I made up my mind when I decided to start writing again, that on Thursdays I would share some of my writings/blogs from the past. A “Throw Back Thursday” if you will, and reflect on them now. I decided to share this one first. Because this is the moment writing really changed for me. It became therapeutic, something I NEEDED to do, as important as breathing. This blog entry was originally posted on February 17th, 2016 at 1:40am. This post was raw, I was drowning in grief, and I poured out all of the emotions I was feeling after just finding out that my husband and I had lost our first baby. Reading this post again today, I can still feel everything I felt then. It took me back to the realness of those moments. I can feel it like it was yesterday and not almost 9 years ago. While some of it was hard to read again, and I was at times overwhelmed with the emotions of it all, I’m so glad I wrote it down. I am thankful to have the opportunity to read this, remember the despair I was feeling, all while listening to my rainbow baby (who will turn 7 in April) chatting with his daddy about his day. It is nice to look back, to know that healing is possible. Even after moments that absolutely shake you to your core. There is something deeply cleansing about re-visiting some of the most traumatic moments of your life, while currently getting to live some of the best. ❤️
“Grieving The Baby We Never Got To Hold”
From the movement we got two pink lines on the first home test I took, something inside me wouldn’t let me grab on to this pregnancy. Even after the second, third, and fourth test, I still couldn’t. I kept telling myself I needed to hear it from the doctor. So when I got my official blood test results back saying I was pregnant, and I still couldn’t allow myself to be super super excited and happy, I thought something was wrong with me. When we went to the doctor last Thursday and we couldn’t hear the baby’s heart beating, I was devastated. However, the doctor told us she could SEE the heart beating and while that still didn’t extinguish my fears entirely, I gave in a little to the excitement my body had been holding back on. I still had my concerns, like why my baby was only measuring 6 weeks when I was 9 weeks going from my last period. In fact, I now recall the doctor saying the baby had a slower heart rate than normal but that could just mean it was a boy. So while I still had a reserved feeling in my gut, I held on to that tiny beating we seen on the screen.
Until the bleeding started Friday night. It was late that night, we had been out all day, eating, shopping, running around. So when I first noticed the bleeding I tried not to make much of it (people had already told me I was being too paranoid), but when I woke up Saturday and it continued, that sinking feeling I had been pushing away in my heart got a little deeper. Sunday brought more, and Monday more.
By Monday afternoon I was sitting in the waiting room of my OBs office thanking God that Russell had been home from work sick that day and decided to meet me at the doctor’s office. The minute the doctor placed the probe, I knew it in my heart before she even said it. The screen didn’t look the same as it had just a few short days before. I didn’t have to be a doctor to see that. Her face said everything I needed to know before she even spoke. She was already looking at me with the “I’m so sorry eyes”. The only thing she told me in that room was that she could see large amounts of blood in my uterus and she thought she could still see a small “flicker” that could be a heartbeat, but she wanted to send me to the hospital for a better test and confirmation.
Nobody told me that I would leave the hospital and STILL not be told if my baby was alive. The only person who was allowed to tell me that was my doctor and I had to wait for her call. It was the longest two hours of my life, but I already knew what she would say. My phone rang around 6:45 Monday night and as soon as I heard her voice it was all the confirmation I needed. “Regina, this is Dr.S, the hospital confirmed what I seen in the office. There is no longer a heartbeat or a viable pregnancy”.
Everything after that was her voice filling my ears with information I could barely process. By the time I hung up the phone I couldn’t breathe. I ran into the bathroom and threw myself over the toilet dry heaving. It was like my body was trying to expel the broken pieces of my heart but they wouldn’t come out.
Russell and I sat on the bathroom floor for what felt like forever. I cried, and he cried, and I told him how sorry I was. I felt so ashamed and angry. I felt like I had disappointed him. I had let him down. This would have been his first child. After what felt like forever we pulled ourselves off the floor, we took a little while longer alone, and then we notified the people closest to us.
After hours of text, and reassuring conversations with friends and loved ones, I thought I had my emotions under control. Until I went to take a bath. The minute I started to undress I realized this was a pain that wouldn’t go away. Not any time soon. I shut all the lights off in the bathroom. Even unplugged the night light. I didn’t want to see the changes my body had already made. I didn’t want to see the way my breast had swelled to almost double their size already in preparation for a baby I would never have. I didn’t want to see the bump that I had already begun sporting so proudly. I didn’t want to see myself. This “woman” incapable of doing what a woman should be able to do. I had never felt so afraid to look in the mirror in my entire life.
So I eased into the tub in nothing but darkness. Eventually I sank my head just below the water to relax, and that’s when I heard it. A heartbeat. I knew it was mine, even though I wasn’t sure how mine was even still beating, but for a moment I allowed myself to pretend I was in the ultrasound room and that the heartbeat I was hearing under the water was my baby’s. For a moment I pictured Russell’s face as he heard our baby’s heart beat. It was that moment that got the best of me. I lost it again, and when Russell came rushing in to pull my soaking wet body from the tub in an embrace, I wouldn’t even let him turn the lights on. I couldn’t stand the thought of him seeing my body. The one he had spent weeks telling me was beautiful and perfect and carrying his baby. I didn’t feel beautiful and I certainly didn’t feel perfect.
I feel defective. I feel broken. I feel ashamed. I feel like he deserves better. I feel afraid to try again in fear of disappointing him again. Making him feel this pain again. Making me feel this pain again. Every tear Russell has cried these past two days feels like another dagger in my heart. It’s hard to explain how you could wish someone you love so much, didn’t love you back, but I did in that moment he pulled me from the tub. I wished he didn’t love me, because his love for me was hurting him in a way I didn’t know was possible.
I never knew it was this hard to lose a baby you never even laid eyes on. Sure, you hear about people having miscarriages all the time. You hear it, you say “how sad” it is, but you NEVER know until you feel it. Until you feel the shame and heartache. Until you can’t stand to have the man you love look at you, but you want to lose yourself in his arms at the same time. Until you have to lay awake at night and wonder how you will explain a miscarriage to your very educated nine year old. Until you experience it, there is just no way of explaining the kind of pain it is.
Now, in about five hours I am due to head to the hospital at which time they will remove what is left of our baby from my body. I refused the D&C at first. I couldn’t bring myself to do the procedure. It made me feel like I’m giving up on my baby. Like I was willingly having an abortion. But after meeting with the doctor today and having her do one more ultrasound. Just so that I could be sure there was no way my baby was still fighting in there, I decided to have the procedure done. They showed me every angle on the screen today. They looked everywhere possible for a heartbeat, and they were able to confirm 100% that our baby was no longer alive. In that moment, I knew I had to allow myself “acceptance” in whatever way that was possible. Supposedly this procedure tomorrow will allow my body to begin the “healing process”.
I am waiting for the procedure that will heal my heart. Where is the procedure that will reach into your heart and “clean out” what is left of your baby there? Can they go in and scrape out the names you had stored away? The millions of times you pictured their face? The color you imagined their eyes to be? The images you had of the baby’s room? Where is the magical procedure that can erase that? Where is the procedure that will heal Russell’s heart?
People don’t often think of or talk about the pain a father must feel when losing a baby, but it’s just as real. His tears, his heartache, it’s equal to mine. Over the past two days we’ve taken turns in picking each other up when we fall apart. I have heard the saying that a relationship will never truly be 50/50. There will always be a time when one is a little stronger than the other, where one will carry a little extra weight that the other can’t. Unfortunately I think there are also times when the weight will seem like too much for both, and in that case, we can only take turns. It reminds me of a song I dedicated to Russell a long time ago. “Shotgun” by Christina Aguilera. The chorus of the song reads “It’s a hard road honey and there ain’t nobody I’d rather be next to. It’s a rough ride baby but we’re gonna make it, together me and you. When you’re tired, I’ll grab the wheel, and you take over when I’m done. Love is taking turns, riding shotgun”. I can see many seat changes for us in the future. I can imagine that we will both grieve our baby together and separately in our own ways. We will both experience pain that only the other can understand and pain that neither can comprehend.
I already miss being pregnant and I sometimes forget that our baby isn’t still growing inside me. Unfortunately I’m not allowed those brief moments of forgetful bliss often enough. I will never truly forget this pain, and I’ll never ever forget the baby I never got to hold.
A Time For Peace 