This morning I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and one of my absolute favorite influencers shared a post explaining that her recent absence from social media was due to the fact that she had just suffered a miscarriage. These stories always make me feel sick to my stomach. I can’t imagine losing a child – all of the excitement about bringing another life into this world, all of the planning, all the dreaming…and then they’re just gone. A mother losing a child is by far the worst kind of loss imaginable, the worst kind of pain a human can experience.
I have never experienced a miscarriage, and I pray to God that I never will, but like a lot of women I have experienced a scare. These two experiences can’t be compared, the fear and the pain that you feel from a miscarriage scare is absolutely nowhere near the fear and the pain that you feel when you actually lose a child. That doesn’t invalidate that fear and pain, but it’s important to recognize and understand that they are not the same. That being said, I feel ready to share my experience in the hopes that another mama out there might find comfort in it.
Mother’s Day of last year, I was about five months along with Ethan and everything was starting to fall into place. My morning sickness had finally started to subside and I was getting over the cold-like symptoms that I had been experiencing for the past month or so. I had my replacement hired for my job, we were making progress in the nursery and we were starting to really get excited.
That night we went to bed and ended up waking up in the middle of the night and to be completely blunt, having intercourse. This was something that I had been very nervous to do throughout the pregnancy but everything seemed to be going great and we went for it.
I will never forget the look on my husband’s face when he very calmly said, “Sara – don’t panic” and started heading for the light switch. Now when somebody tells you not to panic, what do you do? You panic, obviously. I hadn’t even realized I was bleeding but when I looked down there was a huge pool of blood on the bed. I immediately started screaming and leapt up as blood rushed down my legs.
I know what you’re thinking, it’s completely normal to bleed during intercourse when you’re pregnant. And that’s absolutely true – but this was not spot bleeding by any means. This was a lot of blood. This was blood that left a trail as I ran to the bathroom. Blood that spilled into the toilet when I sat down. Blood that didn’t stop trickling down my legs until we got to the hospital.
I just screamed and sobbed. I honestly don’t remember anything I said, anything my husband said or how much time passed between when we noticed the blood and when we got to the hospital. All I remember is screaming that I needed to call my mom. Thankfully, my husband is an absolute angel. He was so unbelievably calm the entire time and managed to get me dressed and to the hospital, while simultaneously giving my parents the information they needed so they could meet us there.
What I do remember is praying. I’ve never been one to pray on a regular basis, and to be perfectly honest I’m not even sure how I feel about it. Religion is something that I have struggled with my entire life, trying to figure out what I believe and where I belong, but that night I prayed and I bargained. The entire time we were driving to the hospital, which is probably only a 10 minute drive, I was just silently repeating over and over again that I would do whatever it took to make sure that baby was safe. He could take my life if He wanted to, I just needed that baby to make it.
We got to the hospital and were placed into a room immediately and I cannot say enough good things about the staff that night. From the woman at the front desk of the emergency room, to the nurses, to the ultrasound tech – everyone was so unbelievably calm and comforting.The nurses assured me that everything was probably fine, but they were going to hook me up to a fetal monitor and try to locate the heartbeat. While they were doing that another nurse was checking my bleeding and yet another nurse was in the bathroom cleaning up the mess that I had made while I was changing into a gown.
Everything turned out to be perfectly fine. The heartbeat was found immediately, the ultrasound looked perfectly fine and my bleeding had stopped completely. I was monitored for several hours to be safe, and then I was discharged and told to take it easy for the next 24 hours.
After the experience was over, and I had time to calm down and process what had just happened I started to feel like an idiot. I was so upset with myself. I had overreacted, I had caused my husband to panic and had woken up my parents and made them drive an hour away for nothing. I had wasted the hospital resources. The nurses thought that I was a drama queen. I had already contacted my work and told them I wasn’t going to come in the next day and now everything was perfectly fine. They were going to think that I was exaggerating and just trying to get out of coming in. Of course I had bled, that was perfectly normal, why had I reacted that way? How stupid could I have been to think that I was having a miscarriage?
Of course now looking back, I know that those thoughts were absolutely ridiculous. I had every right to panic, it was my first child and I had no idea what to expect. Even if this had been my fifth child, that amount of blood would’ve been alarming to anyone. And when it comes to your child, you should never second guess your gut. But at the time I was an emotional wreck and couldn’t see clearly.
I went into work the next day and when I walked in it was immediately clear that word had spread. Several people told me that I should go home, that I should never have come in, that I needed to take the day to relax. I understand now that all of these things were said out of love, but at the time it felt absolutely mortifying. I kept thinking that I needed to make it clear to everybody that it was no big deal what had happened, I had just overreacted but I was over it. I didn’t want sympathy for something that I didn’t feel I deserved sympathy for.
The reality is, miscarriage scares are a big deal. They are absolutely terrifying. They give you the teeniest tiniest taste of what it would be like to lose a child and it’s a feeling that you will never forget. It’s a feeling that you would never wish on your worst enemy. It makes you so much more immensely grateful for that little life that is snuggled safe and sound in your belly.
I will never say that I understand what a woman is going through or that I can imagine her pain when she experiences a miscarriage, because I can’t understand what she’s going through and I can’t imagine her pain. All I can say is that it’s ok to feel scared and sad when you have a scare. Your feelings are not invalidated, just different.
