I can’t believe I’m sharing this.

Originally posted November 20, 2022

TW: Miscarriage

I don’t have the words and I’ll never have the words. But all I can use are words. We’re beyond devastated. We didn’t walk into our 9 week appointment yesterday expecting any bad news. Especially when it was scheduled right before Braden’s opening night. We were so excited to see how much the baby had grown. When the ultrasound started, the only growth I saw was my womb, with nothing inside it. So much more empty space than the last time. Last time, I was measuring around 6 weeks and there it was with a strong, visible heartbeat. This time, I laid there looking at my vast womb with nothing inside just waiting for the doctor to find it. I was waiting to see something – but the more he moved – the more emptiness I saw. “I’m so sorry” the doctor said, “this doesn’t look good.” It didn’t feel real. I was seeing it with my own eyes and I couldn’t believe it. We were gonna see the baby today. Why can’t I see it? There was a white cast around my womb on the screen – the pieces that had been attached and beating strong just a few weeks prior, weren’t. The only thing I could think is, “I can’t believe I’m still here right now. How can life go on after this?” The cold rain felt like a sad metaphor. I just keep seeing the big, black emptiness on the screen. And being so naive, waiting for the doctor to find it. I just hear his “I’m so sorry” echoing in my head and reverberating through my body. It’s not okay. I’m not okay. What am I supposed to say? Me too? I’m also sorry. I’m SO sorry. I’m sorry that I scheduled this appointment hours before Braden has to open a fun, Holiday musical and now he has to go on with this news. And not just the news that I lost the baby, but the news that I’m going to miscarry soon and feel it all again physically and emotionally. I’m so angry that I didn’t catch on. I knew at my first ultrasound I had to be about 8 weeks pregnant. But I was charting at about 6 weeks growth and the heart was beating so strong! How could I think about anything else? It had to all be okay. I was thankful my nausea, queasiness and breast tenderness had kind of subsided and been traded in for back and hip pain. Why didn’t I question that more? I’m so angry that I felt like I was going to have to explain myself to people that think I shouldn’t have a baby so young when my husband and I are performers. I want to be a mom more than anything else. I always have. Why would I wait on such an unpredictable career to be happy when I knew what I wanted more than anything was a family of my own. Now it doesn’t matter why or what or how long I was going to wait to tell people or what my bump was going to look like on Christmas or when I’ll be able to audition for my next show or where I’m going to deliver – none of it matters now. And it’s all I’ve been thinking about for the past 4 months. And I’m still the graveyard to all those hopes and dreams. It keeps on raining and it’s too cold for Texas and that feels like my fault too, somehow. And waiting is unbearable. And being silent is too painful. I know so many people tell no one when they’re going through this but I don’t know how. I can’t live in this suffocating darkness alone. I know that no one knows what to say and neither do I. I don’t have the right words. I’m so sad and angry and there’s still so much left on this journey. I know I’m going to be okay because life has kept moving on. The world didn’t stop. I’m still here and I have Braden. It’s kind of the only reason I know I’m going to be okay. Because tomorrow keeps on coming. We have cried so many tears together and I know we have so many more. I’m scared it’ll happen again. Really scared. And I’m really scared about the pain that’s to come. But I know we have each other.

UPDATE 12/6/2022: *GRAPHIC WARNING*

Braden and I decided fairly quickly that we wanted to have a medical miscarriage. It’s the holiday season and I wanted to be more in control of the timing. Waiting what could have been weeks for it to start sounded miserable to us. When I called my OB/GYN office to let them know we wanted to take the medicine, my doctor was already away for Thanksgiving, so I spoke to a nurse who said they’d send the prescription over to my pharmacy and the pharmacy tech would give me better instructions of how to take the medicine. When I went to pick up my medication I asked for instructions and the technician said they were written on the bottle. I took my dose of 1000mg of misoprostol, everything in the bottle, 2 days before Thanksgiving and had a ton of cramping and some bleeding that wasn’t much heavier than a period. I know the internet can be a horrible and confusing place, but I’m so thankful for it. It became my only resource to find what other women were experiencing and what to expect. I finally called the doctor’s office a week later to check-in since I still hadn’t passed anything and my doctor wasn’t in that day. I spoke to a nurse who was unsure of what I should do and said she’d call me back the next morning when my doctor was back in. She called me back the next morning and told me to keep getting a refill of the medication every day until I passed the tissue. I get this call Thursday morning (12/1) and immediately go to the doctor to pick up my refill. We had plans to leave town Friday (12/2) at 6am and I wanted to get the ball rolling if my bleeding would pick up so I could decide if I needed more after we returned. I was frustrated because my instructions were so sparse and I didn’t realize I needed to pick up a single dose every day until I passed the tissue since the pharmacy wasn’t allowed to give me more than one dose at a time. I didn’t know what to expect. It had already been 10 days since I’d started this process. My doctor had made it seem like I’d take some pills and just pass a grape-sized tissue. I was tired of the situation being dragged on for so long. I took the second dose of medicine around 11:30 am and had a little more cramping, but my bleeding didn’t really pick up at all. Braden had a show that evening and there was an event going on over the weekend while we were away so I saw the show and stayed to set-up for the event. We even grabbed some food hung out with some friends afterwards. When we finally headed home around 10pm, I didn’t feel much different. No notable bleeding or cramping. We had a lot to do to pack for our trip in a few hours. We had just dropped our dog off with the sitter family and I bought our parking for the airport on the drive home but the second we pulled into our driveway – I felt an insane gush of blood come out of me. I had never felt anything like that before. I immediately knew that was it. I ran inside and just sat on the toilet while I just continued to pour out blood and clotting and tissue. This is another thing that I was thankful for the internet for. Women sharing their graphic images of blood clotting and tissue. I understand that may seem gross if that’s not what you meant to stumble upon during your google search, but I was so relieved to see the clotting I had look like the images I’d seen online. I was like, “Okay! I knew it was supposed to be like this!” It was relieving. I felt so thankful that it was passing before our trip and I could finally move forward. I was in so much pain and discomfort but I felt grateful for it to finally be over soon. I felt guilty for feeling relieved and thankful, because I was also just so, so sad.

It was A LOT of blood. I knew it would be, but it was still way more than I expected. At first I was trying to catch clots and tissue to get a good look at them all to see what they were but they started rushing out of me too fast and I couldn’t keep up. All the doctor told me is that I’d pass some tissue “about the size of a grape”… but I was passing lots of things that were varying in size and shape that felt larger than a grape and it was all happening so fast. I wasn’t drinking enough water and the medicine was causing servere cramping that gave me diarrhea, so I was dehydrated and not thinking about it. At one point I got in the shower hoping to wash myself off and get a little relief by changing positions, but that was a little more traumatic than just being on the toilet. Blood mixed with water seems to multiply. I stayed in the bathroom from 10:30pm-12:30am before I was too exhausted and just wanted to lay down. I put on an overnight pad and laid down and set a timer for 30 minutes to check my bleeding. I checked my pad and I had almost saturated through it, but not completely. So I decided to put on a pair of the period underwear, use an overnight pad and lay down a towel to see if I could get some rest. About 10 minutes later I still felt that constant gushing and I reached towards underwear to check and felt wetness on my stomach. I brought my hand towards my face in the dark and it smelled like blood so I quickly turned my bedside lamp on and saw that I’d already bled down my legs, and up the front and back of my underwear. I jolted out of bed, yelled for Braden to wake up and rushed to the bathroom. The moment I pulled down my underwear to check the damage, a huge clot that could fit in both of my hands fell out onto the bathroom rug and I had fully saturated the pad and through the underwear a bit. I sat back on the toilet and Braden and I started talking about what to do. We had to leave around 3am for our trip. It was 1am and I had Braden pack my whole bag for me. I felt like we could make it the trip happen. I wanted to make it happen. But my brain was feeling weird. I had this sudden feeling that if we needed to move our flights, I mentally wouldn’t be able to do it. I started to feel really weak and see glowing lines. I just kept telling Braden I was feeling weird. My ears started to close up. I slowly couldn’t hear. I didn’t know how I was going to get packed. I was so thankful that my cramping had stopped. Just bleeding. I woke up face down in the tile, whimpering because my tongue hurt. Braden was on the phone with 911 telling the operator I had passed out and I was having a miscarriage. I asked Braden what was going on and he told me that I started to get large pupils and he was screaming my name but I kept saying, “Huh? What?” when my arms started tensing up into my chest and I fell into him. He propped me back up on the toilet to grab his phone to call 911 when I fell off the toilet and hit my head on the tile and bit my tongue, I guess. I could feel a big knot forming on my tongue. The 911 operator had Braden flip me onto my back and begin massaging below my belly button firmly. Not much else was coming out. I hoped the worst was over. I asked Braden what was happening and he let me know paramedics were coming. I felt so bad that I’d took the medicine and messed up our trip. I just kept apologizing. Then I insisted that I had to put on a bra for the paramedics to see me since I was only wearing a t-shirt… I mean, I had on nothing on the bottom but I couldn’t be vulnerable like that AND have my boobs swinging free. I know the logic isn’t there, but that’s what happened. We had recently moved from our apartment in the city to our house in the country and had been having issues with none of our mail delivering, so we were worried that paramedics would have a hard time finding us. They made it to us in 20 minutes. The 2 men that helped me were so sweet and gentle with me. It was so sad to explain what was going on. But they were so reassuring and sweet. The paramedics kept telling us how common this was and just kept checking my blood pressure to be sure it was going up and told Braden to keep monitoring me unless I wanted to go to the hospital and be monitored there. But there was nothing that anyone could really do. This is just how it is. The only thing that was out of the ordinary was for me to pass out like that. But none of it felt right. The bleeding had slowed and Braden monitored me while I finally got some rest. We had to move our flights. I got to rest on Friday. I busted my lip and my tongue was bruised and swollen which made it difficult to eat. The left side of my face was painful to move and my neck, arms and legs were really sore from tensing up in the fall. We didn’t leave until Saturday 12/2 but we’ve enjoyed our time with Braden’s family. It’s been very healing to be with family and not just be alone at home. I have a little bit of a black eye and a headache to remind me about our scary night but I know that’ll go away soon enough. I’m not sure how long I’ll be sad.

I’m sad that this situation has been such a thief of joy. I can’t get the joy of my first pregnancy back. I’ll always have more pregnancies than babies, whatever that number is. I’m terrified to try again. I’m scared to go through this again. I’m heartbroken that so many other people are going through this horrible complex situation in so many different ways. The pain physically, emotionally and mentally is so draining. The holidays makes it feel impossible. The constant display of joy on social media is hard. I want to share happy things. There are happy things. But we are so sad. I wish more people knew how hard this is. I wish people didn’t feel too embarrassed to share, because talking about it has been my only way to cope.

I’m amazed at how far this post has reached and I only hope it has given a single ounce of healing to someone else going through this or that has gone through this before. I know there is hope left. But right now I have to honor my sadness and grieve the loss of this piece of me.