Miscarriage Stories

In a few weeks Glow will introduce a Healing section of the app for women undergoing a miscarriage. It's a project we have been working on for months now. Glow will then join a very select group of women's health platforms who acknowledge and try to help women who suffer this loss. 

I want to start with my story.  And then I hope that you share yours.

(If you do so, please do start a whole NEW TOPIC so that you have plenty of space to write as comments have a word limits.)

I have hope that reading each other's stories will help us all. Thank you.

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This is how my silent storm began. Not with thunder but with glad tidings.

I had just completed my 4th IVF cycle. Unexpectedly, the nurse called with good news. “Congratulations!” she said. “It worked. You are pregnant. Please come back in a few weeks for your first ultrasound. If you get lucky, you may even see the heartbeat.”

Ecstatic, I hung up the phone and called my husband, Mark. His happiness was a pure reflection of mine. We could not believe it, I was pregnant. Pregnant! After years of trying, we were going to have a baby.

There were no words sufficient to describe our joy. We immediately told our parents and siblings. We were so thrilled. So happy.

From the moment that I found out I was pregnant, my whole world became about that baby. What would we call the baby? Where should I give birth? Should we move out of our one-bedroom apartment? The baby. The baby. The baby. That's all we talked about. That's all we thought about. That's all that mattered. Our unborn child. Our future.

Until the very day that we were supposed to see a heartbeat. And instead I woke to find myself bleeding...

“Mark, something is wrong. Mark... the baby.”

We call the doctor. He tells us to come in. But he knows, just as well as we do, that nothing can be done to stop such an early miscarriage. A few hours later he gravely verifies what I knew from the moment I woke up - there is no baby.

No baby. Hence, there will be no first steps. No first words. No one calling me 'mommy.' I see birthdays, graduations, weddings, grandchildren all wiped clean with one cruel stroke.

The ache in my heart - It's unbearable.

Mark brings my shattered form home and tucks me into bed. He then proceeds to make some impossible phone-calls.

"We lost the baby. Yes, she is fine. No, she does not want to talk. She will call you later. Yes, I know. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Okay. I will tell her. We love you too. Okay. Bye."

Over and over again. Each phone call is a thunder in the distance. I scrunch myself into a tiny ball. Maybe if I don’t hear it, it won’t be true. Maybe I can hide. Forever. I can’t do this again. I can’t. I’m desolate. I am fearful. I am shattered.

The rain, the tears, start to fall rapidly.

Why did we not wait to tell our family? How did we not know that this could happen? Was it me? Was it something I did?

I need answers. But there are none. I cry until I am out of tears. It takes longer than you would think.

I had a baby growing inside me. And now I don’t. The storm is everywhere. Darkness imbues my days.

There are hard decisions to be made - because I know that I can endure at best one, maybe two, more IVF cycles. And there is no sacrifice I am not willing to make -- absolutely nothing about my life I am not willing to change -- to make sure they work.

I give notice at my stressful job within the week. I start eating better. I take up yoga. Bike riding. I meditate. I follow my doctor's instructions as if they were written on stone tablets.

I am silent in my grief. And it is my grief that transforms me. It is that baby that will never breathe or walk or talk that changes me. I never knew. I never knew the strength that I had until I lost the one thing I wanted more than anything else in this whole world.

By some miracle, my efforts are not in vain. Within three months, I am pregnant again. Fretfully, thankfully, pregnant again. This time, we tell no one. My miscarriage has robbed us of that joy too. I am worried and anxious. I over-analyze every pain. I google every symptom or lack thereof. Mark threatens to ban me from the internet. I hold my breath for 36 weeks -- I finally exhale when I hold my daughter in my arms. And only she finally eases the pain and begins to fill the hole in my heart.

And the thing of it is, I know that relatively speaking, I had it easy.

I've had dear friends who have had miscarriages much much later in their pregnancies. I have friends who have had to deliver stillborn babies. I have friends who are still trying, who have had nothing but one miscarriage after another. I cannot even begin to imagine their heartache. But I know that it is crippling. It is raw. It is ever-present.

So, why tell this story? Why tell your story?

Because I think it is important to say - this happens. And it happens a lot. We rarely discuss it. Hell, I do not want to even discuss it now. But it helped me to write about it. Who knows, it might help you to read about it. Such is the power of words. And more importantly, such is the power, the resilience, the wonder of women.