Losing a baby is so much more than the actual loss of the baby.
You lose your naivete. You can never again enter into pregnancy with that ignorant bliss that everything is going to be "perfect". You know. You know that every single day counts. You know that nothing is guaranteed. Even a heartbeat... even milestones like "2nd trimester" and "viability" don't mean much. This world is full of life and it is full of death. Even in the womb.
You lose your faith. Hopefully not your faith in its entirety but you certainly lose faith in your body. And you tend to question God. I remember feeling so torn because I wanted to act like a strong Christian and believe this was God's plan for me.... but how could this be a plan? How could God will this to happen to me? What was the point?!!!
Even more than my bruised faith in God was my absolute distrust and hatred for my body. I absolutely hated my body! I was so angry that I'd been given a diagnosis of uterine birth defect. WHY did my uterus, my womb, my life sustaining and baby makin' organ have to be defective? WHY?!
When people told me I was "lucky" I had a "natural miscarriage" I wanted to hit them with a 2x4. Who is lucky to have their body "recognize the baby wouldn't make it and naturally expel it"? I didn't give my body permission to expel my baby!!!!! I did not ok this!!!! Yes, I am grateful I did not require medical intervention and I did not suffer a "missed miscarriage" but I certainly do not feel proud that I had a natural miscarriage.
You lose hope. I have a 1-1 record. One healthy, living baby. One dead baby. My doctor seems to think my record is good. She easily overlooks the dead baby but for me, that's almost all I can focus on. My living baby was longer ago... maybe something happened between him and now and maybe every pregnancy will end the way the last one did. It is hard to find hope after a loss. You can lose hope that you'll ever get pregnant again much less carry one to term. I have definitely been devastated watching friends spend months trying after a loss. It seems even crueler than the loss. They're trying to pick up the pieces and try again... they at least deserve that!!!!!!!
You lose friends.
This one, for me, was the biggest shocker. Of course if someone bails on you during your difficult time then they were never a "real friend" but it still just rocks you when someone abandons you while you're in so much pain. In my situation, we hung out mostly with one couple. We spent every weekend together and us wives hung out during the week. They were pregnant with their first and enjoyed hanging around our little one for "practice". When I started bleeding and required a trip to the ER we asked them to watch our son so he would not have to spend all that time in a boring office. They happily? agreed. Everything seemed fine. I had some ups and downs over the next week.... basically, I was in limbo. I thought I had miscarried, was told no I hadn't and to keep the hope, and then by the end of that week, I had officially miscarried. And lost our friends. They just disappeared!
We literally never heard from them again (despite my many attempts to get together, email, call) except once on the phone when she offered the "condolence" of:
Her- "More than likely it wasn't a baby, just a mutated ball of cells that kept mutating. Nature knew it wouldn't survive and passed. I think I miscarried once."
Me- "what do you mean?"
Her- "Well, once my period was really heavy and a few weeks later I was thinking about it and I think I had probably been pregnant and miscarried. I will never know but I am pretty sure I did."
REALLY? This is your idea of a condolence? Totally dehumanizing my loss and then turning it around on yourself?!!
I guess I am better off without them anyway but it still hurts that we shared our most painful day with them and now they're nowhere to be found. Thankfully I have really awesome friends that have stuck with me through thick and thin. If you are reading this, from the bottom of my heart, thank you! I wish we lived in the same place...
You definitely lose a lot when you lose a baby but the good news is you can get some of it back. With time I have gained back hope and faith. I will never get that baby back... I will never get my naivete back... but the most important ingredients for moving on, hope and faith, I got those back! It is important to remember that losing a baby- or just spending a long time trying to get pregnant- is a process, a journey, with ups and downs, ebbs and flows and there will be really difficult times and then things will get easier. It takes time though. This I have learned. Five months ago I never would have thought my mind and heart would feel healthy again... but they do.
