Pregnant. Miscarrying. Mothering. Living.
You took a pregnancy test - it’s positive.
You feel giddy, excited, and slightly nauseas. You mentally calculate your due date and call your midwife, knowing that those weeks before an ultrasound are going to feel like forever. You share with your partner and you dream together. You workshop names, determine when you’ll tell others, and fantasize about how they will fit into your family. You go on with living your life.
Two weeks later (or 4, or 6, or 12), you go to the bathroom and notice some spotting. Okay, you think, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything. You Google and Reddit and WebMD. You feel nervous, cautious, but not yet worried. You go to the bathroom again. This time there’s more blood. You notice some cramping. It’s Saturday and your oldest child needs to get to a soccer game. You go on with living your life.
It’s one day later (or 2, or 4, or 6) and it’s become a ritual to put on a pad when you’re going to the bathroom. You feel sad, empty, and the push to move on. It was early, you think, I shouldn’t be upset. But you are. You go to the doctor and they check your blood levels. Not quite yet, they say. We will see you next week. You go on living your life.
It’s a month later (or 2, or 3) and you’ve gotten your period back. You’re all set to start trying again, says the nurse. You feel excited, nervous, and a pulling feeling of sadness. You go on with living your life.
Today, on October 15th, we grieve together for Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. This day aims to bring awareness to lives lost, whether during 6 week of gestation or 6 month. Societal expectation pushes to move on, buck up, try again. The natural process of miscarriage at home can take up to two weeks for tissue to pass. Two weeks where women experience loss, grief, shame. Where we attend soccer practice, work, birthday parties, graduations. Where we take headshots and go to the dentist. Where we smile through discomfort, pain, and the burdened secret that you keep since it was too early to tell anyone or you were too far along when you lost the baby that nobody knows how to address you. All of those experiences and feelings, but we are supposed to move on. We live in this day to make sure that we do, indeed, go on living our life, but we do so with community, remembrance, and support of one another. You are not alone.
