We jam packed our weekend to make sure it was special for Cole – to keep him smiling, and try to keep us smiling. 

On Wednesday of last week, we lost our baby. Like physically lost our baby. This is the part nobody talks about. The doctors and nurses don’t prepare you for what’s about to come. They offer you two choices, you can either have a D&C or you can let the baby pass naturally. 

I’ve done both of these options, 2 D&C procedures and now 3 let the baby pass naturally. Neither way is easy. Both ways you will bleed, are in pain both physically and emotionally, and it’s just not an easy process. When they tell you about the D&C it’s a procedure to remove the baby – you have to go under for this, it’s intense, and when you wake up, you are without a baby and have to pay a huge hospital bill. It’s great…not. The only benefits from it are that you can do testing on the baby to try and figure out what’s going wrong and you don’t have to physically birth your child and go through that physical and emotional pain.

I had to do two D&C procedures, not by choice, but because of negligence on the hospital’s end. In August 2018, we went in for the first D&C. Through the procedure we were going to find out if there was anything wrong with the baby, and the gender of the baby. Peace of mind, and one step closer to figuring out why we were having these miscarriages, since this was our third loss. Instead, the tech ended up putting the baby in formalin, which killed any chances of us finding out any information. We were left with no baby, no answers, and a huge hospital bill. This is where I fell off the deep end. I was in a very dark place, had to seek help, went to marriage counseling and forced myself to join a MOPs group.

Shortly after we found out we were expecting again. If you are ever trying to find “words of encouragement” for someone who is experiencing miscarriages, please do not say “at least you can get pregnant”. Yes, I’m aware I can get pregnant. I get pregnant very easily. And when I had a successful pregnancy, it was wonderful, but being pregnant and losing 5 babies in a year and a half, that sucks. Don’t get me wrong being able to get pregnant is amazing, but the shit we’ve gone through, truly sucks, and it doesn’t make it easier when someone says “at least you can get pregnant”. 

Everything with the pregnancy was going great, until it wasn’t. We lost another baby, our little girl. This is when we decided to do another D&C because we wanted answers, we wanted more information because we NEVER wanted to go through this again. We never wanted to lose another baby again. 

Well, fast forward to this past Wednesday. I had been experiencing more cramping and pain. Each miscarriage has been different. Every time, we’ve seen a heartbeat though, sometimes multiple appointments, and then either the bleeding starts and you call the doctor panicked, or you are sitting at your appointment and the doctor keeps fishing around to desperately find a heartbeat while you are laying there crying again. 

This time we had no idea our baby’s heartbeat had stopped. I was still feeling nauseous, I was bloated – definitely had the pregnant tummy going on, there was no bleeding or cramping. Baby’s heartbeat had stopped right around 8 weeks. 

Now here is what the doctors don’t tell you about having a miscarriage at home. They offer you some medication that is supposed to help with the pain. The first miscarriage i went through, I laughed and said “no thanks, the pain I’m experiencing from mentally losing the baby is way worse than any physical pain”. Wrong! Well not completely wrong, but they don’t prepare you for how bad the pain really is. They don’t let you know that you could be cramping and bleeding for weeks before you actually pass the baby. They don’t prepare you for the fact that you will actually be laboring and pushing your baby out on the toilet. Or that the pain will bring you to your knees, even several days after you’ve birthed your baby. And no one can prepare you for the emotional toll it takes on a person. 

Jay and Cole were at shop night, I was trying my best to relax through the cramps, knowing at some point in the near future I would be passing the baby. I didn’t even have time to make it to the toilet, the baby in the sac, landed in my pad. I was holding my baby in my hands, alone and in tears. The morbid part about having your baby at home is you usually end up flushing your baby because of everything just coming out – it’s not a pretty birthing sight. I was lucky enough to have my baby in my hands, a little bit of closure, more time to spend with that little one. We now have to bury our baby. This is the part I was excited about at first, we would always have her with us, but now I’m dreading the process. Having to bury a baby, a child – no parent should have to go through it.