Getting (and staying) pregnant is not as easy as it may seem. Everyone’s journey is different, and no matter what path we must go down, our hearts are bravely put on the line.
No matter how many articles, tips and pins are out there, getting and staying pregnant is not as easy as following a particular diet with the promise of an immediate pregnancy.
I’ve come across so many pins on Pinterest that give the promise of the “honest truth” to getting pregnant FAST! It’s simple really; you just need to eat 3.25 unpeeled, refrigerated kiwis that were harvested on a Saturday between 6-7a for 5 consecutive days 1.5 days before the peak of ovulation and BAM! You’re pregnant! … um, no, not quite (and wait, do the kiwi’s need to be harvested between 6-7a on a Saturday or am I eating them between 6-7a?!?!).
For some women, it happens quickly, for other’s like me, not so much. Though I should say that many women have waited a lot longer than I, and some continue to wait.
We never went into this by not-trying-but-obviously-trying-without-stressing-ourselves-out-by-saying-we’re-really-trying. It was all intentional though I did tell myself at the onset that it could easily take up to a year to get and stay pregnant without there necessarily being anything medically “wrong”. To my surprise, I got pregnant the second month of trying. I found out in early October 2017. I couldn’t believe it, and I couldn’t stop talking about how easy we had it after all. One year? Please, this was way too easy! I immediately started researching baby products.
Only 5 days after the first pregnancy test, and a series of pregnancy tests I took everyday once I got that first positive, there was a recurring, ever-fading pink line that presented itself. I knew deep down that that wasn’t good. I miscarried on October 19, 2017. Here’s how quickly that happened — I started my drive home from work thinking, again, how lucky we had it getting pregnant so quickly. By the end of my drive, which is about 30 minutes, I had these odd tearing, burning sensations in my stomach. I got home and went to the bathroom and there was no mistaking the inevitable.
My immediate response was to roll my eyes and say to myself, “of course.” I was absolutely devastated. How could I have been so naive? In just a few minutes it went from irony to shock to just sheer sadness. After about 15 minutes, I went into our bedroom, threw myself across the foot of the bed and cried. My husband eventually came in to see what I was doing, and I had to tell him. I hated what I had to tell him and couldn’t even figure out how to eloquently, if that’s even possible, tell him what had happened. “I’m not pregnant anymore.”
A short while later he went out and got me some of my favorite things: pizza, a bottle of sauvignon blanc and flowers.
I heard all of the worst possible advice and sentiments people could possibly provide: relax. you’ll get more practice. at least you can get pregnant. it happens to a lot of people. Regardless of whether or not those words were meant to be supportive and comforting, they weren’t. They made me feel terrible. Telling me to “relax” is the same as telling me to “calm down”. It backfires and should be avoided at all costs.
Over the next few months, including Thanksgiving, Christmas day and New Years day, there were multiple pregnancy announcements. Around Thanksgiving I was sure that I would be able to talk about the miscarriage as a few weeks had passed, but it turns out that was not the case; talking about it outside my inner circle (aka my husband and immediate family) just made me cry.
On Christmas day, one pregnancy announcement came earlier in the day and the second came at Christmas dinner. I had been given a few minutes notice that the dinner announcement was coming, but no amount of time was going to provide me any comfort or prepare me for the emotions that would immediately start churning. During those 5 days of pregnancy back in October, I had already established that the timing would be such that I would announce my pregnancy on Christmas day.
I had knots in my stomach and my eyes were brimming with tears as I sat at the dinner table and waited for the pregnancy announcement. Before everyone was seated at the dinner table, I started stuffing mashed potatoes into my mouth as a distraction and to prevent myself from uncontrollably sobbing. My eyes continued to fill with tears, and I just stared down so intently at my plate thinking about the texture and flavor of those damn mashed potatoes. The person seated immediately next to me kept repeating, like a broken record, that “they have an announcement to make!” It went on for about 5 minutes and each time some rendition of that announcement was made I just wanted to scream.
I picked the seat at the end of the table by the doorway should I need to make a quick getaway. I was so close to losing it that I placed my napkin on the table and was sitting on the edge of my seat with my leg off to the side in case I needed to make a quick exit to the bathroom. A number of times I started to feel myself get up from my seat because I was milliseconds away from completely falling apart while everyone in the room was cheerfully buzzing around and that gut wrenching prelude to the “announcement” kept repeating. So focused on swallowing the food on my plate that was blurred from the tears swelling my eyes, my head felt like it was underwater as the official announcement was finally made and everyone around the table toasted. I don’t remember a single conversation that took place around that table thereafter.
I don’t know how I got through that night (probably the wine), but I was so relieved to call it a night and finally head home. As soon as I got into the car and closed the door I started crying and didn’t stop until I got home and fell asleep.
I removed all social media from my phone on New Year’s Day because my heart couldn’t take another pregnancy announcement. I scrolled through three consecutive pregnancy announcements in my feed, literally one after the other, one with my due date: June 23, 2018. I couldn’t handle seeing other peoples highlight reels, and I definitely couldn’t handle the unintended heartache that they made me feel. Maybe that made me selfish, but that’s just how it has to be sometimes in order to manage your emotions and guard your heart.
Still trying to process the loss, I found myself in a very lonely place. I didn’t feel like anyone really understood just how painful it was to lose a pregnancy, a baby. My baby. Everyone had moved on; it was old news. I didn’t feel like I was being supported and felt like there was this perception that I should be moving on, too. I didn’t move on. And even now, 1.5+ years later, it still makes me cry. It’s a part of my journey, it’s an emotional wound that many women must deal with in silence because we are not able to just move on and get over the loss of something that literally took a piece of our hearts. I was going to be a mom and then suddenly I wasn’t in the blink of an eye. You don’t just move on and you certainly don’t recover from the loss of a pregnancy, a child, as if you were recovering from a twisted ankle.
The next few months were essentially a downward spiral for me emotionally and mentally. I foolishly booked a cruise, months in advance, to locations that exposed me to the Zika virus, and I didn’t even think about it until I got home and realized the mistake I had made. I was so mad at myself. Our efforts to conceive had to be postponed several months just in case I had contracted the virus as I was bitten in the Turks and Caicos, and I wasn’t sure if it was from a sand flea or mosquito. I requested to get tested for the virus, but they would not test me unless I was pregnant.
A few months later, we lifted our ban for trying to conceive, after I spent a lot of time reviewing newly published research and data on Zika. My sadness didn’t go away though. Each passing month without a positive pregnancy test was devastating, and, let’s be honest, I took no comfort in what I had originally told myself all those months ago about the process taking at least a year. Every month without conceiving just caused me more pain.
For months I did everything from taking and tracking my basal body temperature each morning to using the Fertility Friend app to using ovulation test strips. I became way too in tune with cervical mucus. I read blog posts, articles and the book Taking Charge of Your Fertility among others. I started telling (perhaps more like threatening, but that’s neither here nor there) my husband to get ready to have his sperm checked because he was an equal player. It was hard to mess up the timing as I was using all of these resources and natures signals, but I still wasn’t getting pregnant.
We arrived at the month of June which was the point at which I’d say I hit my rock bottom. It was the month our baby was supposed to arrive and yet my uterus was empty. I started seeing a therapist. I started doing yoga daily, sometimes twice a day. Efforts to conceive that month were less than optimal, and I just didn’t care nor did I even try. I needed one month to just not be disappointed and to feel that I had some control over things. One birth announcement after another came through on my social media feeds (because it’s an addiction and I couldn’t stay away too long), and it was all I could do to send my sincerest congratulations. All of these beautiful new lives were entering the world, and mine didn’t survive beyond 5 weeks gestation. I was happy for these new moms, because I knew what it is to want a baby, but so utterly sad for me.
It was a relief to have survived June.
As with every month during the TWW (two week wait) I pretended I wasn’t looking for any signs of pregnancy — am I nauseous? do my boobs hurt? did I pee more than usual today? am I feeling really tired this week? Wait, didn’t I just say that I didn’t really try to conceive in June and that I didn’t care? Oh, yes, but welcome to my reality. I cared. I still wanted that miraculous positive pregnancy test. Every month I held out hope for a miracle.
For some reason I decided to buy a baby book because I was always thinking of ways I’d tell my husband that I was pregnant. That’s what you do during the TWW (two week wait) to kill some time. I also decided to take a pregnancy test because like every other month I was sure that I felt different — I felt something — and was hopeful it was the start of a new life.
On July 1, I got home from work, opened up the wrapper of a pregnancy test, peed on the stick, covered it up and waited a few seconds before not-looking-but-looking-at-the-test. I then found myself sitting on the bathroom floor in pure disbelief with tears streaming down my face. I was staring at a positive pregnancy test that turned so boldy, unmistakably positive in such a short amount of time, it didn’t seem real. I’ve taken a lot of pregnancy tests and this one was different and that was a lot to take in.
My heart was racing and at the forefront of my mind was whether or not I could endure the heartache of losing another pregnancy. We barely even tried to conceive, so how could this even be possible? I composed myself, hid the test and waited until the next day to tell my husband. He was heading to his game night and I just needed to process everything and figure out how to prepare for more potential heartache.
The next day I got home from work, grabbed the baby book I recently bought titled I Love My Daddy and the positive pregnancy test and hid them behind my back. I nervously walked up to my husband, told him to put out his hands and close his eyes. I was so nervous but mustered up the courage to place the book and test in his hands. I couldn’t find any words to say so I just stood there silently as I watched him look down into his hands.
The timing of this pregnancy was quite interesting. The month I was due with my first baby was actually the first month of my second pregnancy. And it’s quite possible that biology worked such that the first baby’s due date and the day this baby came to be was on or around June 23. Fate? Coincidence? I’m not 100% sure, but I’d like to think there was a connection.
Bring on the relentless nausea and all-day morning sickness. I was pregnant.
I wrote this post because I know what it is to want a baby, to lose a baby and, yes, to finally hold my own baby in my arms. I don’t take it for granted, and I know that there are women out there that are right where I was not too long ago. While I now update my family and friends with a monthly post about my son on social media, I acknowledge that it might be painful for some to see. Like those that posted about their pregnancies and births, the intention is not to hurt. It’s to celebrate one of life’s greatest miracles, and it really is a miracle.
It was one of the hardest times of my life, and I’m thinking of those on their journey to motherhood and hope that this post makes them not feel so alone.
