurse Clements to return and preform our first ultrasound.

At 10:15am it was finally time to see our second child, to hear the beautiful sound of our baby’s heartbeat. The nurse began a transvaginal ultrasound and I could immediately feel the mood in the room shift. It was completely silent. My eyes were glued to the ultrasound screen.

I was confused. I’m quite good at understanding what I’m looking at on an ultrasound, but this time I wasn’t so sure. My eyes were frantically scanning the screen in search of my little gummy bear……. and then there our baby was. So tiny, so different looking from Gannon’s ultrasound at 9 weeks. Before any words were even spoken, I knew. I knew something was wrong.

“You’re definitely not 9 weeks along,” the nurse said. Uhhh YES, I most certainly was! She asked if there was any way my dates could be off. I scrambled to sort through the dates in my head, praying that I’ve made some kind of mistake. Our baby was only measuring 6 weeks in size. But there was no way. It was physically impossible for my dates to be off. There was no way I could have been only 6 weeks along. I was terrified of what the nurse would say next – then there it was! The tiny flicker of a heartbeat on the screen! “Well there’s definitely a heartbeat,” she said. “I see it!” Aaron leaned in.

I asked if we could hear it! Nurse Clements declined. She explained to us that the baby’s heartbeat was slower than it should be, but that there was no question about it, our baby was alive. She tried very hard to keep a positive face and reassure me with the mistaken dates thing again. I knew with every fiber of my being that my dates were NOT off. So I asked her, “what if they’re not?”

“………Then this may not be a normal pregnancy,” she responded.

We were scheduled for an ultrasound with my OBGYN in one week to check on baby’s growth, and off we went back into the world. As if my life hadn’t just been turned upside-down.

I cried the whole way home. I cried the rest of the day. I cried on the floor of the shower for almost an hour that night, talking to my baby and begging God not to take him/her.

Deep down in my heart I knew that these were going to be my final moments with this baby. I had no idea how much time we had, but I knew how to read between the lines of the “stay positive, wait and see what happens” bullshit we were fed at our appointment. I just wanted so badly for someone to look me in the eyes and tell me exactly what was going on – no sugar coating.

Our baby had a heartbeat, our baby was alive inside of me, our baby had been fighting to live for the passed 3 weeks after growth had stopped……. but our baby was not going to make it.

We were just waiting for our baby’s heart to stop beating. How terrible is that!?!

I quickly turned to google for answers. I needed to know why this was happening, what to expect, if there was anything I could do to save my baby…. I needed the truth. I knew absolutely nothing about miscarriages, and yet I knew that’s what our future held. It was only a matter of time.

I thought being in that limbo period was going to be the worst part. Knowing my baby was alive inside of me and waiting for it to die…. but I was wrong. The worst days of my life were still ahead of me.

   

The Miscarriage:

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

I was 9 weeks 1 day pregnant.

Aaron went to work, Gannon and I went about our normal day. At 12:20pm I went to the bathroom and there it was, the pink spotting began. Immediately I knew my worst nightmare was coming true. I had lost my baby.

I called my nurse practitioner for guidance while Gannon was eating lunch. “Some spotting or light bleeding can be normal after a transvaginal ultrasound” – there’s that false hope again *eye roll*. I was told to monitor the bleeding for the next 24 hours and call back if things became worse.

At 8:30pm the bleeding turned bright red, and by 11:00pm all hope was lost. I was experiencing horrible cramping and the bleeding had become HEAVY. Heavier than I’ve ever experienced. My husband and baby boy were sound asleep as I spent my night on the bathroom floor crying and googling like crazy. Googling to find answers, googling for what to expect next, googling to find other woman like me.

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

I thought I was going to die.

The large blood clots began at 11:11am. Accompanied by contractions, horrible contractions. I experienced chills, nausea, and shaking almost exactly like those first few hours of laboring at home with Gannon. (Except this time I was alone and had a toddler to take care of.)

At one point in the day I couldn’t even leave the bathroom. The bleeding was so bad that I’d soak through a giant diaper pad in a matter of minutes if I attempted to leave the toilet. The contractions were so painful I could barley move at times. I spent the majority of the day curled up on my knees in the living room beside a kitchen pot for puking purposes – either that, or on the toilet. I felt so guilty for not playing with Gannon that day. I was just trying to survive the day, struggling to take care of myself let alone somebody else.

Around 3:00pm I couldn’t do it anymore. I needed help. I texted Aaron asking if he could come home, but he said he couldn’t leave work. So I texted my parents, begging for one of them to come help me with Gannon. My dad left work right away and came up to the house. Aaron got home shortly after 5:00pm that day, and at 5:20pm we decided to head to the emergency room (my dad took Gannon to their house).

We were at the ER from 6:00pm – 10:40pm, they ran blood tests, urine tests, and another ultrasound. I had lost a decent amount of blood, and it was confirmed that I had miscarried our baby. My uterus was empty – or so they said. But the radiologist then threw us a curve ball… I was (mis)diagnosed with a heterotopic pregnancy.

“A heterotopic pregnancy is a rare complication of pregnancy in which both extra-uterine (ectopic pregnancy) and intrauterine pregnancy occur simultaneously.” – Wikipedia

………..we actually later found out that this was NOT the case. The 2cm mass found in my fallopian tube/ovary area was normal during the first trimester of pregnancy and would resolve itself in time. I did, in fact, just have the single pregnancy. (Nothing like a little added stress to an already awful situation though, right?)

Thursday, August 9, 2018

I had thought the worst of it was over.

The pain and bleeding had lightened up enough to sleep through the night….. but it didn’t last long. That morning the contractions hit me like a freight train. I got into the shower thinking it might help, but next thing I knew, I felt something coming out. Something different from the multiple jelly-like blood clots up to the size of a tennis ball that I had been previously passing (sorry, TMI). I crouched down and looked between my legs, it was tissue. I began to push it out and – at 8:15am, in the shower, right there before my eyes was….. my baby. Along with a large piece of ruptured amniotic sac.

I was hysterical. Sobbing and holding our tiny baby in my hand. Aaron ran in (he had stayed home from work that day) and couldn’t believe his eyes. We cried, a lot.

On the ultrasound, our baby had only looked like a grain of rice, but in real life – I was in shock. Our baby was the size of a large green grape and looked EXACTLY like the photos I’d seen on my pregnancy apps. It was very obvious that this was a baby. It was my baby.

We had only known he/she for such a short time, but we loved and wanted that baby so badly.

At 12:45pm I passed more tissue (what’s thought to be the rest of the amniotic sac). I was so ready for this nightmare to be over. And at 6:52pm, I passed the final hunk of tissue.

Friday, August 10, 2018 and onward…

I continued to bleed (more like a period) for 3 – 4 more days. I lost 5lbs in 4 days. The physical pain was gone, but the emotional pain was here to stay.

My heart had shattered into a million pieces. I was left empty and feeling more alone than ever.

“We were going to have a baby, but we had an angel instead.”

I am 1 in 4.
I am an angel’s mom.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my story.
I will be posting a short series on the topic of miscarriage in the weeks to come.
(This post was strictly to share my personal experience)

 

XO,