Entry 009

If you are a regular here, you probably noticed I didn’t post a blog entry last week. I just didn’t have the energy to write about loss. You might think I have to be in a sad mindset when I decide to write but really, it’s quite the opposite. To get into the deep, dark feelings and experiences of the past year and a half—and to be able to get back out—I actually have to be quite content, strong enough to write intentionally, and confident enough in my ability to carry on to bring the feelings back up. Last week, I focused my energy on lighter things. And that’s okay. At least the therapist I saw a year ago would tell me it is.

After my second miscarriage, life was dark. They say motherhood changes you but motherhood when your babies are dead is an entirely different beast. The word I’d use to describe how I felt for a couple months following the loss of my second child is “foggy.” There were days, weeks even, where I’d feel normal while doing everyday things. Things like working, exercising and conversing were all good in the moment. But later on when I tried to recall if I did something or what I talked about, it was a blur. At its worst, I’d be going about these same things but as if my body was going through the motions without me and people’s voices would sound like I was hearing them through earmuffs. I knew I wasn’t okay and I had never had to navigate through anything like that before. So I started therapy.

The first thing my therapist had me do was describe how I felt during each of the five stages of grief, whether it was while processing my first loss or where I was at with my second. Below are my exact words from one year and two losses ago.

Below are the stages I’ve gone through and in the order I did. I feel that I wasn’t given the opportunity to fully grieve the loss of our second baby because instead of the doctors and our loved ones being sympathetic, it was immediately time to try to figure out why I had two miscarriages in a row.

Denial:

Both miscarriages came with lots of bleeding. In fact, that’s how I learned I was miscarrying the first time and how I knew it was happening again the second. 

It was a Friday when I started to lose the first baby. The doctor had me go in for blood work but unfortunately that was just to get the baseline number to compare blood work to a few days after (to see if the pregnancy hormone was continuing to increase or dropping). All weekend, I told myself, “maybe I’m just having implantation bleeding—that’s normal, right? Maybe my baby is okay.” But the bleeding was worse than any period I’ve ever had and it clearly wasn’t from implantation. 

It was also a Friday that I started bleeding during my second pregnancy. This time I was certain it had to just be implantation bleeding because it was far lighter and I thought there was no way this would be happening to us again. There was no way we could lose our first two babies. Sure as hell, my body was ridding itself of my child.

Bargaining:

During an experience like miscarriage, there’s really nobody to bargain with except for God. No doctors can reverse it and trust me, I couldn’t do anything to change it - no matter how many times I Google ways to. I prayed and begged and screamed at Him to let my babies be okay those weekends I bled between blood work tests. I even prayed to Him before we conceived our second baby to only let me become pregnant if the baby would be in our arms in nine months. I prayed every single morning and night that He and my loved ones who have passed protect the baby I carried at the time and to let him or her grow strong enough to come into this world alive. None of it worked.

Depression:

Some days, I don’t even want to try to have another baby because I can’t imagine going through another loss. I don’t think I’d survive it. I feel hopeless and like a failure as a women and wife for not being able to give my husband his babies. Every now and then I think about how I should be 4 or 2 months pregnant and I’m not. I’m afraid I won’t be able to sustain a pregnancy and won’t ever be seen as a mom and that I won’t be able to make my husband a “real” dad.

Anger:

I am mad at my body for losing our babies. I’m mad at myself for somehow not being able to save them even though I know I could have done absolutely nothing differently. I’m mad that we have to wait to try again until the doctor clears me after running tests we haven’t even done. I’m mad at the people who don’t have to try to get pregnant or never have to worry about if their baby will make it into the world. I’m mad at others who get pregnant and have healthy babies they don’t want or in some cases, don’t deserve. I’m mad at God for letting this happen to me and my husband again and again.

Acceptance:

I had accepted our first loss. I know many women lose their first pregnancy and don’t even know about it so I am thankful to have known that we were going to have a baby. But going through this all over again after we were sure the first loss was just one of those it’s-really-more-common-than-you-think miscarriages, it feels like the progress I made recovering from my first baby going to Heaven was erased. My womb is empty. My heart is raw. Everything hurts.

At the time I saw this therapist, I was sure life couldn’t get any worse. Man, was I wrong. Here I am two more losses and zero additional answers later still talking about what I’m going through. But instead of talking to a therapist, I’m talking to you.

Emily Lindquist