One in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. I am aware of the statistics, but I truly never believed it would happen to me. This was some time ago, but the trauma is present. I thought that possibly sharing this story would help others who suffered through the same experience.
A couple of years ago (one and half years ago), my husband and myself decided to remove my Mirena (birth control) and try for a third child. I wanted a girl badly, I knew that no matter who they turned out to be I would happy though. There is something about having a child that is irreplaceable. The feeling of them kicking, the growth of your body, and the strength that a woman must have to even carry a child. I was taken off my medication for depression, and we started to try.
My period was 6 weeks late! I knew that the nurses said that it may not happen right away, but my family (the women) are breeding machines. We carry the children, and birth them vaginally, usually with little complications. We breastfeed, and rarely dry up. I have wide hips and I carry well. I hate being pregnant but would give birth any day of the week. It is one of the most empowering moments of a woman’s life, if they so choose to have children.
The time came when I thought it was possible to take a pregnancy test. There it was, a faint double line that indicated that I had the hormone that women create when carrying a child (HCG). The line was faint, but anyone could have seen it. It is hard to obtain a false positive, but I was going to wait three days to take another test to see if that line would become darker. Then I would call my OBGYN, who is incredible.
That weekend I started to have lower back pain. It was sharp, and stabbing, and unfamiliar. When I have menstrual cramps, they are in my front. Maybe I twisted something in my back while doing some light yoga from the morning? I became intensely tired, and decided to sleep. While I slept I dreamt.
There, in my dream, I saw a beautiful blonde toddler running around. I never saw her face, but I knew she was my daughter. She kept running back and forth in the dream, between my home and my neighbor’s home. My neighbor was having a garage sale, and my husband kept calling over to me. He said: “Sweetheart, we cannot keep her right now. The neighbors are going to take her until we have our stuff together,”. No, not happening. I kept chasing the child and crying out to her to come back to me, I needed her, she needed me; all while my husband kept repeating that we could not keep her, it wasn’t her time yet. Bullshit. Then, I lost sight of her in the garage sale. I lost the sight of her bouncing beautiful blonde hair. I collapsed to the ground crying.
I awoke in a panic, something was not right. I do not have vivid dreams like that often, and I knew there was significance. What was it? My back hurt like the dickens, and I decided to stand up. Bright red clotted blood ran down my leg. It pooled under my feet, and I knew I had lost her. She was gone, and it horrible. I tried to scoop her back in, but somewhere my brain was telling me it was a futile attempt and I was responding in a way that was trauma based. ‘Do not take her from me’ I thought to the universe, not her. Yet, she was gone. I suffered in silence, and I do not think that many people knew how much it affected me.
Oddly enough, our neighbors became pregnant the following week with a girl.
So, here I am, in all my vulnerability, sharing that experience.
Miscarriage is not something that many talk about, and other people that have never had one do not seem to understand the plight that those have had one have lost. Much like infertility, I cannot be there and understand it, but I can and am a shoulder to lean on.
I loved her, and never met her. Now with the amount of medication I am on and college, I do not have time to even think about having another child. I can always come down off of my medication once I learn how to let go of the trauma, or at least get my symptoms under control and reaction to stimuli under control. Now is just not the time.
Thank you as always to Jenn Bovee.
Light up the Darkness,
TheLotus
TheEvolvingRedLotus9377 