I won’t be welcoming my fourth baby this spring as planned. Instead my last pregnancy has resulted in me joining a club that isn’t at all exclusive, but is very secretive.

One in four … that is how many pregnancies are believed to end in miscarriage. I knew that number long before it happened to me, but I also had a lot of thoughts about miscarriage I am ashamed to admit: “at least it was early.” and, “well she has other kids.” would be at the top.

To say I’m writing about my loss to help others would be a lie. I hope it does; I think that is the hope of all who write, that your words resonate with those who read them, but that isn’t my motivation. I knew I’d write this, I am always transcribing my life in my mind and I have been writing and rewriting the way this chapter unfolded since I first heard those deafening words, “I’m not finding a heartbeat.”

This running biography of mine often keeps me up at night, but is also the best way – perhaps the only way – I know to process my feelings. But now I am taking the story I’ve been protecting in the confines of my head and putting it on display, because I am tired of the way it bounces around in there; I am tired of fearing that it will crack a wall at the wrong moment and I’ll reveal it inappropriately, perhaps bitterly. I have come to believe that sharing my story is how I finally exhale a breath I have been holding for months. It is what feels right to me — it is how I move forward.

I began to think I had lost my baby the day Megan Markle’s opinion piece came out in the New York Times. No, her story didn’t make me paranoid; I just happened to have a check-up appointment (15 weeks) scheduled the same day. My husband and I both had the day off and as you can imagine in 2020, we had no plans. I convinced him to run a few errands with me; I needed to return a stack of clothes I had ordered before I found out I was pregnant – no sense holding on to them for a year. When we returned home, I debated cancelling my check up; we had been out all morning and I was enjoying the warmth of my home at the holidays, but I didn’t cancel – I went, and my life hasn’t been the same since.

I was the last appointment of the day and was not surprised when they were late calling me back. When the nurse finally brought me to a room, she quickly took my blood pressure and told me she was going to listen for the heartbeat. She spent a minute or two running the the doppler over my belly and said she couldn’t find it. She stated the doctor would check when he came in. To be transparent, I wasn’t concerned at this point; I assumed she was new or in a hurry to get home herself. I figured the doctor would come in and find it without a problem. He arrived shortly after she left and made it clear he wasn’t prepped for my appointment (he hadn’t reviewed any of the test results from my last visit and was scanning all the paperwork aimlessly.) He asked me questions he should have known the answers to and then proceeded to check for the heartbeat. I kept waiting to hear it and I thought I did a few times, but I guess that was just hope or even my own heartbeat as the panic set in. While I will not hide that I am not a fan of this doctor, I will give him that he really tried to find that heartbeat. He scanned and scanned and apologized for his aggressiveness before ultimately telling me, “I’m going to give it one more go and I don’t want to leave you hanging, but if we don’t find it, you can come on Monday for an ultrasound.” It was Wednesday – fucking Wednesday. The day before Thanksgiving and five days before Monday. I had been silent until this point, but when he didn’t find it on the last attempt, I couldn’t help but ask, “What does this mean? There has never been an issue finding the heartbeat in any of my other pregnancies.” He replied with, “Well obviously we will want to do an ultrasound to confirm the pregnancy is viable.” And that was when I knew without a doubt (and all too late) this guy was not the doctor for me. I knew there was an ultrasound device across the hall and the fact that he was going to send me home to sit with the biggest uncertainty I had ever known was beyond what I could deal with in that moment. I was so frustrated with his response that I simply stood up, grabbed my things and left. He didn’t say anything, didn’t follow me, didn’t have the girl at the front desk follow up with me – nothing was done.

Once inside my car, I called me husband and told him what had happened. I cried the short drive to pick up my older daughters. Then I bottled up the fear, told myself everything was fine, put on a smile, and hugged my girls a little longer before putting them in their carseats.

I didn’t talk about it that night. I didn’t want my girls to hear anything and I didn’t know what to think. I did google. As much as I tried to tell myself it was a bad idea, it seemed like a better option than not doing anything. Everything I found had positive endings, but there was one small issue – all of these women who shared their stories had a reason the heartbeat wasn’t heard that I was pretty certain didn’t apply to me: 1. It is common to have hard time finding the heartbeat if the mother is overweight and, 2. It can be attributed to a tilted pelvis. I knew the first didn’t apply to me and I imagined the latter was something that you always had, not something that just happened during your fourth pregnancy. So now the doubt crept in … but even as I began to doubt, I told myself I couldn’t have miscarried; I didn’t have any cramps and there was no bleeding – outside of this appointment everything had been normal …

For five days I felt insane. I read the same info, continued to call the doctor’s office even though I knew no one was answering their phones, went back and forth in my head with “you’re being a pessimist, everything is fine.” And “you know you’re body better than anyone and this baby is no longer alive.”

When Monday finally came, I had prepared myself for the worst. I finally got someone on the line who was willing to squeeze me in when I explained my situation. When the ultrasound tech pulled up the scan, I knew right away. She didn’t say it – but I knew. There was no flicker. I stopped watching and didn’t respond when she asked if we had ever moved my dates. That’s when she said she couldn’t find a heartbeat. That’s when she asked if I wanted her to print the scan for me; I said no. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at the screen again. I was taken to a different room where a doctor I had never met before had to come in to officially tell me that my baby was dead. The baby was measuring at 12 weeks and should have been 15, so best guess was that it happened three weeks prior to my visit. The doctor explained how common this was and how it wasn’t my fault. Words that fall flat when you’re on the receiving end. He then said we had to talk about my options. There were three and in his mind there was only one that was safe. All of this was happening while Shawn waited in the car (COVID precautions meant I was alone during all medical visits) and I just couldn’t process. Ultimately the doctor said I would need surgery and that I should do it as soon as possible. If my body recognized the loss on its own I could lose too much blood. I agreed to the surgery and he told me someone from the hospital would call to schedule it shortly.

I walked to the parking lot, knowing Shawn knew – he would know by how long I was inside the office, and by my face, and by the simple fact that he didn’t get any news from me while I was in there. Part of me was relieved he would know as that meant I wouldn’t have to say it.

As we started to drive home, I received a call from the hospital saying I needed to come ASAP for a COVID test. We pulled up and a woman came out to the car and explained to me the procedure then asked a few questions. I couldn’t tell you how many, but I will never forget that one was “Are you pregnant?” I couldn’t respond. I felt I didn’t know the answer – I mean the technical answer was yes, but did it matter? I looked at Shawn and back at the woman and she knew – I watched it register on her face and she felt awful, and suddenly I felt even worse. When I think of this moment, tears sting my eyes; I imagine I will remember it like this for the rest of my life.

Shawn was permitted to come to the hospital with me, but only in the waiting room. This meant I spent hours conscious in a hospital room alone waiting for the doctor to arrive. Alone with the sad reality that the baby inside of me was no longer alive; alone with the knowing they were about to surgically remove a baby, my baby, from me – a baby I would never hold. I couldn’t get lost in this reality so I distractedly worried if Shawn was able to coordinate someone to pick up my click-list order while obsessively counting the ceiling tiles.

When my doctor finally arrived, I was proud of myself for remembering to ask for RhoGAM. I could tell he was anxious around me and perhaps felt guilty that he sent me home to live in misery the last five days – this was my first time seeing him since I walked out of that room on Thanksgiving-Eve. Our interaction went like this:

• He explained the procedure and then asked if I wanted to have any testing done on the “remains.”
• He went on to say that this testing is quite often very expensive.
• I responded that this was something I would want to discuss with my husband.
• He asked if I could call him.
• I said he (Shawn) had my phone in the waiting room.
• He offered to have someone go get my phone then changed his tune to say he wouldn’t recommend the testing being that this is my first loss and I had had “such great success in the past.”

Like I said: Not the doctor for me.

(I feel like I need to go on a tangent here to say that I truly regret not looking for a new doctor. My three girls were all born in Chicago and I loved my doctor there. When we returned to Michigan I began seeing a doctor I saw a few times during college because I didn’t want to take the time to look for a new OBGYN in the middle of a global pandemic. This was a mistake. I am in no way delusional in thinking this guy caused my loss, but I can confidently say he managed to make some of the worst experiences in my life more awful. I share this here to reinforce that your relationship with your doctor is important – don’t second guess switching if you’re doubting it.)

My only memory after anesthesia and before the recovery room is the song playing in the operating room: “Escape”. Waking up in recovery alone sucked. I was cold and tired and just really fucking sad. I wanted to see my husband, to hold my kids, to be anywhere but in that hospital. But they failed to administer my RhoGAM and on a day I just wanted over, everything continued to translate to more time alone in a hospital bed.

I got home late, but the big girls were kept up so I could put them in bed. I tucked them in and then came downstairs to snuggle my own mom. Here I was at 34, still wanting, needing, to cry to my mom. So I did. I didn’t talk; I just sat there with her in a silence that was so different than that of the hospital room.

I wasn’t ready to talk about the loss. I hadn’t told many people that I was expecting. Thankfully Shawn took on the task of sharing the news with our families – most who didn’t even know I was pregnant – but I still felt I needed to tell my friends who knew about the pregnancy before I put them in a position to ask me about how it was going, only to find out in an awkward response it was over. I told them in a text. For the first week that was the only form of communication I could handle. No one could hear my tears through a text and I didn’t want to have my sadness take over … I didn’t want anyone to see me through a pity lens – or even worse, for them to think I was being dramatic.

• It took me a full week to say that I had lost the baby out loud. Which I unfortunately did while emotionally vomiting on my boss (who didn’t know I was pregnant).
• It was also a full week before I could bring myself to use goo gone to remove the sticky residue left from the monitors and IV tape.
• Two weeks to be able to have a conversation (and only thorough text) with my sister-in-law.
• Two weeks to find the motivation to run again.
• A month to start writing this post, only to realize I wasn’t there yet.
• Six weeks to pack up the shirts I ordered for an announcement.
• And who knows how long to stop resting my hand on my stomach …

I can’t speak for what life is like for others following a miscarraige, but for me it’s a crap shoot. Some days I’m truly okay; some I think I am okay only to have a moment I feel I can’t dig my way out of. Some days it feels so overwhelming, and some days are just good. On those good days, I don’t feel sadness until I realize I didn’t feel it, and then I feel the guilt – the guilt that life is still moving forward even though this child I hoped for, wanted, expected will never experience any of it.

Since the loss, I have found that I benchmark everything to this pregnancy. I am constantly measuring time against it. When I hear someone else is expecting, my first reaction is excitement for them, but then I immediately find I am calculating what would have been the age gap between our children – wondering if I will imagine my unborn baby every time I see theirs. This pregnancy is my new frame of reference. It is no longer, before I had kids, or when I had two, or when I had three; from here on out I imagine it will be before I understood this loss and after. While I know as time goes on, my thoughts will bring me here less and less, I know there will always be moments that bring me back to this pregnancy and what should have been.

When I sit with “what should have been” the feelings are overwhelming. The disappointment, sadness, anger, grief …

Grief – the fucking grief – it just creeps in, and if you don’t address it, I have found it has the power to strip life of the good moments all together. I have always been able to dismiss my emotions because I know that whatever I am feeling there are others who are feeling it more intensely. Through this experience, I have come to know this is not how to approach grief; this is not how you heal. My loss doesn’t take away from someone else’s, nor theirs from mine. Loss is loss; grief is grief. We should all be given the grace to deal with our emotions in a way that works for us.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t come with a weight – processing our emotions. It feels selfish to admit that I am angry about this loss, but I am so angry. I am angry because I was sick, so sick this pregnancy, and I missed out on so much. Shawn had to carry our family for months because I was vomiting around the clock. I could barely muster up energy to spend time with my brother when I hadn’t seen him in years. I sacrificed time with my kids to lay in bed – and I knew all of this in the moments I was missing, but I told myself it was worth the tradeoff, I was growing a human; we were completing our family. Only now there is no baby. I missed out on time – on moments – and for nothing.

Admitting that feels too honest, but here’s the thing, feelings can coexist. My anger hasn’t translated to me being an angry person. It has not come at the expense of my happiness over other things just as my sadness over my own loss has not impacted my ability to be happy for friends who are expecting.

All my realizations of suppressing my emotions illuminated the stigma of miscarriage for me. You know what makes losing a baby even more difficult? Pretending you didn’t. Actively avoiding talking about such a loss is fucking exhausting. We are conditioned to believe that it is our fault when this happens or that we shouldn’t talk about it out of fear we will scare others, make them uncomfortable, make them sad. But what we’re doing when we don’t talk about it is isolating women when they’re their most vulnerable.

I have lived my life in fear of pregnancy – and I imagine this is true for many women. When you start having sex, you’re terrified to get pregnant; when you start trying, you’r terrified it will never happen; and when it does happen, you’re terrified something will go wrong. But then it didn’t. I never faced an unplanned pregnancy, and babies one, two, and three all arrived healthy. By pregnancy four, I didn’t worry – I even declined the genetic testing for the first time – and this haunts me; all of the unknowns haunt me.

But even knowing why wouldn’t change one thing: I will never meet my baby. It is a hard reality that I must face, and I must face it now. I don’t have the luxury of time to process all of these emotions. I am staring down 35. We will quickly need to decide if we want to try again. If we’re ready to face the heartbreak should it happen again. Which makes me ask myself: How can I plan to have another baby, or even admit that I want one, without it seeming like I am just replacing the life of a baby I still feel like I am waiting to meet?

The truth is, I don’t know. But in the meantime, I will keep writing and keep reading the stories of others, because what I do know, is at a time when I didn’t have the strength to share this, I found validation in my feelings through reading the words of strangers. It was through their strength I realized I was not alone. And in an attempt to bring this mess of thoughts full circle, I will end with this, I wrote for this for me, for my baby I will never see grow, but also in hopes some of these words will find their way to those who are in the throws of these emotions and that they help them feel less alone.