It was all a dream...

A direct quote from my journal: “It’s starting to feel like it never even happened. Like the whole thing was some weird four-and-a-half month long fever dream and I’m just waking up.”

I hadn’t even given myself the time and space yet to write about my pregnancy here on Substack, nor in my own personal journal. After months of privately journaling about my trials and tribulations to get pregnant, I suddenly stopped once I learned I was. The thing I had been wanting for so long had finally come to fruition, after polyps and surgeries and months of heartbreak and frustration. I stopped writing because it felt like I had crossed the finish line, even though I was keenly aware the race to having a baby was just beginning. Maybe subconsciously I didn’t want to jinx the pregnancy.

With both my first and second pregnancy, the mantra has been the same. “Just let me get through the first trimester.” Always anxious to ensure the baby is okay and we are going to make it together. So, for three months I held my breath, checking for blood every time I peed, feeling my heart race at each OBGYN appointment. At eight weeks, the doctor confirmed I was pregnant. At nine weeks, we had our first ultrasound and saw the heartbeat. Later that week, I got bloodwork results and learned everything was normal so far and we were having a boy. At just about 13 weeks, we heard the heartbeat.

Thank GOD. CLEARANCE. We could finally tell our family and friends I was pregnant. We had kept it a secret longer this time. I’d heard too many horror stories and wanted to be sure we were “in the clear” before we shared our news. I shared it publicly as well and on the air with my viewers, as I am a local news anchor after all. I received so many messages, including from viewers who said things like “we had a feeling.” It was hard for me to hide it. I did the best I could, but my belly popped at eight weeks, and it was the most obvious secret from that point forward.

Past the 13 weeks point, the nausea continued for a bit, as it did when I was pregnant with Brooke. At one point, my belly appeared smaller, but I remembered that happening with Brooke too. After all, the nausea was less frequent, so I was eating less (I typically gain a lot of weight in that first trimester as I eat to fight nausea) and lost some of the bloating. I felt the baby kick for the first time! But then I stopped feeling him for a few days and started to panic. I started Googling “16 week silent miscarriage,” but everything I read cited a 1% chance of that happening. So I told myself I was being crazy. Just getting ahead of myself.

But at my next appointment, when the doctor couldn’t find the heartbeat, my world changed. I was the 1%. I was the 1 in 100 moms whose baby didn’t make it in the second trimester. I don’t want to go into details, but suffice to say the moment I saw my doctor’s expression change as she looked at the ultrasound, her shaking her head and repeatedly telling me “You did nothing wrong” are forever seared into my brain. It plays on repeat in my head at least five times a day. It’s similar to the image I have of my dad in his coffin seven years ago, lying there, his face looking contorted because his skin was slack, pale and sagging off his cheekbones and he no longer really looked like my dad. Certain moments in life are mental pictures you never forget.

So what now? I had surgery to remove the baby. It was scary, but everything proceeded as normal. I woke up, saw my husband and cooed “I’m alive!” I was so deathly afraid of bleeding out and dying. After all, I was the 1% once. What reason did I have to believe I wouldn’t be the 1% twice?

Fortunately, I wasn’t so lucky. I’m taking a leave from work to heal both mentally and physically. Physically, I am okay. Mentally and emotionally, I am not. Smiles are few and far between. After about a day, I had to stop taking calls from people because it was too hard. I had a few shouting rampages in my house, slamming my hands on my bed, throwing things across the room, screaming “EVERYTHING IS WORTHLESS.” I lost a bracelet and shouted “Of course, I lost a bracelet. I can’t even keep a baby.” A coworker brought over food for my family and myself, and after she left, I promptly went up to my bedroom and had a panic attack. Hormones aren’t helping. It also didn’t help that my birthday was two days after the surgery, so there was an additional wave of outreach from others, for which I felt completely unworthy and undeserving.

I’ve debated back and forth between sharing all this because part of me feels like this is private and after sharing my pregnancy in the first place and then having to share that we lost the baby, I thought…well I’m never sharing anything again. But as the days go by, and I’m processing more and more, I’m throwing myself back into daily meditation, journaling, reading, etc. And writing is part of my healing process. So here we are.

My belly is gone now, four days after surgery. Nearly 18 weeks of carrying that boy. And poof! Gone. Just like that. Like magic. Like waking up from a dream.