I have thought about having babies ever since I was a little girl. I loved playing pretend with my baby dolls.
In February 2022, about two years after I got married, my husband I decided we were in a place we felt ready to start trying to get pregnant. I had started a birth control pill right when I got married and was excited to be done with it. I did all kinds of research on fertility, conceiving, and ovulation.
To our surprise, I got my first faintly positive pregnancy test in July 2022. I don’t know that I can ever forget that moment—the realization that there actually were two pink lines on the test and my eyes weren’t just messing with me.
We were so excited! I got in with my primary doctor right away for confirmation and a blood draw. My HCG seemed very low to me, but I knew that those numbers were usually different for everyone and tried not to think too hard about it.
Within a week or so of finding out we went out of town on a pre-planned weekend trip. The day we left, a Friday, we told our families and several close friends. Sharing that news felt so great—I’ll never forget that either.
I started spotting and was having cramping and I started spiraling. It was so hard to focus on enjoying our trip and sightseeing when all I could think was that something might be wrong and no one would be able to do anything to fix it.
I woke up in the night with bad cramping and bleeding and absolutely panicked. I called my mom in the middle of the night—even though she was all the way across the ocean in Germany. Once the morning came I called my OBGYN nurse line and as I feared they told me that unfortunately there wasn’t much to be done and to just keep monitoring the situation.
When we got back home I went in to the doctor right away that Monday. We did blood work and an ultrasound. I knew as soon as I looked at the screen that my worst fear had already come true. I’d looked at enough early ultrasound pictures online to know that there was no gestational sac—no baby—in my uterus anymore. The blood work confirmed that I had passed the pregnancy.
I couldn’t stop feeling guilty that the trip had aggravated and caused the situation. Maybe if we hadn’t spent the weekend walking around outside in the heat, maybe if I had rested more our baby wouldn’t be dead. I still struggle with that today.
We were both shocked. It had been such a rollercoaster of emotions within such a short amount of time. The highest of highs and the lowest of lows.
Another thing I’ll never forget is watching my husband cry when we got home that day. The way he held me on the couch when I told him I missed our baby and he cried and said he missed them too.
Several months after that first loss I began to notice my body was not recovering and cycling properly. I had gained weight rapidly in the last few months since getting off birth control and my periods had stopped. In October, I went to the OBGYN and started a long process of trying to figure out what was going on.
We started medicated cycles with Letrozole to try to get me to ovulate. After two unsuccessful cycles my OBGYN referred me to a Reproductive endocrinologist at a fertility center.
In July after more visits with the RE, she decided I most likely had PCOS which was affecting ovulation and our fertility. She wanted us to continue the Letrozole on higher doses and more monitoring to see if we could get any improvement.
The third letrozole cycle was unsuccessful. We started the fourth one right as October 2023 begain, and this time added in a trigger shot to further aid ovulation. I found out I was pregnant again.
Again, my initial HCG was very low. I almost immediately lost any hope of a successful pregnancy and started to brace myself for another loss. Unfortunately, the second HCG draw two days later revealed my number had only risen by two points. About four days later the bleeding started again and shortly after that my second chemical pregnancy was confirmed.
We now had two angel babies.
In a way this second loss didn’t hit as badly. I think I was just so numb and had already been through it once so it was kind of familiar.
We didn’t really know what to do from there. We ended up taking a bit of a break to try to heal and work through our emotions. After the new year though I decided I wanted to try again, so we started cycle five of Letrozole.
On February 11, 2024—Super Bowl Sunday—I tested positive again. I was so scared. I didn’t think I could handle a third loss. I went in for blood work and waited anxiously for the results to come back. My HCG was a three digit number! In both previous pregnancies I had never reached a number that high. Two days later the HCG doubled.
After a stressful few weeks it was finally time for an early ultrasound to look for a gestational sac and possible heartbeat. I was only 6w 3d. It was just a few days after my birthday. When the ultrasound started I almost cried in relief because right away I could see the little black circle on the screen—and it wasn’t empty! There was a little tiny blob in there. They managed to get the heartbeat too—115bpm. It was probably the best sound I had ever heard.
We couldn’t stop staring at the little ultrasound pictures they sent us home with.
After one more early ultrasound at 8 weeks we were cleared to go to a normal OBGYN for normal prenatal appointments.
After almost two years from the start of our fertility journey we are finally pregnant with our double rainbow baby! We can’t wait to welcome our little girl this October. She’s due right around the 1 year anniversary of when we lost our second baby last fall.
I hit the half way point this week and it still feels so surreal! Some days the anxiety really creeps in and I feel as though I’m waiting for something bad to happen again. Pregnancy after loss is so hard but also filled with hope, and I’m so grateful I get to experience it.
We had a scare or two in the first trimester with some light bleeding and cramping. I was so sure I was going to lose another baby and I couldn’t bare the thought. I laid in bed that afternoon crying while my husband held me. Thankfully, everything since then has been okay.
I came across Project Finding Your Rainbow about a year or so ago, hard to say exactly when. When we had our losses I was in a desperate search for representation and community to identify with and found all kinds of miscarriage/loss accounts to follow. I love the mission of this project and it has been so neat to read all the stories and see the pictures of the traveling rainbow skirt!
Since I lost my first two babies super early on, I never got to take maternity pictures or really any kind of pregnancy pictures with them. This is such a meaningful project to me, and I love getting to share about my babies.
Photos taken by C. Lyn Creations.
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