10 Things I Learned Through Losing a Pregnancy

The first time I found out I was pregnant, the most apparent feeling for me was surprise. I’m not sure why I was so surprised to see a positive result on my at home pregnancy test since my husband and I had been trying, or as I always said “not preventing,” for about a year. Nonetheless, I felt surprised, scared of the inevitable labor and delivery, and also excited about this new phase in my life.

As I discovered several weeks later, I did not need to fear giving birth any time soon as it became clear that the baby I was carrying was not going to make it much further. When I look back on the experience, I am not totally sure why the thought of losing the baby hadn’t really crossed my mind. Maybe it was because I was so concerned about the later stages of pregnancy and the eventual leap into motherhood. Maybe it was because I figured women had babies every day and my experience probably wouldn’t be much different. Whatever it was, finding out that my baby wasn’t going to make it was a shock, but through the loss, I learned a great deal about myself and the whirlwind of emotions that can be experienced through having a miscarriage. These are the ten most impactful and memorable things I learned through losing a pregnancy.

10. Miscarriages are far more common than I ever realized.

Before losing a pregnancy, I really had no clue just how common miscarriages are. According to WebMD and March of Dimes, an estimated 50% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, including pregnancies women were unaware of. 15%–25% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. The statistic approximately of one in four known pregnancies will end in a miscarriage always sticks with me. Although I know I still would have felt pain through losing the baby no matter what, I wish I had known just how common having a miscarriage is. I think I would have felt less alone and less like there must have been something wrong with me.

9. The fact that I wasn’t nauseous or feeling other early pregnancy symptoms could have been a clue that the pregnancy wouldn’t last.

As I began my pregnancy, I would cheerfully say to my husband, “I’m so glad I don’t feel nauseous or having morning sickness!” Although each woman is different and there are no tell-tale signs of miscarriage, it is sometimes true that women who do not experience nausea in the early weeks of pregnancy do end up miscarrying. This is especially true if no nausea is present after eight weeks of pregnancy when nausea most commonly rears its ugly head. This was definitely the case for me. I didn’t go to my first OB appointment until I was ten weeks along, so I figured I was just one of those lucky women who got to have an easy pregnancy. I didn’t feel sick or tired or moody.

In the future, I learned that I was not one of those lucky women because in my subsequent pregnancies I had many first trimester symptoms. I was actually happy when I felt sick or tired because I figured it was a good sign that those pregnancies were healthy, and thankfully, they did turn out to be healthy babies. In some way I wish I had known about the connection between lack of early pregnancy symptoms and miscarriage when I was experiencing it, but in hindsight, I probably would have just been stressed out. Either way, it was definitely new information I had never heard before.

8. The baby can stop developing before any blood or other clues appear to the mother.

Whenever I had heard about miscarriage or seen one depicted on TV or in movies, it seemed to be a pretty typical situation. A woman gets a worried look on her face and holds her stomach. She runs to the restroom and is horrified by what she sees in the toilet after getting up. She is covered in blood and crying. This was not my experience at all. I will get into more detail later on, but as it turned out, my baby had stopped developing weeks before I experienced the actual miscarriage.

7. Being blindsided at my first OB appointment was a very difficult experience.

As I walked into my OB’s office I didn’t think anything was wrong with me because I figured I would have already known if something was wrong. I hadn’t experienced pain or seen blood, so I figured I would just get some information about pregnancy and lots of congratulations from the people working in the office. It was a true slap in the face when my doctor did an ultrasound on a portable ultrasound machine and said he saw the sac but not a developing fetus or heartbeat. I was completely shocked. I had been so excited to finally have my first appointment. The juxtaposition between that feeling of excitement and the feeling of despair I felt during that ultrasound was something I will never forget. I definitely wish I had been more prepared for it.

6. Not knowing what was going on inside my own body was a very strange, scary, and frustrating experience.

After the ultrasound, my doctor said the baby could just be measuring small and he might not have been able to see it on the portable ultrasound machine, so he scheduled me to have a full ultrasound the next week. As you can imagine, I felt heartsick, but also hopeful that maybe the baby really was just measuring small. On the day of my ultrasound appointment I finally started to have a little bit of spotting. I called the doctor’s office and they told me I should go to the emergency room just to make sure the baby is okay. In my head, I was thinking, “I’m pretty sure the baby is not okay,” but I went to the ER.

After spending the entire day at the hospital, my husband and I were left with no more information than we started with. All of my blood work said I was pregnant while the ultrasounds did not show a developed fetus. Pretty much every doctor and nurse said that either I was in the process of miscarrying, the baby was very small, or it was a chemical pregnancy which explained the HCG levels indicating pregnancy. At this point, I was almost 11 weeks and pretty sure I had lost the baby. I felt like the healthcare professionals were all trying to be nice and not tell me the inevitable. I understood that they didn’t want to say I had lost the baby when they weren’t 100% sure I had, but it was still frustrating nonetheless. I made an appointment to see my doctor the following week to hopefully get some answers.

Through losing the baby and becoming pregnant again in the future, I learned that when it comes to reproduction, even doctors are unsure of what is truly going on much of the time. It is never comforting to hear that whatever symptom you are experiencing could be related to a variety of things that are all due to the fact that you are pregnant. The time between finding out the fetus had no heartbeat and the eventual miscarriage took about two weeks, and those two weeks were definitely some of the longest two weeks of my life.

5. Waiting for the baby “to pass” instead of having a D & C turned out to be a good decision in my case, but it also felt very wearisome.

After talking to my doctor, he still could not give a definitive answer of whether or not I had lost the baby. He suggested waiting a week or so to see how I felt before making plans to perform a D & C which would remove the uterine lining and anything else left from the pregnancy if the baby still had no heartbeat. I knew that the procedure could be tough, and I still had the tiniest bit of hope that the baby was still just measuring small, so I agreed to wait it out. A few days later, the baby passed. It was the strangest feeling of sorrow and relief. I was happy the ordeal was finally over and I finally had an answer, even though it wasn’t the one I had been hoping for.

4. The physical pain of losing the baby was intense but didn't last long.

I have never felt I was a person who had a high pain tolerance, although after delivering two babies later in my life I learned that I am actually a pretty tough cookie. However, at the time of my miscarriage I was still under the impression that pain and I were not friends. This being said, I was interestingly not too fearful of eventually passing the baby. I guess I had felt so much anxiety that I knew that the pain would be short lived, but as I said, a relief. Now that I have had two kids, I can confidently say the the pain of having a miscarriage is intense and comparable to labor contractions. I felt light headed and extreme cramping. Luckily, after about an hour of rest, I felt okay physically and actually went out to meet a friend later that day. Of course, all women have different experiences, but I was relieved that not only my questions were answered but that I got through the pain without feeling too badly afterwards.

3. Telling anyone who knew about the pregnancy beforehand that I had lost or was losing the baby was the hardest part of the whole experience.

There is an unwritten rule that women are not supposed to share a pregnancy until 12 weeks in case she loses the baby. After losing a baby, I can understand the rationale behind this rule, but I also think the choice to share your pregnancy is very personal and varies greatly from person to person. In my experience, my husband and I have always been pretty secretive about the beginning stages of pregnancies mostly because it is kind of fun to have something so big happening in our lives that no one knows about yet. Usually we will tell a very small group of family or friends or it will somehow slip out. I guess there is always the partial feeling of not wanting to share in case we lose the baby, but that wasn’t really how I felt with my first pregnancy.

This being said, I was relieved that only a few people knew about the pregnancy before I lost it. Having to call my husband after my first appointment to tell him the bad news was so heartbreaking. I knew he was expecting to hear good news just like I was, so having to tell him otherwise was very difficult. I talked to friends about what had happened, but I liked having the option of telling them about it without having to see the disappointment on their faces or hear pain in their voices. Telling a friend, “I had a miscarriage,” or “I am probably about to lose a baby,” was a lot easier than having to respond to, “How’s the baby?” questions from my well-meaning friends. As I said before, sharing the news about a pregnancy is a very personal choice and I was glad I hadn’t shared it with too many people yet.

2. I couldn’t stop questioning myself about whether or not something was wrong with me.

Although I knew that losing the baby wasn’t my fault, I couldn’t help but think that maybe there was something I did or didn’t do that made the difference. Had I drank too much coffee? Had I had too much alcohol before realizing I was pregnant? Had the cold medicine I was taking before I knew I was pregnant affected the baby? As much as I tried to tell myself that one, it didn’t really matter at this point, and two, it was probably a chromosomal abnormality like my doctor had told me, I couldn’t help but question myself. I would sometimes feel anger or jealousy when I saw women who were pregnant and I would think, “Why did she get to keep her baby?” It was not a side of myself I liked to see, but it was definitely there.

I also felt fearful of the future. This was the first time I had gotten pregnant and I had friends who had gone through multiple miscarriages while trying to figure out a cause. I was scared that I might have to go through that terrible ordeal as well. The fear of the unknown has always been something that bothered greatly and this was no exception.

1. For me, there was light at the end of the tunnel.

Thankfully, for me, my story ended happily as I found out I was pregnant two months after losing the first pregnancy. Obviously, I felt worried, but once I made it to my first appointment and saw the baby’s heartbeat I felt much more at ease. Sadly, many women do not have their minds put at ease so quickly, and I am so grateful that I have been lucky enough to have healthy pregnancies and babies after losing my first one.

In Conclusion…

As I write about this experience, I can’t help but feel three things. One, losing a baby is a truly traumatic experience no matter what the details are. Two, I am so thankful to have only gone through pregnancy loss once especially since there are so many worse experiences women go through when it comes to pregnancy and losing a child. And three, miscarriage needs to be normalized. As stated in the beginning of this article, pregnancy loss is so common. When a person experiences a death in the family or other tragedy, usually people know and give support. If you know anyone dealing with losing a pregnancy, I hope you can be there for that person in the same way. Miscarriage is never a fun topic to discuss, but it is an important one as so many women go through it. I find it interesting that many of the times I have shared that I lost a pregnancy have been met with a reply from a woman in a lowered voice saying she had one too. It is almost as if women are ashamed of the fact that they have lost a baby. October 15th was Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day. I do not seek pity and I think many other women would agree that they do not want to be pitied either. I just hope that more people are aware of how common and difficult losing a pregnancy can be. I also hope that women with the unfortunate fate of pregnancy loss in their future can feel less alone through their experiences.