You Were Bigger Than the Whole Sky
This is one of those stories that sounds really heartbreaking, but you’ll never actually know how it feels until it happens to you.
I know this because I am that girl. And this is me trying to explain it to you.
You hear that 1 in 4 women will experience a miscarriage at some point in their journey to conceive. But I’d bet that statistic is much higher than that. I read every fact under the sun. I crunched the numbers against my autoimmune disease and pre-existing conditions. I knew that the statistics weren’t on my side. I knew that if it did happen, it wasn’t my fault. As one of my dear friends said, I knew. I knew. I knew. But it still hurt.
It hurt like hell.
Let’s be transparent here, I started writing this during a sleepless night. On the night I started writing this, I am technically 10-11 weeks pregnant and still carrying my lifeless baby in me. Yep, I’ve experienced what the experts call a missed miscarriage.
Essentially, my body was and is fully ready to carry a baby to term… but for some rhyme or reason (we now know it was a fetal chromosome glitch) baby’s heart stopped beating. It happened somewhere in the 9 week window, and our only signs were light spotting and complete loss of pregnancy symptoms from one day to the next. In the blog post linked here, I take you through the exact behind-the-scenes of the medical part of having a miscarriage. Save that one for later, for the curious, or if ever needed in your own circumstance.
This was by far the absolute most difficult thing I’ve ever had to experience in my entire life. And I know my partner Justin fully agrees.
Let’s start from the top…
I’m 30, I knew we’d get engaged this year (2023), so Justin and I started the year saying we’d “let things happen naturally.” We weren’t fully timing to “try” at ovulation, but we were very much aware of my cycle at this point and knew that this was going to be a possibility. Plug for Natural Cycles which was an excellent (and accurate) form of both birth control and pregnancy planing for us (I have a referral link here). So, during my January cycle we decided to say “let’s just give it a go and see what happens.”
By early February I had conceived according to my cycle tracker. Fun story, technically my egg implanted while on a trip to NYC — a New York baby after all!
When I first found out, I dropped the pregnancy test on the ground and called Justin telling him to run to the bathroom.
“Dude. I’m fucking pregnant.”
We had just gotten engaged the weekend prior. I had forgotten that I missed my (very regular) period with all the engagement excitement. And a week past my period due date, I tested. Something inside me already knew. Two big life changes at once.
I dropped to the floor sobbing, screaming, wondering “can I even do this?” I was in complete shock and the only thing grounding me was the support of Justin — the most incredible husband-to-be. While I was filled with absolute fear, his eyes glimmered with a new sense of life and purpose I had never seen before. It made me realize we are beyond ready.
But see, being the realist that I am I didn’t allow myself to be instantly happy. Like I said, the statistics hovered over my head in a very realistic sense — not all doom and gloom. We kept this little secret to ourselves and the handful of friends who I knew I needed the support from. Mostly our “mom friends.”
If you’re new here, something to know is I have 3 autoimmune diseases and a handful of health side effects they’ve caused. The most impactful to pregnancy is my inability to absorb B12 — a vital vitamin for pregnancy — and Vitamin D due to issues in my gut. I ran to my doctors’ offices and got every test under the sun done. Delightedly, they all told me I was in perfect health. All the “dangerous” levels they had recognized before were gone and I should be fully able to bring a healthy pregnancy to term.
I also ensured to take every extra precaution from prenatal vitamins, supplemental Vitamin D, a specialized physical therapist for the journey, and more. What no one can take away from me is that I was the healthiest I’ve ever been
Instantly, I became so connected and grateful to my body. It was a new sense of joy I’d never felt before. I got sent for an early ultrasound at what we assumed was the 7-week period (I have longer period cycles so we didn’t know for sure)… and boom.
We already have a happy, healthy heartbeat.
We ran out of the midwife’s offices crying of joy. This was the absolute best news of our entire lives. Up until this moment we didn’t realize how badly we wanted to start a family. And we knew the timing was exactly as it needed to be.
With this confirmation of baby and I’s health we decided to start sharing the news with our closest friends. We waited to tell family because we wanted to make it really special — I planned a trip home and goodie boxes for those we couldn’t visit. Spoiler: we were 2 days away from the trip when it all came crashing.
I knew in the back of my mind that people wait to share the news until you pass that “high risk” zone in the early weeks (somewhere after 10-12 weeks). In fact, a few people made us feel a bit badly about this decision, but we knew it was right for us.
Looking back, I don’t regret this at all. It’s the same people we shared good news with that we would share bad news with. It’s the same people whose support we expected to receive no matter the outcome.
And the reality is that something “bad” can happen at any time. There are people who don’t get to experience a live birth and never make it to the end, there are people who lose their living children for reasons like school gun violence. It’s a sad, fucked up reality and I knew I couldn’t allow myself to not feel joy simply because of all these unknowns.
It’s one of the best lessons I learned in this experience — to live life fully in the moment.
We had the best few months of our lives being pregnant. Gosh, I wish I could explain this feeling to others but it’s one of those you can only express with experience. And I’m happy we gave ourselves that time to experience full, unfiltered joy.
Fast-forward through the next few weeks of pregnancy and oof was I feeling pregnant. Textbook symptoms of nausea, food aversions, bloating, etc. And then one day it stopped out of nowhere.
I remember waking up that morning and breathing a sigh of relief thinking… “phew am I finally getting a break?” I’d spent the last few weeks somewhere over the toilet, with minimal appetite, wishing that I’d get some relief. And now I’m sitting in the same place begging for those symptoms to come back.
One day after celebrating making it to 9 weeks, I spotted. I had been told that spotting in pregnancy is very normal. Especially if it’s extremely light. Your uterus is expanding to make room for this baby!
I wasn’t worried at all. I did call my midwife, as instructed, and she said that because my symptoms had also gone away the next day that I should get an ultrasound and HCG bloodwork. I know how to read labs like their own language and opening those results was the first time I got nervous.
My pregnancy hormones dropped. I knew I was headed to a miscarriage.
And then the ultrasound confirmed: “Unfortunately, we can’t find a heartbeat anymore.”
These words will live with me forever. I’m sure one day I’ll heal, but I will never forget the feeling. The feeling of seeing the silhouette of a tiny baby with tiny arms, tiny head, tiny belly… being so giddy looking at the screen and being able to make out an actual human being but then realizing there was no flickering at the center. Somewhere in all of this, we lost our baby.
I remember reacting to the shock in full “fix the problem” mode. I had an appointment next door with my midwife, I was ready to hear next steps. I was ready to make the next moves to adjust the things we had in motion for our lives. And then as I walked through the doors of the exam room I completely lost it.
How is this possible? Why me? Why now? What happened?
My midwife was incredibly empathetic and supportive. For those who aren’t familiar, and this is why abortion access is so fucking important, the next steps in a missed or incomplete miscarriage are life-saving medication or surgery to terminate the pregnancy in full and remove baby from your uterus. Something so many women don’t have access to nationwide even in circumstances like this. Imagine having to process this deeply sad and traumatizing loss, and then having to jump through hoops to get the medical care you need. So many women will die in the process without access.
Reminder: abortion is healthcare.
The weeks that followed were the hardest. I don’t know about you, but I thought miscarriage was a physical experience that just happens and passes, and then of course comes the emotional grief journey to follow. Nope, blog post here goes in-depth on what actually happens (not for the faint of heart).
For this post, I’ll spare you the medical story. We’re here to talk about our feelings and how we’re moving forward.
For almost two weeks I carried my lifeless baby inside of me. It crushed my soul daily and forced me to face grief head on. In some ways, I’m thankful that my body was holding tight but it was time to let go. We received Misoprostol (the “abortion pill”) from my Midwife and prepared to labor at home.
A weekend of the most blood I’d ever seen, two ER visits, and lots of pain medication later, it passed.
As someone with a lot of health anxiety and trauma, the physical part of a miscarriage was both difficult yet incredibly transformative. I felt so empowered and trusting of my body through the entire process. All fears shed. With every “contraction” I breathed through and pushed my body to new levels I didn’t know I was capable of.
And I guess that’s one of the many gifts baby left me.
I experienced what it truly means to live in the moment — to experience every feeling as it is without worrying about something that hasn’t happened
I found my emotional and physical strength and I realized I am capable of SO much more than I ever thought I was
I built a deeper relationship with my partner, Justin, and saw him in a new light… being one of the best future fathers I could ever imagine
I discovered who my true friends are, those who were willing to be excited with us in the time we had and both supportive and holding space when we needed the opposite
I met grief and learned how messy the process is, but how beautiful it feels to understand both highs and lows of life (I wrote about it here)
I gave myself actual rest (took ~3 weeks off work) and discovered what it truly means to love myself with care
And we learned that in life we might not be “ready” for something, but divine timing will take us through whatever we need in that moment — and we can overcome anything
This has been one of the most transformative experiences of my entire life. And in some ways, I’m thankful for it. I wish I and no other parents-to-be ever have to go through it, but I am better for it.
I love you, Gummy Bear. You will always be the first baby I carried… even if your first step was taken on another plane of existence.
If you are or experiencing or have experienced pregnancy loss, my heart is with you. If you need support from hearing someone else’s medical experience treating a miscarriage, the post is linked here.
I’ll leave you with this…
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
You were bigger than the whole sky
You were more than just a short time
And I've got a lot to pine about
I've got a lot to live without
I'm never gonna meet
What could've been, would've been
What should've been you