One Year After Miscarriage, And It Still Hurts

A year ago, I miscarried my second pregnancy in eight months. We’d decided to expand our family the summer before last, and the first miscarriage happened so quickly and unexpectedly that I didn’t really let it register in my brain as a loss. But it was. I also assumed that because I’d become pregnant so quickly (even though I lost it) that getting pregnant again would be no problem.

I was wrong.

A few days before Memorial Day weekend last year, I finally saw that pink plus sign appear. By the 1st of June, though, things were taking a turn for the worse, and no matter how hard I clung to the hope that somehow, some way this pregnancy wasn’t doomed, it was.

Three days later, my doctor confirmed that I had miscarried — again.

Today, I am holding my 2-month-old daughter in my arms, but the memory of last year still hurts.

It still hurts to know that my body got pregnant twice, but couldn’t protect those little lives just starting to grow.

It still hurts to think that instead of a 2-month-old, I could be holding a 5-month-old. Or a 1-year-old.

It still hurts that on the due date of my first miscarried pregnancy, I was in a cemetery, desperately trying to make sense of how I could have lost two pregnancies in less than a year.

It still hurts to know that with my daughter’s pregnancy, I could barely talk about it for the first 11 weeks because I was terrified I would lose her too.

It still hurts when I have to fill out medical paperwork that asks how many pregnancies I have had, and I have to list four. But I only have two living children.

It still hurts when I see someone’s Facebook announcement about a new baby on the way, and the sibling is only a year old. At this time last year, I didn’t think my son (who was nearly 3 then) would ever have a sibling.

It still hurts when someone remarks that the age gap between my children — nearly four years — is such a great spacing, as though we planned to have them so far apart. I don’t have the heart to tell that person that I lost two pregnancies in the journey leading to a sibling for my son because I don’t want to make the conversation awkward.

It still hurts to know that days after my second miscarriage, I sat at a friend’s wedding with tears filling my eyes to the brim. No one else could possibly know why, except my husband, who clung to my hand in that pew as the tears spilled down my cheeks.

It still hurts that five days before my daughter’s birth, I was told she was breech and I would need to have a C-section. In my irrational and still paranoid mind, my body had failed another baby by not doing what it needed to in order to bring her naturally into this world.

A lot has changed in the year since losing that second pregnancy. I’m grateful every day for the healthy daughter I have been blessed with, but that gratitude rests alongside the grief I still carry from that sad time last year.

It still hurts to have lost two pregnancies between my children. And it always will.