The Miscarriage Club

The Miscarriage Club. The club you never want to be a part of, and for your heart’s sake, I pray you aren’t. But for those of us who are members, I need you to know it is built out of the strongest, most loving, caring, grieving women and mothers.

Before the days of “rainbow babies,” our great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and sisters experienced these sad times alone and in silence, often never speaking about their loss. To this day, discussion of pregnancy loss, or miscarriage, is still taboo.

The Miscarriage Club has been around forever, and, unfortunately, it isn’t going anywhere.

I am a member. I am one in four. Chances are someone around you, someone close to you, has been the “one in four,” and you just might not know.

To the newest members of the club, welcome. The first and only rule of the club is to grieve. Let out all of your tears. Whether it is your first, your third, or your eleventh miscarriage, a loss is a loss, and it stings so badly. Your heart, your soul, everything seems so lost. I have only experienced one miscarriage, and it led me into a painful streak of grief, depression, and sadness.

While I cannot discuss my miscarriage without mentioning memories of the difficult days, I also need you to know, my sweet friend, that, for me, there is happiness on the other side of this sad time.

I often tell grieving mothers that if I could have seen my future while enduring my heartbreak, I would have known that all of the pain and loss was for something, for a future of happiness and love.

Today, I remember my sweet angel, Ellis, through my three daughters. I talk about their “big brother” in Heaven. I also pray every night that my children never endure the pain I did, even with the outcome I received.  

I remember being a little girl and playing with my baby dolls. I pretended to feed them, change them, and nurture them, just as my mother did for me. As I grew older, I dreamed of having children of my own one day– I can vividly remember walking around with a basketball in my shirt pretending I was pregnant.

I graduated from college, moved away, moved back home, married my husband, and was ready to start a family. Of course, I was a little overzealous at the time, and my husband convinced me that we should “travel the world” a bit and then begin “trying” for a family in about two years. I am forever grateful that he was able to convince me to travel because the thought of a “vacation” with three children under three seems like a challenge I am not up to, and will not be up to, for a long time.

On a trip to the Amalfi Coast in Italy, our luggage (which I stupidly packed my birth control in) was lost. I was hopeful our “trying” would start even sooner, resulting in starting our family even sooner. Unfortunately, that was not the case. About a year or so passed, and I began to wonder how people “just get pregnant.” I was praying every night to “just get pregnant.”

Then came the difficult nights of questioning my body, my health, my weight, my past decisions in life, everything. I needed an answer as to why I couldn’t “just get pregnant,” like everyone else. Every negative test, every period, every two-week wait, it began to break me down, physically and mentally. 

Then, one day, on a girls’ trip, in a hotel room in Atlanta with my best friends, my pregnancy test no longer read “not pregnant.” It now read, “Pregnant 2-3 weeks,” and my whole world stopped for that very second. It happened! God answered my prayers. My OB-GYN knew that we had been trying to conceive, so he performed early bloodwork and an ultrasound. Everything finally seemed perfect. We were pregnant with a due date of July 15, 2017, a day I will always remember and celebrate.

Everything was perfect…until it wasn’t. 

The ultrasound technician called us back for our routine ultrasound before our ten-week appointment. I had listened to the baby’s heartbeat a few days before on my at-home doppler (blame the nurse in me for that), so I “knew” that everything was going perfectly in my uterus.

When I looked at the screen, I knew it wasn’t right. It wasn’t what I was expecting to see.

The image on the screen didn’t look like the Google image results for a “10 week, 2-day ultrasound” that I had been Googling for days. Most importantly, I didn’t see the flutter of my baby’s heart. 

The words I heard next were the most heartbreaking, quite literally.

“I’m so sorry. There is no heartbeat.”

I let out the most screeching cry I’d ever cried. I had experienced a missed miscarriage even though my body thought I was still pregnant. I fell into a deep depression; I wrote letters to our baby, Ellis. I journaled, cried, screamed, and formed jealousy as I’d never known.

I returned to work as an RN in the NICU a few days after my D&C. The first baby’s heartbeat I listened to through my stethoscope sent me into an unending mess of tears that I pushed through to finish my assessment. That heartbeat sounded just like my baby’s, yet my baby was gone. 

The next month, I questioned everyone and everything. I asked a lot of “why” questions without finding any good answers. Then, I began again, with my husband by my side. With the help of my family and best friends, I pushed through the lowest time of my life.

Then God answered my prayers, again. This time, times two.

We asked for a miracle and He gave us two, Evelyn and Sloane, my “double rainbow” after a dark storm. Our ultrasound technician, the woman who spoke the most heartbreaking words I’d ever heard just a few months prior, would also be the one to confirm this pregnancy with a giggle and an “I think I see two.” She was as excited and shocked as I was!  

Our twins will never be my first pregnancy, my first child, or my first loss, but they will always be our first successful pregnancy, our first and second living children, and our blessings from above. I want them to know they were prayed for, hoped for, and wished for since the day I was a little girl holding my baby dolls telling them “everything will be alright, mommy’s here.”

Evelyn and Sloane gave me hope and confidence when I needed it most. They gave me a purpose when I began to lose sight of what I was placed on this Earth to do. My “rainbow babies” shine brighter every day and I am thankful they chose me as their mother. 

My membership in the Miscarriage Club is for a lifetime.

If you are a member, yours is too. There are no dues, no get-togethers, no fundraising. There are a lot of tears, a lot of questions, and a lot of love. But there is also an amazingly supportive group of women who can and will be there for you. 

If you are struggling, please reach out. It doesn’t matter if you miscarry at 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 10 weeks, or 12 weeks pregnant. You are a grieving mother who just lost her child. Find other members of this club. If you are unable to find them or choose not to search locally, then connect with them online through Facebook groups or Instagram bloggers like ihadamiscarriage – Jessica Zucker, Ph.D. 

Talking with other mothers who experienced similar pain will help, I promise. By sharing your story and learning from others, you could become the resource for the next person to experience loss. 

Here’s to all of the women of the Miscarriage Club, past, present, and future. 

Keep your head up, mama. So many women understand the joy and sorrow you have experienced. Reach out to us.