Learning Through Loss

My name is Jennifer Zachary. I’m 30 years old and I have been married to the most amazing man for over 12 years. Together we have five beautiful children and one baby in heaven. This is my story about our loss. It was Christmas 2016, not trying, but not preventing another baby. I KNEW I was pregnant (I had been pregnant four other times). I just had a feeling and a couple of the symptoms, so I took a test which came back negative. The next week my period did not start so I took another one. Negative again. I thought, “OK, my body is probably just reverting back to being irregular so it’s probably nothing.” The next week I started getting nauseous all day long, headaches, dizziness, strange dreams, and weirdly enough, my gums hurt! But I was still getting cramps, so I thought maybe it was all PMS symptoms. Fast forward a few weeks and Friday January 13th came along, I was at the store and bought two of the cheapest pregnancy tests they had, took them home and forgot about them until later that day. “Morning pee is better” they say, so I figured if it was negative I always had a spare to take if I still had the symptoms. It didn’t even take the 3 minutes and I saw double pink lines. But this time it was different. The line that says your pregnant was very light! Maybe it was too diluted, maybe it was too early in the pregnancy, either way, it was positive! I wasn’t sure how to tell my husband or kids, so I kept it to myself for a couple days. I’m not sure why but I had a nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach, but I figured everything was good and I needed to Pinterest some announcement ideas. Eventually I told my husband and found a cute way to tell the kids and filmed it of course. Finally, I had a reason to feel like complete crap. Yay! According to the app on my phone I was 6 weeks the day I found out. Fast forward to the next week, I began to feel great! The nausea went away, I had tons of energy, I even deep cleaned the kitchen and kids’ rooms. I thought it was weird but loved that I was getting things done! I kept telling my husband, “I don’t feel pregnant. It’s so weird, I don’t know how to explain it.” Then Sunday rolled around and I could barely get out of bed. I felt like I was coming down with something, like my entire body was fighting the flu. I stayed in bed almost all day. There are so many ups and downs in pregnancy, I figured that was part of it. The next morning, January 23rd, I woke up like normal to get ready to take my husband to work. Brushed my teeth, went pee, and saw blood. It was only a little, but enough that I didn’t know what to do, so I yelled for my husband. I probably had a horrified look on my face when I showed him because he tried to sound calm and not say the wrong thing. He asked, “Isn’t that normal in early pregnancy?” I thought about it and said, “Yes, but not for me and not now” (I was almost 2 months along at that point). So, we decided that if it continued I would call the doctor. Other than the bleeding, I felt fine. While driving, my mind was racing. I wasn’t talking or listening to anyone in the car, I wasn’t singing along to any songs. I turned up the radio to drown out the thoughts and all of a sudden, I hear “Thy Will” start and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I loved this song before and knew the story behind why she wrote it, but right then in that moment I KNEW that song was played for me. I KNEW I needed to hear it. Silent tears began streaming down my face and I knew. “I know you’re good. But this don’t feel good right now”, that line spoke to me. Once the song was over and I put myself back together and we got him to work like any other day. But it wasn’t any other day for me. The cramping and low back pain started slowly in waves. I knew in my heart what was happening. But I tried to push any negative thoughts out of my mind. No one wants to think they are going to lose their baby. I had about an hour before I had to take the kids to school, so I called the advice nurse. I waited on hold for 25 minutes before talking to someone and another 15 minutes for the nurse to actually talk to me! It felt like forever. Minutes slowly ticking by and that horrible hold music cutting in and out. Trying to keep myself composed, I told her my symptoms, that I’ve had four other pregnancies with absolutely no problems, so she told me to go get blood work done to check my hormone levels as soon as possible. She said it sounded like it could be an ectopic pregnancy (which is scary in itself but there was still hope), then she went on saying, “We aren’t sure which way this pregnancy will go, so you have to keep an open mind that you may-you know-lose it.” And that’s when I couldn’t hold it in anymore. Even though I knew it was happening hearing those words just made it so real. Trying to hold back tears while talking about it is not easy. As I’m pulling up to the school to drop the kids off, they kept asking why I was crying but I couldn’t tell them, just in case, there was still a slim chance this could just be a fluke. She checked to see if there were any appointments with my doctor for that day but there wasn’t. She did say that the first appointment I had scheduled was that day, with the nurse to do all the regular paperwork and questions and most likely the in-room ultrasound to make sure I was “really pregnant”. After dropping off my two youngest girls with a neighbor, I went straight to the doctor’s office to get a blood pregnancy test and to head on over to my appointment. I know my face was red and splotchy, but I didn’t care. I walked over to the receptionist who entered my info and told me my appointment was for Tuesday, the next day. WHAT?! The nurse I talked to on the phone said it was that day, so there I was. I had an extremely hard time talking through the tears as I asked if there was someone I could talk to. I’m guessing there was some sort of note in my chart because she looked at me with a sad look on her face and said, “Just go to the OB office and knock on the door until someone answers and they will see you.” So, I did. I didn’t even know what to say to the nurse. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. I was by myself. I was almost hysterical. She put her hand on my shoulder and led me into a room, took my info, and went to get the head nurse. The nurse that came in was a small, older lady with short gray hair, kind eyes, and a soft voice. I told her all the same information about my symptoms. The whole time I was there talking with her she was saying it was normal, it could be from a bunch of different things, it doesn’t mean you’re going to lose it, etc. While I know she was trying to make me feel better, it really didn’t. I’m not one for being negative, but I think when you know, you know. Especially a mom, when it comes to her baby. Mom’s just know. She said she would wait for the test results to come back and give me a call that afternoon and let me know what my levels were at and schedule an ultrasound if it was needed. I never saw a doctor, they didn’t do any sort of exam, no prescription for the pain I was in, just sent me on my way home to wait for her call. Over the next few hours the pain and cramping got worse. I ended up passing a clot about the side of a large grape (gross, I know). I had to see what it was. I ended up fishing it out of the toilet to look at it. I’ve had four kids, I’ve seen birth, I’ve seen after-birth. My first thought was I was holding the placenta in my hand. All dark and veiny, the life-source for that little baby. So, I guess that was it. It was over, I had gotten through it. I had a miscarriage and it wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be. Maybe because I was only 7 weeks, but from the look of the tissue in my hand it didn’t look like it was that far along. Then the past few weeks of thoughts came rushing back. I stopped feeling sick, the pregnancy test line was light, my breasts didn’t hurt at all, I suddenly had more energy. I knew right then that the baby I had been carrying wasn’t 7 weeks. It had stopped growing around 4-5 weeks. And there I was excited for this new-found energy! I could’ve sworn I was nesting already. Nesting to get ready for the baby that was coming. I just didn’t think it was coming so soon and that it wouldn’t be alive. I was carrying a dead baby around inside me for a week or more until my body was ready to let it go. It wasn’t until around 6:30 that evening when the nurse finally called me. It was the same one I had seen earlier that day. She started off saying, “Normal non-pregnant women’s hormone levels are at a zero or 1. Generally at 7 weeks gestation, hormone levels are around 10,000, they double every day to get that high. Your levels are at 97.” All I could say was “OK.” She continued on saying, “I know this is not what you wanted to hear and it’s not the way you wanted it to go, but sometimes it just happens, and we don’t know why. I’m sorry for your loss. Do you want me to cancel your other appointments you have scheduled? You will need to come back in two days and have another HCG test done, then once a week after that until your levels are 5 or lower. Call us back if you have any questions.” After canceling my appointment with my doctor and first ultrasound I felt empty. Nothing to look forward to. I was in a fog. My head and my heart felt so heavy. I laid in bed for a while. My husband came in and laid on the very edge of the bed, didn’t ask me to scoot like normal, but just sat there quietly. I tried to get any answers or feelings out of him about it. All he managed to say was he was upset and wasn’t sure how to tell the kids. All I could think was, “Oh crap, I forgot about that. I’m a horrible mother. We already told them they were going to have a new brother or sister. They have been so excited! How are we going to tell them that I had a miscarriage? How are their young minds going to comprehend that? Are they going to blame me? Does my husband blame me? I didn’t do anything wrong. I know there’s nothing I could have done! There’s no way I could have known.” I told him I couldn’t, so he was going to have to. He stayed silent and I knew that if he tried to, he might breakdown and I couldn’t do that to him. So as hard as it was I said I would tell them. It would probably be better coming from me anyway. Without moving from where we were on the bed we called the kids in to come sit with us. They knew something was wrong because I had been crying on and off all day. I looked at all their sweet faces looking concerned for me, wondering what this serious talk was going to be about. “Mommy’s not going to have a baby anymore”, was all I could blurt out before I couldn’t speak anymore. The lump in my throat was huge, my face turned into the ugly cry face and tears came rolling. I looked at them as their eyes got red and filled with tears and all my son could say was, “Why?!” How do you respond to that? How do you look at your 10, 7, and 4-year old’s faces and explain that to them? I just responded the best way I knew how. That the baby had stopped growing, there was no more baby in my tummy. My 10-year-old son understood better than the others, but he was also so much more upset. For days in fact. I don’t think he’s ever hugged me as long as he did the next day. I was holding my baby boy as he was crying over the loss of his baby sibling. And there was nothing any of us could do about it. That night I was so tired that I went to sleep around 9:45 pm. I woke up some time in the middle of the night to get our youngest daughter, Lainey and she laid with us in bed until morning. 5 am came around and I woke up with the worst cramps I had felt in a very, very long time. I tried to lay there until it passed but it didn’t stop. I tried getting up to walk to the bathroom, but it was more like stumbling. I held onto the wall, hunched over grabbing my stomach as I made my way to the toilet. My lower back was on fire, it crept around to the front of my stomach and came in waves. I thought, “This feels like I’m in labor”. The cramps just kept coming, stronger and longer. As I felt the blood drain out of my face it became tingly, I was trying to breathe through the pain like I normally do in labor but this time it was different. Sitting on the toilet trying to pee and it felt like everything was trying to come out all at once! I felt like I was going to pass out right there on the toilet. I held onto the counter with one hand and gripped the towel rack with the other and tried not to yell as my body purged itself of everything. I passed another clot about the same size as the first but was so drained and disheartened I didn’t get it out. I looked at it through the water and blood and flushed it, thinking “I just flushed my baby down the toilet.” Shaking and weak I slowly made my way to the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. I had no color in my face. No color in my lips, nose, ears, the veins in my hands weren’t there like they normally are. I was so dizzy as I made my way out to the living room where my husband was working out. I sat down and said, “I don’t think I can take you to work today. I can’t drive.” My insides were all twisted up, I was drained, I could barely stand, I could barely even stay awake, I probably looked like death. I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I’m so thankful that he took the day off work, took the kids to school and let me go back to sleep. I slept for the next three hours by myself, curled up in the fetal position with my heating pad across my lower back. I woke up around 9:15 am feeling even worse. I wouldn’t say this is the worst I’ve ever felt, but pretty close. (I judge all my pain on the worst being actually pushing a baby out, without medication, that’s a 10 on the pain scale for me. So, I guess it was probably an 8.) I was sore for DAYS. Not just my stomach, but my entire body. I had no energy. I couldn’t even pick up my 17-month-old baby girl. I stayed in bed most of the day, took another 2-hour nap, and drove to get something for dinner in sweat pants. I did not have the energy or want to cook dinner. I didn’t want to do anything. I was exhausted ALL THE TIME. I felt so stupid for being so emotional. I remember driving my husband to work the next morning and pulling the seat belt tight over my tummy and thinking the pressure of it felt good, like wearing a girdle after having a baby, except I had no baby. I had nothing to show for everything I had been and was going through. I had no medication to take the pain away. I had nothing to help me sleep at night and it was all I could think about. I would wake up in the morning thinking about it, lay in bed staring at the ceiling thinking about it. I’d wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it! I didn’t smile for days. I didn’t laugh, or sing, or play. I didn’t even really cry, or grieve, or process any of it. I certainly didn’t go out unless I had to. One thing I did do was post in a group I’m apart of on Facebook. It’s a group of moms from our church. All I did was ask them to pray for us. My husband and I don’t like to ask for help, but I figured asking people to pray for us couldn’t hurt. It helped in a way, knowing that people who barely knew us would be praying for us. I never felt alone in this because I knew it was common, I just didn’t realize how common. I got a lot of responses saying they had had been through the same thing before and they were there if I needed to talk. Soon I got a message from someone in our small group asking if they could bring us meals for a few days. I think normally I would’ve said it wasn’t necessary and we would manage, but at that point in time, that was probably one of the nicest things anyone could offer. I wasn’t thinking about dinners for our family of six. I wasn’t even thinking about eating. I said that would be amazing and for the following six days we had meals brought to us. Anything from taco fixings, to rotisserie chicken and apple pie. And each of the women who brought a meal stayed for a little while and asked how I was doing, each one giving me “that look” and a hug before saying if we needed anything else to let them know. I dropped the kids off at school Wednesday, January 25th and went straight to get my blood drawn. I hate needles. I hate getting poked and prodded, but I will without complaint when it comes to having a baby. But seriously, now? The baby was gone, and I still had to go through this. It was like ripping the scab off a slowly healing wound. Giving me a reminder that I wasn’t pregnant anymore and they just wanted to make sure. I know, I know it’s their procedure to make sure everything is OK, and the “issue” is resolved, but it sucked. I knew I was going to have to keep going back until all my pregnancy hormones were gone, until the last trace of baby was out of my system. That same nurse who I had talked to before called me to tell me the results of the test. My levels were at 24. I text my husband at work to tell him. At this point I was getting irritated at little things. He text me back saying, “You still have the hormones, so there’s still hope right?” I snapped and text back, “No. My levels are going down. From 97 to 24. There’s no baby.” I knew it was harsh, but I had already passed it. I knew it was gone. There was no hope. It was done and over and he wasn’t getting it. I know that in my normal state of mind I wouldn’t have been so rude. I felt bad but looking back now I guess it was part of the denial process. The anger part of it. I wasn’t even sure what I was feeling, I just wanted it to be over. We woke up on Sunday, the 29th, at our normal time. We stayed in bed for a little while longer than normal debating whether to go to church or not. My husband was fighting an ear infection and head cold, I was still in a funk not wanting to do anything. Did we really want to fight the kids to get ready and rush out the door? I knew I needed something, anything, and thought that maybe hearing our pastor speak would make me feel better. Him saying, “Let’s pray” might lift my spirits a little. I looked in the mirror and felt like I was looking at someone else. There wasn’t any injury on the outside, there was really nothing physically wrong on the outside, maybe just a little tired looking. I knew it was all on the inside, so I put on a little makeup to make myself look a little more presentable, and off we went. Walking down the hall, passing all those people to get to our seats, noticing a few pregnant bellies or tiny babies, it took everything I had to keep it together. I felt like when people looked at me they knew. Maybe some of the women did, from my prayer request. Maybe my face was telling the whole world something was wrong. We made it to our seats and the music began to play. I’m pretty sure I made it through the first song. Just barely standing there, holding onto the chair in front of me, not singing, just reading along and listening. I couldn’t even stand through the entire song. I sat down and soon everyone else did too. I remember this next part so perfectly. The music of another song began to play. People began to sing along like any other song. The song filled the room and I wasn’t even really listening to it. I was just sitting there surrounded by people, holding my husband’s hand, and all I could hear was the man behind me. His voice cut through the haze in my mind saying, “Amen! Amen!” (listen to that song here) I leaned forward and put my head in my hands and tears began to flow. My husband rubbed my back as the song continued and I began to sob. He pulled me into his arms and just held me as I cried. Big crocodile tears, nose running, sniffling, sobbing, ugly crying. Still hearing the man’s voice behind us, I thought about stopping him after the service to thank him for singing and not caring who could hear. Because as silly as it sounds, it was what I needed. I figured my mascara was going to be smeared all over, so once I calmed down enough I walked out to find some tissues and a mirror. I saw my reflection. Raw and real. My makeup was gone, my face red and splotchy. There was nothing I could do about it though. I wasn’t going to hide in the bathroom. I took a deep breath and headed back to sit with my husband, the place I knew I needed to be. We listened to the rest of the service and I’m glad we went. It was hard not to get emotional as Pete (our friend and the speaker for that day) began talking about trials. You can listen to that sermon here. Once we were dismissed we left as soon as we could. I never did thank the guy behind us, I thought he might think I’m scary or something. We picked up our kids, like any other Sunday and went home to take a much-needed nap. Although I couldn’t sleep. I needed to do something to exhaust my mind. I thought about going for a run but instead I took my four-year-old to get some preschool supplies, so I could start homeschooling her. It was time to get back to normal life even if I didn’t feel like it. Looking back on all this I know it could’ve ended up differently but I’m content with the way it went. I know many women who go to the doctor to hear the heartbeat for no fluttering heartbeat to be found, followed by an ultrasound, where ultimately, they are told their baby has stopped growing. I can’t imagine getting that kind of news. Then being told if their body doesn’t “clean itself out” in a certain time frame, they will have to medically clean it out. I really don’t know how I would’ve reacted if it happened like that. I’m glad I didn’t know until it was happening. For me personally, I think the hardest part was going through all that pain with nothing to show for it. My little tiny tummy bulge slowly shrinking away, and I have no baby to snuggle and make the pain all worth it. It wasn’t the loss of the baby that gets to me, maybe I wasn’t “bonded” with it yet. It might be because since I found out I had a feeling it wasn’t going to stay. I was excited, like any time I’m going to have a baby, but there was something keeping me from announcing it to the whole world. I told a few people but didn’t post on Facebook. I didn’t whip out my camera and set up some cute pregnancy announcement for everyone to enjoy. There was something holding me back. It had been six weeks. Six long weeks of trying to get back to normal. Then suddenly one evening, we had to rush my youngest daughter to the emergency room, where she would soon be transferred up to Doernbecher’s Children’s Hospital in Portland. (She’s fine by the way) Staying up there with her for 3 days while we were unsure about what was going on with her, never really leaving the hospital room, going through all that was a snap back to reality for me. Seeing my daughter hurting, pulled me out of the fog I was in and made me focus on something else. I soon realized that I was not coping very well. I was wanting to sleep all the time. I would take my husband to work and kids to school every morning like usual, but I would crawl right back in to bed and stay there until lunch time. I had my two youngest daughters at home and I just turned the TV on for them and gave them snacks. I was barely functioning. When my husband would try to get me to talk about what was wrong I wouldn’t be able to talk about it. I was irritable, I wasn’t sleeping well at night, I was barely eating. My husband would try to hug me, and I would push him away. But one day I made the decision that I was going to do better. For me. I HAD to do something to feel better. I couldn’t live like that. I couldn’t stay so consumed in myself because I had a family to take care of. I know there wasn’t anything I could do, I didn’t do anything wrong, so why was I feeling like that? I was confused about why I was feeling so much, but nothing at all. I was angry at myself for still having a tummy. I would look down and think it looked like I was a few months along (which I probably wasn’t but that’s what I saw). I got so mad at it. I had the mindset that “if I’m not pregnant, I don’t want to look like it.” So, I started working out, hard, every day. Running, lifting weights, anything I could think of. I could feel the anger inside me like I’ve never felt before. It helped me get through each day and motivated me to continue. It was like I HAD to do it. Even if the dishes were piling up or the laundry needed to be done, it was going to have to wait because I NEEDED this. For me, it was my outlet, it was going to make me stronger. I needed to be stronger because I had felt so weak. I needed something I could have control over because I had no control over what my body did. I was taking myself back from me. I signed up for seven 5k runs and obstacle course races from March to July. I started making it a point to do my make-up and hair and try to dress nice every day. It was a huge step up from stretchy pants, t-shirts and a messy bun. I was taking vitamins, supplements, and eating healthier. I was trying anything I could think of to make myself feel better. Eventually my body reverted back to having ovulation pain and PMS every month like clock-work. So, I was feeling pretty helpless. I went to my doctor and told him I wasn’t sleeping well so he prescribed me a sleeping pill to try. I also went to my OB/GYN and told him about my ovulation pain and asked what I could do about it because I was basically incapacitated for 4 days one week, then another 5-7 days during my period. It was horrible. He said I could get on birth control (which I hate taking because it makes gives me terrible mood swings and I just can’t deal), wait it out and see if it slowly goes away, or get pregnant. I thought, “well, I DID get pregnant and we all know how that turned out.” So, I opted for the mini-pill (no estrogen). He also had me take a blood test before starting it because they always do. After that appointment I went down and got my blood drawn and they said they would call with the results, but I could start the pill any time. I went home and told my husband I was going to be on birth control, not something either of us really wanted, but the best decision I could think of to help me feel better and regulate my body that seemed to be fighting me so much. Later that week I got a letter in the mail about my lab results, but the pregnancy test part of it was not included. I figured they couldn’t send that in the mail, so I would wait for the call. It was almost two weeks later, May 5th, that a nurse called and asked me to come back in and do another blood test because “it came back abnormal”. I thought, “I know what that means. It means I’m pregnant again.” I was not excited. I debated whether to tell my husband or not, I didn’t want him to worry or get excited, but I text him at work and told him. He asked if I had the leftover test under the bathroom sink and said I should take it. I didn’t want to. I felt so stupid. I knew it was going to be negative. I was being so negative! But I did it anyway. I set it on the counter and watched as it showed up. One pink line, then another. Wait, what? Two DARK pink lines on that test. I yelled, “Shut up!!” at it, started bawling, and took a picture and sent it to my husband with the caption, “Hey, guess what?” He was ecstatic! I, on the other hand, was not. I wasn’t sad or upset, I wasn’t anything. I guess I was fearful. Scared that it was going to end the same way, afraid that my body was going to reject it again and I was going to go through the same pain I had just a few months before. So, I stopped taking the pill that day. I packed up the girls and went to get my blood drawn again like the nurse had asked. She said she would call me on Monday with the results. Which she did, and I said, “I know, I already took a home test when you said my test came back abnormal.” She then set up my future appointments with my OB. I went in a couple weeks later to do the initial paperwork and questions, but this time they had an in-room ultrasound machine. My husband and girls were in the room with me. I was up on the table where she asked me to lay back. I was trying to act like everything was fine in front of the girls because we hadn’t told them yet. She put the wand on my stomach and began swirling it around looking for my uterus. I stared at the screen, searching for that tiny flutter of a heartbeat. It felt like an eternity. She was pushing harder and going lower to try to find it. I was slowly losing hope. The wand was pushed right up against my pubic bone when I finally saw it and gasped, covered my face with my hands and started sobbing. There was my baby! My tiny little blob with a heartbeat fluttering away on the screen! We waited until 12 weeks to tell our kids this time, that way the risk of losing it was lower. My entire pregnancy was hard. Emotionally hard. Physically I was fine, I was still working out consistently and eating as well as I could, I just wasn’t hungry. I was still depressed, still anxious, so much in fact I had an anxiety attack at one point. I was scared that not gaining weight was going to make me lose the baby, by the third trimester I had only gained 9 pounds. I was only 103 pounds to start! I told my OB about how I felt and he recommended talking to a counselor, so I got in touch with an amazing lady that I started seeing weekly. Just talking to her made me feel better. She didn’t give me “the look” but asked me questions and told me related stories and helped me see things a little differently. She gave me ways to process and grieve in a healthy way. Also gave me a distraction by talking about other things like the babies I have at home who still need me and love me no matter what, and believe it or not, I needed them to, I was just too overwhelmed to see it or feel anything. I knew that once I gave birth I would feel so much better because a big part of how I was feeling was my hormones being crazy and all over the place, messing with my mind and emotions. I just had to get through the next few months, growing this baby as best I could, and pick out a name! Our rainbow baby girl, Torryn Reign, was born January 8th, 2018, a year after getting pregnant with the one we lost. I have always said I wanted to be done having kids by the time I’m 30 (I turned 30, three months before). The saying, “If you want to hear God laugh, tell him about your plans” comes to mind. Hah, seriously, I’m not bitter or angry. My heart is so full, and I know there was a reason for all of this. God works in mysterious ways, right? Right! It is still hard to talk about out loud. I have to choose my words carefully or I will start crying. People ask how I am and I normally say, “I’m OK. I’m doing better”. Which I am, but obviously there is more to it, I just can’t say it. I knew deep down in my heart we would be blessed with another baby. I know it happened for a reason, maybe to give me a better understanding. Maybe to eventually help someone through the same thing in the future. Maybe to take me down a peg or two because I’ve had four relatively problem-free pregnancies and births without medication (except once). I may not know the reason now, or ever. But I look at my five beautiful babies we are so blessed to have, and I am OK. My daughter told her teacher from last year about it, while I was standing right there, and she gave me that look. The one where they tilt there head a little to the side, purse their lips, and raise their brows in the middle. You know, to say, “I’m sorry”. She did say that, but she also said, “It’s not something you forget. I had one many, many years ago and I still remember it. But it does get better.” Then she hugged me. A good long hug, as if she really truly cared. It was so what I needed. There was not much to read about miscarriages online, from a woman’s point of view, not a doctor’s. I Googled many different things but didn’t see much of what I was looking for. I know it’s not talked about much, many women feel ashamed or feel like they shouldn’t talk about it, that it’s taboo or something. I don’t feel that way. It’s something that is more common than even I thought. I guess I just never thought it would happen to me. I hope in some way it can help someone else not feel empty and alone. Because you are not alone. I’ve been there too. I’ve lost one too. Whether it was your first pregnancy or fifth like me. Whether it was six weeks gestation or more. It still sucks. Literally sucks the life out of you. I would never wish this on anyone. It really is something you will never forget, but I know it gets better, it just takes time. ♥