Miscarriage is unfortunately such a common thing that happens to women, but you just don’t think that it’s ever gonna happen to you. Losing a child is and was my worst fear; it’s heartbreaking, it’s gut-wrenching, it is the worst pain I think anyone could ever go through.
I lost our baby at six weeks and five days, and so, yeah, we were excited about our baby. I found out I was pregnant on September 4th, and we were so incredibly excited. I was shocked because, for us, I have two other kids, and for both of those pregnancies, I took about—well, we took about six months to get pregnant with both of them.
And so I was pretty shocked when I got pregnant in month two of trying; like that is so soon, and we were so incredibly excited. You start to dream for that baby; you start to get excited. You know, you plan your year around having that baby, and you dream about who they’ll become and what they’ll like and all those things, and whether you know it’s gonna be a little girl or a little boy.
And I told Luke, my husband, and he was so excited. I told my daughter, Brielle, and she was just over the moon excited. Every single day she would come up to me and she would ask me how the baby was doing, and she would put her head on my belly to see if she could hear the baby talking back to her. And, you know, that was just so precious.
Everything was going smoothly. I didn’t have any complications with either of my previous pregnancies, so I assumed that was going to be the case for this one as well. But on Wednesday, September 23rd, at about 7:30 p.m. I started to get, like really bad stomach cramps. Now, this wasn’t like period cramping or uterus cramping; this was like, I’m gonna have the runs; like I’m gonna have diarrhea.
I was thinking through my mind, I was like, this is so weird. Like, I didn’t eat anything that usually makes my stomach upset, and so I ran to the bathroom because I felt, it was common. And I sat on the toilet for a while, and it was like really bad cramping, whoa, like this is violent diarrhea; what is going on?
I stood up to wipe, and the toilet was covered in blood. There’s like so much blood in the toilet, and my heart just, my heart sank, and I just burst into tears. After I had diarrhea and cleaned myself up, I put on a pad because the bleeding wasn’t stopping, and I told Luke, he was very optimistic with me, but I knew exactly what was happening.
With that much blood, that early on, I knew I was having a miscarriage. I called my midwife that evening saying like, I’m bleeding a lot, I’m cramping, I described my symptoms to her, and she was almost a hundred percent positive I was having a miscarriage. And so she said just to wait at home, and she’ll check in with me in the morning time.
She told me I could go to the emergency if I wanted to, but she highly recommended that I stay home as I didn’t want to sit in the emergency room if they were just going to tell me something I already knew. And my midwife was very knowledgeable and kind, and I trusted her in her care. And she told me you should stay home, take some medicine, and she’ll check me in the morning.
And the cramping started, and it was very uncomfortable. I started having back pain, and a lot of uterine cramping, and that night we could not sleep a wink. It was so hard to go to sleep. I don’t even know how to describe the emotion to you, just devastated. Luke was hopeful, and he’s just like, maybe it’ll stop and everything will be okay.
But, the morning time was still bleeding. I was still cramping, and it was very uncomfortable. I knew that I couldn’t physically and mentally take care of my kids that day. It was just too much for me to even do regular day-to-day things that day. And so I drove my kids to my parents’ place.
So went home, and my midwife called me, and I still told her I was bleeding, and she said that’s probably best for you to stay home and just let everything come at home. About an hour after I had dropped my kids off, I was sitting on the toilet, and a really big clot passed. It was probably the length of my hand, and it was a lot of uterine tissue, and I knew that my baby was in there. This part of my miscarriage story at 6 weeks was incredibly painful.
And that helpless feeling that where you can’t do anything to stop it is so helpless. You just feel so out of control, like you want to keep this baby so badly, but your body is just doing what it needs to do. And I just sat there and wept. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I couldn’t believe how devastating it felt. I am thankful that Luke was home with me, and so we were able to mourn and grieve together, and he was able to be there to support me.
And after I had like cleaned myself up. I was just wearing pads at this point, I just went and just laid on the floor of the living room, and I just laid there staring at the ceiling for like. I don’t know how long it was but I just like couldn’t get up. It was the most overwhelming grief. I’ve never felt in my life. And I know that I was only six weeks along but you love that baby so much already.
So as the day went on, I continued to bleed, and I started passing smaller clots, and I knew that, yeah, textbook miscarriage for sure. I was possibly going to get an ultrasound that day. My midwife was trying to get me in, in radiology at the hospital, but they never called me that day. So I already kind of knew it was happening.
I almost didn’t need that confirmation at that point, and I was kind of glad that I could just stay home and I tried to keep my mind as busy as possible. I’m thankful that I had family close by to take the kids because I didn’t want them to be around for that.
Brielle (daughter) is very intuitive, and she knows when I’m not doing well, and she wants to know all the details, and she’s very, very sweet. We picked the kids up that evening; we just wanted to be around them. You just appreciate their life so much more after you experience a loss and just realize how precious life is and that we have these two beautiful babies that we get to enjoy. We are so blessed.
Then we told Brielle that the baby had passed away and I had a miscarriage at 6 weeks. And to be honest, that was probably the hardest part about all of this was knowing that like this is gonna hurt your other kid; this is gonna hurt your other baby, and she’s gonna be sad with you, and she’s gonna grieve with you. And telling her news like that was so difficult because she was so invested in this too.
So I made sure that I was emotionally stable for this moment because I didn’t want to be all over the place telling her that we had lost her baby. And I wanted to kind of help her understand what was happening without me being emotional. She was very understanding. She was very sad; she didn’t cry at first when we told her, and she was kind of confused as to why it happened, as I’m so confused as to why it happened.
I was bleeding for the entire week after my miscarriage; my body just getting rid of everything. Then by day seven, the bleeding had completely stopped. I did not get any signs of infection but to make sure it was true. On Friday, October 2nd, I went for an ultrasound.
She (radiologist) did a stomach ultrasound, and she said that she had not seen anything, so she had to do a transvaginal, which was a good sign. But she didn’t say anything; she took a few pictures and said I would get results in the next two days or so.
I was feeling kind of numb about it; it’s been a week since I started bleeding. It’s all still part of my miscarriage story at 6 weeks.
This will always be a part of my story, and it’ll be always a part of our family’s story, and we will always remember this baby. One thing that we did to remember our baby’s life was that we decided to go on one of our favorite hikes, and we have gone on this hike so many times as a family. We decided to paint a stone, to remember their life and to put it up at the top of the lookout, which is beautiful.
And we decided to name the baby Anna. We didn’t know if the baby was a boy or a girl, but that’s just something that stuck out to us. So, for this miscarriage story at 6 weeks, we put that stone up at the top of that viewpoint, and that was therapeutic for us to kind of name the baby and to make, kind of like a remembrance symbol for our family.
So whenever we go up there, we can see the stone and remember their life. And it was just like really healing for us, and it was great for something that we could all be involved in; both kids could be involved in it as well.
I didn’t want to let this overcome everything, and I didn’t want this to be just something that would trap me and cause me to spiral into a depression. I know some days are tough for me to do daily tasks, and I think everybody grieves differently. But I do feel like since I have two other babies, and I have a husband, I have to be strong, and I am not strong with my strength. I do believe that comes from God. So this was my miscarriage story at 6 weeks from which I had healed a lot.
I Didn’t Cry; I Wasn’t Angry. Miscarriage story at 11 weeks.