Twelve Weeks

The time in a pregnancy you normally feel safe to start telling your friends and family that your family will be expanding. That was when we told with our first pregnancy. We didn’t think otherwise. We were excited. With our second we had a scare and were dealing with some tests so we didn’t share with everyone. We didn’t tell most until we really had no choice because it was quite obvious I was pregnant. I was over four months (16 weeks) by that point. It should have been a safe time to tell. Two and a half weeks later my water broke.

There really is no safe time. So when I got pregnant for the third time I had it in my mind that I would tell people as I saw fit. I didn’t go yelling be it from the roof top or tell everyone I knew that’s just not how I am, but I had told a few people. We were excited and scared.

Actually scared is an understatement. I was TERRIFIED. What if what happened with Hunter happened again?! I don’t think I could survive that type of loss again. Losing one child was hard enough on us, I couldn’t imagine losing a second.

At first everything seemed to be going fine. Blood work as good, I was feeling good, though a little tired and my cultures came back normal. But until I saw it on the ultrasound I knew I wouldn’t calm down.

Due to my now high risk I was required to have bloodwork, cultures and an ultrasound every four weeks. Four weeks ago today I went for my first ultrasound. I was just over eight weeks. There wasn’t much to see but the technician confirmed looks like only one baby and everything looks great. I saw and heard baby’s heartbeat. I started to relax a little. It finally sunk in. I’m pregnant again. Our rainbow baby. Xander will get to be a big brother again. I even let myself get a little excited.

And just like that everything changed. Just over twenty-four hours after my ultrasound I started to feel awful. I just knew something wasn’t right. I was keeled over in pain and then the bleeding started. It was the beginning of the end or our rainbow.

It was just Xander and I home. My poor Xander. It’s no wonder he seems older than his age. He has been through and seen so much. I tried to hide him from my pain but he knew something wasn’t right. I decided in that moment that I would break the stigma about not talking about miscarriage. I explained it to him the best I could. He was so amazing. Asking how he could help. Getting himself ready for bed and looking after the dogs. All five of them. He wouldn’t leave my side until Ian got home.

One in four pregnancies end in miscarriage that is unexplainable or just happens for some reason unknown to those involved. It is something that doctors are trained to say to you. “We don’t know why, but it happens often. It’s normal.” The way they say it just makes you feel like you should just accept it and move on. It happens to lots of people, you can try again. Well when you have been working on having a family for seven years and it’s still not completed the way your heart anticipated, hearing those words is like a slap in the face.

It hurts. Having experienced the loss of an infant and miscarriage I can testify that both are painful and emotionally challenging. Was loosing Hunter harder. Most definitely. Maybe if my miscarriage had been before my loss of Hunter it wouldn’t have felt as hard or hurt so much. That I can’t say for sure. What I can say is that it does hurt. This baby was hopes and dreams, and represented a light at the end of the tunnel. It put a little happiness back into our lives. A hope that is now gone.

It was here one day and gone the next.