Did I have a miscarriage?
I hardly even know where to begin as I start this post. I don’t think I have ever shared anything like this on here before. I am hoping that it speaks to someone out there that needs to hear that you are not alone. Miscarriages are more common than we think, but no one ever talks about them. We keep them locked up inside and deal with our grief without the help of others. God gives us community to help us during these times. He uses each other to build us up, encourage and come alongside us during the ups and downs of life.
I want to encourage you to find someone to talk with whether it is with me or someone you know. I truly believe that talking about it is healing. No one should ever go through a miscarriage alone.
The Beginning
Let’s start at the beginning. Brent, my husband, and I have been trying to get pregnant for several months now and it hasn’t worked out as we had planned. With our first, Elijah, we got pregnant on our first try. This time, I figured it would take a couple of months and I was preparing myself to wait a little longer to find out. Again after our first time trying, I found myself not having a period. We were laughing, joking around and couldn’t believe that it was happening again. Because of our first pregnancy, we had always joked about how fertile we were. It was funny to us.
I didn’t have any pregnancy tests on hand, so I just kept waiting till I got around to the store. I can be a fairly inpatient person sometimes, but with this I wasn’t. I just knew, so it didn’t bother me to find out right away. We were busy for a couple weeks anyways. For vary reasons of being out of town, working too hard on our fixer upper house, photographing a wedding, an impending marathon and forgetting to grab one when I went to the store, I didn’t ever take one. After being 10 days late, I started bleeding. It wasn’t heavy, but it was a very abnormal period. It was in fact very light, I had no pain or discomfort, and it lasted a couple days longer than normal. I looked up miscarriage symptoms online and it mostly talked about the pain. Even with early miscarriages like this (if it was one), also known as a chemical pregnancy where the egg is fertilized, but never implants, people associate pain or discomfort.
How was I suppose to feel?
I didn’t know what to think. I was disappointed, a little upset and honestly I didn’t know how to feel. Had I been pregnant? Did I just have a miscarriage? I didn’t grieve a loss, because I didn’t know if I should. I also felt like I should have grieved a loss, but how could I since I didn’t know for sure that I was pregnant. I don’t know how to explain what I was feeling then. I just wanted to believe that I hadn’t been pregnant, but part of me just knew that I was. I am never late more than a day. In fact, if anything is abnormal, I am early. In my heart, I knew that I had been pregnant. I just can’t prove that I had been pregnant. Since I didn’t take a test, or go into the doctor, we can’t really count this on my medical records. Which is okay, but not okay because if I have more, I might need to have two more (not counting the one that is talked about in part 2) before they do testing. But you know what, I shouldn’t worry about that, because God has this under control.
I feel like I missed my chance to grieve because I didn’t take the time to find out. I mean, there is Amazon Prime in this world for a reason now. I could have known in 2 days without ever leaving the house. (After this happened, I ended up ordering some). I didn’t share with too many people about this “loss”. I didn’t know what to say to them about it. “Umm friend, I think I was pregnant and maybe had a miscarriage, but I really don’t know.” I did start telling a few people, but the conversation always turned to something else. Not that we needed to linger on it, but it was my little quiet way of grieving a loss that I wasn’t sure about. Having the words to say to someone that just experienced a loss can be hard. You don’t need to say anything. Just listen and be there for your friend. Be their shoulder to cry on and direct them to the word of God our comforter.