The one who wasn’t meant to be

Today would’ve been a due date. An estimate of when we could’ve expected the arrival of our second child.

I’ve been meaning to write this post since I first mentioned the loss of a pregnancy way back in January, right after we announced my current pregnancy on this blog. But it’s not a post that I ever felt particularly motivated to write. And then last week, I was thinking about it some more, and I realized how close we were to the date. So it only seemed fitting for today to be the day.

I had a miscarriage. It’s not unique. In fact, 1 in 4 women will experience a miscarriage at some point in their lives. And, of course, there are women who experience more than one.

Here’s the thing about my miscarriage: No one needs to be sad about it. I actually feel a little uncomfortable when people tell me that they’re sorry or offer sympathies. Why? Well, because to be absolutely honest, my miscarriage really didn’t cause me any heartbreak. I never shed a tear.

There are reasons for this, which I’ll explain. But I just want you all to know that you don’t need to be sorry for me. Out of those 1 in 4 women, I consider myself to be one of the extremely lucky ones. Again, why?

Because I didn’t even know I was pregnant until it was over.

Rewind to last August. We decided it might be time to try to expand our family. I didn’t know what to expect, given my past struggles trying to get pregnant with Nora. But my period seemed to return to normal (meaning regular) after I started weaning Nora at around 12 months old, so I was cautiously optimistic. We threw caution to the wind, so to speak, but I didn’t truly believe that we would ever get pregnant on the first try. So I was relaxed about it. So relaxed, in fact, that I didn’t pay much attention to my body.

I did take one test. But it was early, and it was negative. A couple of days later, I started spotting, and I figured it was over. At this same time, we were in the middle of a hellish project at our house—the kitchen/entryway floor remodel. We were busting our asses, and then we went through enormous stress and a battle with our original contractor, who—instead of opting to do the job correctly—ultimately decided to walk off of the job. It was so stressful and upsetting, in fact, that I never even wrote about it here. If you know me at all, you know how amazing that is, given that when I’m stressed like that, one of the first things I want to do is vent. But this was so bad, that I didn’t even want to relive it long enough to write about it.

Then, just as we resolved the floor issue—my cousin’s husband came to the rescue and got it done for us—we suddenly and unexpectedly lost Michael’s beloved grandfather. That next week, among calling hours and an incredibly moving funeral, my 10+ days of spotting finally gave way to what I believed to be a normal period, although heavier (and longer) than normal.

You can maybe see why I was not aware that something weird was going on? I had just a few distractions.

But once things started calming down after Poppy’s services, I started to really look at dates, and think about what had been going on. Things didn’t seem normal to begin with, and then, after a heavy/long period, I had four days off from it all when suddenly I started spotting again. At that point, I was definitely wondering, what the hell?

I called my doctor and they wanted me to come in. I made an appointment, and in the meantime I began to wonder. The possibility did occur to me—I remember mentioning to Michael one day when we were getting out of the car, “I’m worried that I might’ve had a miscarriage.”

I went into the doctor’s office the next week, and as part of the standard urine screen, they ran a pregnancy test. The nurse practitioner came in and handed me the little plastic cartridge, which showed a very faint second line. “Congratulations,” she said.

Uhhhh… what?

I remember laughing. Just because it was so completely not what I expected to see. And it was my way of dealing with the tension. But I also knew, deep down inside, that this was not right. I told the nurse practitioner as much. I even asked, “Could this positive be the result of residual hormones left in my system after a miscarriage?” She said there was no way to tell beyond running a beta blood test.

Long story short? Beta #1 was a measly 23. For me, that was confirmation enough that things had gone down exactly as I figured they had. I got pregnant back in August, right after deciding we’d give this second baby thing a go. And at around 5-6 weeks, in the beginning of September, I’d had an early miscarriage. Of course, they had me do a second beta draw anyway, and the number then was 9. Official confirmation.

I had a lot of feelings of disbelief. I’d had a miscarriage. It didn’t seem real.

A day or two after the second beta draw, I began to bleed heavily again. I assume it was because my HCG levels had finally dropped to zero. This time was different—I was more crampy, more uncomfortable, and it was not at all like a normal period. A real miscarriage, I think. It was my body, finally getting rid of everything it needed to.

That lasted all of a few days, and then things were truly over in early October. And I was lucky in that things got right back on track, because as you all know now, I managed to get pregnant again in November.

Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Through the whole thing, once I knew what was going on, I really didn’t feel much but gratefulness. I was just so glad that I had been distracted. I was glad I hadn’t ever taken a pregnancy test and gotten a positive. I was relieved that I had never had the chance to be excited, or to worry.

Still, I sometimes think about the one we lost. Or rather, the one who wasn’t meant to be.

Whenever someone announced a pregnancy due in May, I thought about how I could’ve been right there with them. My cousin and one of my friends from college both just had babies, and even now, I’ve thought about how that could’ve been me.

Today, I could be on maternity leave, with a tiny baby in my arms. Instead, I still carry a baby with me, one whom I am feeling move within my middle… one whom I have not yet come to know. But that’s OK, because I still know…

I am one of the lucky ones.