I never thought I’d join this club. To be honest, I never thought I’d even have to share about this. And really I don’t have to. No one is telling me that I do. But deep down. It needs to be out of me. So here goes.
About a month ago I had a miscarriage at 7 and a half weeks.
Pyk and I photographed by Valeriya Maltsava
**Exhale.**
When you go into trying to have a baby you think thoughts like:
“I’m not going to tell anyone we are trying, I don’t want pressure from anyone, I’ve got enough from myself.”
“What if it takes a while?’
“What if it never happens?”
“What if the thing I’ve dreamed about (being a mom) for so long isn’t in my near future?”
There are deeper and darker thoughts that I don’t even want to get into once you start actively trying to have a baby. At some point I even envied people who it just ”happened” to. Silly, really, because unless everyone involved is ready for it, and unless you want it, there always seems to be victims in those situations.
And then one day, shortly after starting to try, it happened.
I was pregnant.
And it was wonderful.
Those first few weeks are strange and beautiful. All of a sudden your body is changing in miraculous ways and all you can do is cheer it on by eating healthy, taking vitamins, and avoiding all the millions of things you need to once your pregnant.
Our days were filled with smiley side-glances between Pyk and I. Talking about the baby… boy? Girl? Names we loved.. him asking me to stop drinking coffee.. me conceding and drinking decaf maybe once or twice a week for a taste fix. Little things. Feeling my body change from the inside. This whole feeling of getting ready. A feeling of never being alone.
I’ll never ever forget the day I told my mom, I don’t think I’ve ever seen her so happy. We told our parents and our closest friends who had just had babies. “Just in case”. Then I told Pyk one day that I was going to tell my cousins, I didn’t care if the news would probably then spread around my family, but that if something happened, I’d need them to support me.
The day before I had planned to tell them I was waiting for Pyk to meet me after a shoot to go out for lunch. I took a quick bathroom visit before heading to the restaurant when I saw the faintest spotting and had some cramping.
I unraveled.
Quickly calling the doctor we got an emergency visit with her that afternoon and what do you know? There’s a beautiful little shrimp in there, with a beautiful little heartbeat. My whole life changed. My whole existence was something bigger. I’ve never ever lived a moment more magical. We should have recorded the heartbeat. There was never so beautiful a sound.
We went home with lighter hearts and I rested for that evening. Over the course of the night I had more and more pain until it was absolutely unbearable and woke Pyk up to tell him we needed to go to the hospital.
I knew.
I didn’t want to know.
But I knew.
Somehow the little heartbeat would have already gone on.
The most painful thing wasn’t the excruciating physical pain of the miscarriage. But seeing the empty ultrasound only 12 hours after seeing it full of life.
I remember the message I sent to our family and friends, “Our little shrimp wasn’t made for this world. We were so lucky to have loved him/her for the last 7 weeks.”
And it’s true. We are so lucky. And I wish I could change that message, because we still love our little 7. That won’t ever change. That will always be my first pregnancy. And we will forever love that little soul.
I read a book recently that a friend sent to me. It talks about all the little unborn babies in heaven being raised by angels, just waiting to meet us one day. It’s a beautiful thought, comforting that one day we’ll meet her/him.
It sounds silly really, I mean, 7 weeks isn’t long. And really, the little shrimp wasn’t even the SIZE of a shrimp, just a cluster of cells. But the thing is, you cannot measure love in weeks, or in number of cells, or in number of tears shed.
After the miscarriage I can only describe it as emptiness.
A void of feeling.
A physical void in your body.
A whole future, changed.
A whole life together you had imagined, gone.
It was like screaming into a cave without any sound echoing back. Just loud silence.
I feel silly over a month later still breaking down in tears in the metro, or just while washing my face. But it’s not. It’s really not silly. It’s normal.
Miscarriage feels like the most awful hurricane right above you, when it happens. And you and your partner are just sitting there, in it. No umbrellas. No cover. Feeling exactly like the storm itself, thinking how could it have been sunny yesterday?
Then your family comes with umbrellas. They sit with you. Hold you. Cover you. But rain is still coming from every direction, bouncing off the ground and sweeping in from all sides. Everyone is feeling the storm.
As time goes on, the clouds get lighter and the rain lets up little by little. But the thing is, the storm, even when lessens, seems to follow you. Catching you off guard without an umbrella.
Those damn sun showers can be killer.
And all you can do is hope with every pore, fiber, and being, that one day, there will be a rainbow.
**To everyone out there who has felt this kind of loss. I see you. I’m with you. And if ever you need an umbrella. I’m here.**
Post script: To be honest, before this I didn’t realize how many women have had miscarriages. It’s more normal than not, yet before you’re in it, you don’t know that. I’ve spent hours in forums and on blogs reading other people’s experiences. And it helped so much. I wanted to write this to both get it out, and to give back even just a little of what I got.
