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Today, we have a story by Marie Lofton from Whispers of a Crazy Mother. This is a difficult read. Marie captures the pain of miscarriage vividly and raw. You are taken through her experience with her, catapulted into her doctors appointments and painful news. Please grab a tissue and be prepared to need a hug, yet to also find such a sense of gratefulness at the end of her story. Don’t forget to connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. She has a great post, When Your Best Is Not Enough that you should also check out after this one. Let’s get straight to her story, and I’ll save her bio for the end.
I remember discovering when we were pregnant with our first baby, it was January 20th 2009 (inauguration day of President Obama); we were newlyweds, just married the prior November. We were literally jumping up and down – and we now knew why I suddenly HAD to have tobacco sauce poured (heavily) over all my food for the past month (I’m not a hot sauce person – LOL!). I was only 5 weeks along so we anxiously had to wait another three weeks for a doctors appointment for our first ever ultrasound that we ever had to do. We were picking out names, baby shopping and telling everyone in the WORLD with such pride and excitement! New marriage and new baby!!! Whoo hoo!!!
We finally arrive to our appointment date, we giddy our goofy butts to the doctors office, I go through all the troubles of drinking 3 gallons of water, wait forever, and finally get to the ultrasound. We are grinning from ear to ear, looking at the screen of confusion and trying to make out where the baby is and… we wait… and wait… we are waiting for the doctor to say something… but… the doctor could not find a heartbeat.
– – –
We didn’t understand (we were new at this), “Well, when are we supposed to hear it? can we hear it later? what does this mean??” We asked. Turns out that by 8 weeks we should be able to track the heart rate and the growth of the baby and there was no sign of proper growth and no sign of a beating heart….
To that day, it was one of the worst things to ever hit my ears… our hopes and daydreams of our baby were crushed by the news of death. The daydreaming of what our baby might look like, what she might grown up to be like (I had a very strong sense she was a girl) and if she was going to be sassy or sweet. All of it stopped suddenly… We were hit by a speeding train that came out of nowhere. Our doctor was so understanding of our beliefs, she respected our hopes and my choice to keep waiting.
“Perhaps we just cant see the heartbeat yet” We thought out loud. We had read that has happened before so we hung on to that hope and visited our very patient doctor EVERY week for an ultrasound.
She gave us the same devastating news every time… My spirit was crushed, every time.
Over and Over…
For 4 more weeks I carried her, hoping she was alive, but hearing what I was told every week, I was slowly losing my grip of that hope.I hung on till I was 12 weeks along, our doctor urged me to consider my health since there were signs of deterioration and gave us our options.
I chose to take the pill, she warned me that it will be sudden and painful and that I should take time off of work. Taking her advice, I took the pill home – thinking I was ready, that I had already grieved my loss and that I could move on with life.
I sat on my couch and swallowed the pill.
The horror of the sudden pain was something that I had yet to imagine or experience. I honestly do not remember the timeframe in how long it took for the baby to pass, I just remember pain, crying uncontrollably to the point of slobbering and shame.
I remember running to the toilet and feeling her pass through me then seeing her lifeless little undeveloped body floating in the water.
Nothing could prepare me for this.
Nothing.
The time after this is a blur to me. I knew I was depressed and I didn’t care.
I remember at one point I even walked out of my job, in the middle of the day, for no reason (anyone who knows me knows that this is something I would NEVER do normally).
I just walked, left my car at work and just walked… I didn’t know where I was going – and I didn’t care.
My poor confused newbie husband held me through the nights of my childish cries.
My family reached out in love to give support.
I heard that many women had gone though miscarriages and still had children of their own, those stories started to give me hope. It was then when I started to find hope in my pain.
We tried again soon after and met with another miscarriage before I could even make it to my 8 week appointment. My baby had passed on their own. At this point the Doctors discovered that my blood type was the issue and it could be fixed with a simple shot every three years (or every pregnancy) to correct the efforts that my body was giving to abort my pregnancies.
Turns out that my blood type is Negative, it isn’t always an issue for pregnancies unless the father’s blood type is positive. So, this shot was supposed to take care of this.
Hopeful, I took the shot and wanted to wait a long time before trying again.
A few weeks later, our doctor wanted to check in to be sure that everything was okay with my body. My hubby kept bugging me, he was convinced I was pregnant again and I brushed it off (after all, how could he know? Boys don’t know these things).
While visiting with the doctor, after all the questions were answered and we were about to leave – my hubby opens his mouth
“Can you test her? She’s gotta be pregnant, she’s been acting really weird”
I rolled my eyes,
“oh geez, here we go…”
I looked at the doctor and said,
“Like that could really happen… I JUST had a miscarriage!”
She corrected me, while looking up at me with her glasses on the end of her nose
“Actually, your hormones are at a high rate after a miscarriage, it is very possible! Lets just take a look to be sure”
After a faint pee test result and a blood test confirming, we were pregnant – by just a few weeks!
This pregnancy went full term and our firstborn came May of 2010! In fact, every two years in MAY we had another baby till 2014! Its crazy, every two years we had a child in May, their birthdays ended up falling a week from each other, first son born on Cinco De Mayo, then our Daughter was born on Mothers Day, and our youngest a week after her. All 3 of them are all healthy, wild and sweet!
I have lost count how many times I had to stop typing this because I cannot see or control my shaking hand or muffle my sobs – I am still heartbroken over the loss of my angels. Them passing through me crushed me in ways I did not know it was possible. And these tears I shed now surprise me, as I thought I would be able to “handle it”, but it goes to show that we can still move on, be strong and still grieve loss of our loved ones.
I voluntarily flipped through the pages of this difficult chapter in my life to share with you, tears and all. I am doing this because I was encouraged when I found out that this has happened to many other women,
“Its more common than you realize, it doesn’t necessarily mean you will never have kids again” the doctor said to me.
After hearing so many heart breaking stories from other women, I somehow was one step up from my deep sorrows – just in knowing that I wasn’t alone.
The rest of my healing came from Jesus – and that is another story, my beautiful friends, that will be continued in another post on my blog soon. I can’t wait to share it with you.
Marie is a mother of three littles (ages 6, 4 & 2), a wife and NEWLY staying home. She’s a lover of Jesus and strong coffee. She does her best to make time for her passions, which keep her from losing her marbles. She recently created her blog to share more about life, good, bad and funny in a way that’s relate-able and inspiring.