Miscarriage and Loss

“So when are you going to have a baby?” I knew the routine. While I wanted to lecture on infertility and inappropriate questions, I slapped on my fake smile and uttered through gritted teeth “we’re working on it.” This seemingly innocent, albeit nosy, question was so painful to answer. My husband and I suffered through years of infertility, not knowing if we would ever become parents. We found out later that 8 of my miscarriages likely occurred because of chromosomal abnormalities, causing me to miscarry early on in each pregnancy. A little background. My husband and I met in October 2002. We married in June 2005 and decided to wait a few years before we started trying to get pregnant. We both come...

  I could tell the nurse who answered the phone that night was aggravated with me. It was the third time that I had called and requested that the on-call doctor call me back. This was the fourth night in a row. The bleeding I could deal with. The cramping is what was doing me in. It was keeping me up all night and had me pacing my house trying to find relief. I was 10 weeks pregnant so anything other than Tylenol was off limits. All I could do was wait for a phone call, breathe, and pray. My husband and I had actively tried for a second for a couple of months. Our first child was two years old, and...

I remember the look on my husband's face when the sonographer was unable to detect our son's heartbeat. I began to cry as he looked at me with confusion and panic. "He's gone," I said. We held each other in a dark room that merely moments ago was filled with joy and excitement. Exam room four, now so cold and lifeless. As we walked behind closed doors to labor and delivery, I remember how quiet we stood waiting for the elevator. Both of our minds reeling with questions and hurt, though on the outside - quiet. The silence would show its face many times in the days to come. When our son was born, quiet. As our friends and family...

Most people that know me know I am a “Boy Mom” who absolutely adores her sons and her Boy Mom adventures. I truly do. However, there is an almost unspoken reality that I live with daily. I had a daughter. I gave birth to Charlotte, my “official” second child, too early and she died. She was born, yet never took a breath of air. She has a name, but she didn’t live. I held her but she didn’t move. Being pregnant with her is the only memory she and I will ever have together. Most well-meaning friends and family don’t acknowledge her existence, I am sure, out of fear of hurting me. I don’t publicly acknowledge my love for her on a...

"Is this your first?" To any woman pregnant after loss, you know the punch in the gut feeling that follows. The inner turmoil of dialogue goes something like, "Should I tell them I lost my first baby? No. It's too sad, they'll feel so uncomfortable. But, does that make me ashamed of him? If I don't explain, does that make me a bad mom? Would he think I'm not proud of him?" It's a battle I faced every time an acquaintance innocently asked that question. And let me tell you, working in a hospital, it happened a lot. Before returning from maternity leave after losing Weston, I honestly practiced a script of what to say when faced with tough questions like...