After getting married in September of 2018, I assumed getting pregnant would be easy. I was young, healthy, and felt ready. Like so many women, the journey looked different than I expected, taking over a year to see a positive.
I cried so hard my husband thought something was wrong—but it was joy. Pure, overwhelming joy.
We were ecstatic. We loved that baby immediately and deeply. We shared the news with close friends and family, who celebrated this new blessing with us. I imagined a future so clearly—milestones, firsts, a life growing inside me.
But then the bleeding started.
In the sterile quiet of an emergency room, I felt gutted as I watched a still ultrasound.
The loss left me feeling as if I had done something wrong, confused on how God could allow this after answering our prayers in the first place? I wondered who I was now—was I still a mother, even without a baby to hold? I struggled with the silence that followed, the lack of clarity or something physical to hold on to, and the feeling that there was no clear place for this kind of loss to live. There were no answers as to what happened, and no medical personnel seemed to be able to address my concerns because “you’re young, things happen, give it time.”
In the months that followed, I struggled to find purpose, and leaned on friends and family who helped me find joy, and a way to laugh again. Ultimately I chose to move forward in a new way and went back to school. Then in March of 2020, as the world grew uncertain with the beginnings of COVID-19, an unexpected positive appeared.
This time, I panicked.
Fear replaced excitement. I was scared every second of every day that I wouldn’t be able to bring a healthy baby home. My pregnancy was relatively “normal,” but filled with extra scans and constant prayers—pleading with God to let me hold this baby, to let this story end differently.
In December of 2020, we welcomed a healthy baby boy into the world. A prayer answered. A reminder that joy and sorrow can exist in the same story. Today, he is a big brother to another sweet boy, born in December of 2024—a living testament to grace after grief. I still take a moment on my first due date and just breathe, wearing ruby earrings, as he would’ve been a July baby, and lighting a candle in his memory.
I carry both loss and love with me. One cannot erase the other. Joy can grow after grief, and hope can be rebuilt even after it feels completely lost.
Photos taken by Anactacia Myrick.
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