Hi friends. Hope you’ll all allow me to share my story.

I was supposed to be 11 weeks pregnant last Monday. I had seen my baby’s strong heartbeat at 8 weeks and I was eager to finally cross the threshold into the second trimester so that I could finally tell my family and friends. I remember waking up that morning and feeling so energetic and excited. I thought it was a good sign that my nausea was subsiding too.

When I went to my OB she told me that she could actually use a Doppler to hear the baby’s heartbeat! Though we couldn’t hear anything. But she said it was probably due to my tilted uterus and so we’d just do the U/S - no biggie. But then we couldn’t see anything on the screen. Ok - transvaginal U/S instead. We saw the baby. It wasn’t moving. No heartbeat detected. She measured the baby and found out that I had miscarries at 8wks4days. So for the past 3 weeks or so, my body still believed it was pregnant. Not only did I fail at keeping my baby. My body failed at having a miscarriage.

She told me that I needed an immediate d&c some I had been carrying around a dead fetus for so long and I could be susceptible to sepsis. Life also handed me a cherry on top to all of this because our city had just announced the shelter-in-place mandate. I had an hour to get over to the hospital. No time to process. Grieve. Or think.

I went through the surgery alone since the hospital was prepping for the influx of Covid cases. I wasn’t even scared - just hollow. After the procedure my OB exclaimed that it went as well as it could. I have gone through bouts of crying, anger, hope, disbelief, and outright depression. This isn’t fair and I feel so alone. I felt unreasonably happy to find this community and read everybody’s stories about their own journey. I’m truly sorry each and every one of you have had to ensure this type of pain. I’m hopeful that we can all find solidarity in this common thread we share as women.