In 2020 I became a mother. I gave birth to a beautiful 9-pound baby boy. It was the textbook pregnancy that was boring and uncomplicated.
In 2023, we got pregnant again! We got pregnant fairly quick in the 2nd month of trying and felt very blessed. We had our 8-week ultrasound and saw the baby’s heartbeat and everything was measuring right on track! We told our families at Christmas, and all was great! On January 25th, I started to notice some changes and things just didn’t feel right. I saw some rusty brown blood and called my OB right away. They said that bleeding was normal and to call back if it got worse. 2 days later, it got worse. Clots of blood started to appear, and I had a gut feeling that this was no longer “normal”. We went to the ER. They did an ultrasound and told me that this wasn’t going to be a normal ultrasound like at the OB’s office. The tech said she couldn’t give me any information and had to wait for the doctor to come back. During the ultrasound, everything was quiet. I couldn’t see the screen. I just laid there praying with tears streaming down my face. Please just everything be okay! The tech finished up and wished us good luck. An hour later, the doctor came back. I heard the words that no mother ever wants to hear. “There is no heartbeat”. A little piece of me died that day, with my baby. I sat and cried with my husband. My whole world was shattered. We were 3 days shy of 12 weeks. We were supposed to be safe. I knew miscarriages happened. But I never saw it being our story. We left the hospital and called our families. I had to explain to our nearly 4-year-old that the baby inside mommy’s tummy was sick and their heart stopped beating. We named this baby Skye.
What I never knew about miscarriages before our loss, was that you still have to deliver the baby. I had intended on going to my OB appointment in the next couple of days after our ER visit to discuss getting a D and C. I just wanted this nightmare to be over with. I couldn’t bear the thought of laboring at home and having to see my lost baby. However, the night before my appointment I started contracting at 11:30pm at night. The contractions came fast at only 5 minutes apart. I started bleeding a lot. I called the hospital, but there was nothing they could really do. It was already happening. For 4 hours I laid on my couch in excruciating pain, bleeding clots. Finally, the contractions stopped at 4am. I went to bed absolutely exhausted physically and emotionally.
I went to my doctor’s appointment the next morning in a fog. My OB was so kind and empathetic to my experience. She told me that this baby was sick from conception and there was nothing that we could have done. She told me that it seemed as if everything had resolved by itself, and my body had finally recognized the miscarriage. We did HCG testing, and my numbers had gone down drastically, which she said was a good thing. My body was doing a good job healing itself.
The next couple of days were hard. I was still bleeding and emotional trying to process what had just happened. A couple of days later, it was a Thursday. I dropped my son off at school and came home. I used the restroom, and I felt something come out. It was our baby. I was in absolute shock! I thought the baby came out Monday during one of my contractions in the bathroom. It was so tiny. I saw its tiny head, ears, eyes, lips, legs, and arms. They were so perfect.
The next couple of months were so hard. I had to still be there for my son. I had to learn this new me. I had to learn to live with grief. The days rolled by, and it was just one more day where I wasn’t pregnant anymore. We were so scared to try again. But I had to believe, and I had to have hope for our future. 3 months after we found out we lost Skye, I got a positive pregnancy test. I was so thankful and felt so blessed. But at the same time. No longer naïve. I now knew that positive pregnancy tests didn’t mean you got a healthy baby. Cautiously optimistic we got through our 8-week ultrasound. At 12 weeks we got a negative NIPT test, another step closer and I could breathe a little bit easier. I am so blessed for every week we reach and get closer to meeting our rainbow baby.
Photos taken by Terra Elizabeth Photography.
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