In my previous blog, I discussed going through the dilation and curettage (D&C) process and, subsequently, getting my life back on track. Month after month, I was hoping to get pregnant again, and I was disappointed each time. I couldn’t believe how easy it was for us to get pregnant the first time, and how I had taken it completely for granted. It constantly felt like I didn’t appreciate the incredible gift I had been given until it was taken away.
None of my friends were aware that I had been pregnant so, when I experienced the miscarriage, I had to suffer in silence. It was a strange feeling that the sun was still rising and setting each day and everyone else’s lives were running completely normally, while my world felt like it had come crashing down in a fiery ball of sadness. I returned to my normal routine of work and college, yet I constantly felt the pain of the miscarriage weighing down on me. I really just want you all to know, all of you who have experienced a similar situation, know that you are not alone. I know that you will try to continue with life as if it is normal, but deep down you feel like you’ll never be fully happy again. But, also know that it is not like this forever. I went through this stage for five long months. Every time the month was coming to an end, I would get the twinge of dread and a pit in my stomach as I knew the moment of truth would appear on that pregnancy stick.
Then, it happened. One morning in December, I was expecting my period in about four days. I was just lying in bed at six in the morning, so distracted with the idea that maybe this would be the month, that I just decided to go ahead and take the test even though it was way too early. The instructions of the pregnancy test I took claimed that you could actually take the test 5 days before your expected period. I knew there was a pretty big chance that the test would not be positive even if I was pregnant since the human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) concentration is still very low that early on. I was becoming an expert at taking these tests yet, each time, my hands would shake and my heart would beat so loudly I was worried I would wake up my husband!
Each second felt like eternity as I watched the first line make an appearance on the stick. Then, my heart stopped beating. I heard the quiet around me and felt my head lighten. I slowly saw a faint line getting darker and darker, making the second line a light shade of blue! I couldn’t believe it, I was pregnant!
The faint line slowly appeared!
I will never forget how ecstatic I was at that moment. I couldn’t imagine ever being sad again, I couldn’t imagine anything in the world being wrong. I was going to have a baby! I couldn’t stop crying from happiness.
I ran over to my sleepy husband Jeff and kept saying over and over again “we did it, we did it! We made a baby!” Jeff lit up when I showed him the test. I am not sure if it was out of excitement of the prospect of having a baby, or whether it was out of happiness that I was beaming and acting like myself again. I felt the old sad, dark shell of me, dissipate into the air. There was such a stark difference between the confusion of finding out we were pregnant the first time and the elation of finding out the second time.
We found out about this pregnancy extremely early on; we were not even four weeks yet! Quickly, after the initial excitement of finding out we were pregnant, was the dread of worrying that this one might end in another miscarriage. I would like to say that, after a couple weeks, the thoughts of the miscarriage became a distant nightmare. Yet, I was filled with paranoia. It felt too good to be true and I was sure something would go wrong. Still, I tried to focus instead on the sure fact that I was, undoubtedly, the happiest person in the world.
