Miscarriage Story

It’s like when you first turn out the light for bed. You can’t see what’s in front of you. All you can do is stumble your way under the covers. And it can be unsettling, uncomfortable, or even a bit scary having your sense of sight gone just like that. This is where most people go to sleep. They close their eyes and drift away into the sand. Now imagine that grief is insomnia. It keeps you from drifting away. You stay, very awake, in the dark. Firmly tethered to reality. Some even go mad. They drive themselves crazy, or even turn the light back on, refusing to acknowledge the dark. But if you sit in the dark long enough you’re eyes adjust. There’s a faint blue hue that slips over your eyes and softens the atmosphere around you.

There’s a comfort in that darkness.

They say there are five stages of grief: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But I think there’s a type of grief that will always stay with a person. I think part of the healing process is understanding that the grief will always be there. That it permeates flesh and muscle and settles deep within our bones. And once you accept that, you start to sit with the grief and stop trying to rush it out the door.

It’s coming up on the would-be first birthday of the baby we lost. It’s been a roller coaster both physically and emotionally. Obviously some days are better than others, and the grief isn’t directly in my face, but other days it’s all I think about.

There are some things that will set off my grief and send me spiraling. If I see a pregnant woman, a young baby, or small children. But the thing that upsets me the most is actually what people say. Often time people don’t know what to say, so they just try to say something. They feel awkward and uncomfortable and try to fill the empty space with words of encouragement or to try and make me feel better. Which just…ends ups aggravating me. I’ve been told that “at least” I know I can get pregnant, “at least” I was only eight weeks along, “at least” the baby is in a better place now, and my all time favorite, “Everything happens for a reason”. I hate that statement. There is no good reason for me to have lost my baby. Absolutely none. If the situation was different and I had lost a toddler, or even another member of my family, no one would tell me that “Everything happens for a reason”. And if they did, I would kick them.

I think the hardest thing, however, is not what I see and hear in real life. It's what I don't see. I don't get to see our baby experience his or her firsts. I don't get to watch our baby discover new things and grow up. It wasn't just a pregnancy we lost. We lost out on a whole life that we had started to plan for. And we will never get that back.

I do not think that I have successfully navigated through the five stages of grief just yet. And even once I do make it through all five stages, I do not think that will be the end of it. Like I said in the beginning, I think this is something that will always be with me.

I heard an analogy somewhere that I feel sums up living with grief pretty well. It said grief is like a hole in the room that is our life. At first the grief takes up the whole room, and there is very little we can do to avoid falling in the hole. And as time goes on, the hole doesn’t get smaller, but the room gets bigger. So there becomes more room for us to live our lives normally with less risk of falling in the hole. It’s always there, but we learn to cope instead of throwing a rug over it and pretending it’s not there.