My Story
Even if you haven’t suffered a miscarriage, experiencing the heartbreak of any part of being a mom not going the way you planned can really be devestating. Social media convinces you that you are, for sure, the only one in the whole world who is suffering. So, in hopes of providing a ‘me too’ for someone else, here’s my story
In September of 2017, we found out at 10 weeks I was pregnant, it was the surprise of our life. I had been to my OB six weeks earlier to discuss my PCOS. My doctor told me it would not be easy to get pregnant and started me on hormone regulation medications. Little did I know I was four weeks pregnant. I had morning sickness but an overall easy pregnancy. However, my labor and delivery story was an absolute nightmare. My water broke and the doctor on-call I had never met. He was less than cordial. My nurse told me she was tired from already delivering another baby and needed a break and left right as I began pushing. And after being with her from 9pm to 5am, when another nurse took over she looked me in the eye and said, “What’s your name again? I need to tell the nurse coming in”. I’d taken all the classes that told me how I’d leave feeling like my nurse was my best friend. That was not at all my experience. After a night of pushing, the forceps and vacuum, they set up for a c-section. I wept, I felt so defeated, like I had failed. The c-section was a terrible experience where the doctors were discussing Birmingham’s up and coming theater scene and his review of last night’s Fiddler on the Roof show when I heard my baby cry. I remember saying “is that him? Is he ok?” I hadn’t even known they were starting. I felt like I was such an inconvenience.
Fast forward five weeks and my c-section incision bursts open. I went a different OB, a wound care specialist, a plastic surgeon, and for three months no one could figure out why my wound wouldn’t heal. After months of my husband cleaning my open wound two to three times a day, and bi-weekly doctor visits, not to mention thousands of dollars of medical bills, a plastic surgeon decided a suture hadn’t dissolved and said he’d do surgery to clean it out. A less-than-one-hour, outpatient procedure ended up requiring a general surgeon, an OB oncologist, and an overnight stay in the hospital. It turns out I got staph infection in the OR and my body was trying to get rid of it. In doing so, my body developed an abscess on my uterus and scar tissue had attached my bladder to my uterus. I had to wear drain tubes for a week. Post surgery, the OB oncologist who did my surgery told me that he’d had to do so much work to my uterus I would probably never have another child. And because I was heavily drugged, he said it over and over and louder and louder and wanted to make sure my husband fully understood too. I was devastated, I’m one of five and never wanted just one child. On top of that, because my abdomen had been opened up twice in four months, I wasn’t allowed to carry my son for six weeks. I didn’t leave the house alone with him until he was six months old. Three days before my surgery, we drove to Mississippi to bury my two month old nephew. He’d been in the NICU with a rare genetic disorder and no one knew how to help him. In the aftermath of my surgery, trying to grieve the loss of my nephew, I also experienced crippling guilt for being upset that I couldn’t have more kids and that I was so at my wits end with my surgery recovery, when I knew my sister-in-law and brother would give anything to have their one child back in their arms. It was a hard and weird year of transitions. My body was a wreck, I was so isolated as a stay-at-home-mom, and I had all those first new mom feels, when all I saw on the internet was how awesome and easy it was to get your life right back being a new mom was, and that wasn’t my experience at all. Fortunately, from there we had nowhere to go but up. We got into a groove and feeling like myself, enjoying my role as Mom and making some great Mom buddies.
Once I started weaning my son, my period came back and the next month we were pregnant! We were shocked but thrilled and believing everything from the surgery and that nightmare season seemed to have passed. Fast forward to January 10, my 12 week appointment. I’d been before and heard a heart beat but it was my husband’s first visit and I was pumped! I’d been feeling very sick, and heard a heartbeat before so I was really excited for the appointment. It started off with a handheld ultrasound machine and she couldn’t find the heartbeat and told me we needed to go to the ultrasound room. Ever oblivious, I said out loud ‘Thrilling!’ As I clapped my hands because I was excited to see my baby on the big screen. Because I’d had one healthy child, miscarrying never entered my mind. As soon as we walked in the room, I knew something was wrong. She didn’t turn the big TV on and wasn’t saying a word. After giving my husband the ‘something is very wrong eyes’ I looked back at the tech and she told me my baby had no heartbeat. She said the heartbeat had stopped about a week earlier. I’m sure it would’ve hurt less if my husband had gut punched me. I felt like all the air was sucked out of the room and I remember thinking this is just a bad dream, wake up, wake up. My doctor was going out of town the next day so we set the D&C appointment for Monday. Those four days of knowing something that my husband and I had created and had a heart beat and brought us so much joy was no longer living and still inside me was something I really can’t put into words. I remember agonizing and analyzing every moment of my pregnancy. Certain that it was my defect uterus that had caused the miscarriage. It was some of my darkest days. I remember the Sunday night before my procedure, rocking my baby to sleep and feeling like I was having a panic attack, it was such a vast and disgusting contrast to have one baby asleep peacefully on my chest and one baby dead inside of me. I clung to him as I wept and wept over all the broken dreams I had for Barrett and his sibling he’d never meet. Waiting for the procedure the next morning was unnatural. It goes against everything you know as a Mom to go through that surgery even if it’s what needs to be done. I felt like I was failing my baby by giving up. Not to mention the PTSD from the last time I was in the hospital, I was convinced it would be more complicated than it was and I’d be in the hospital a while. The procedure came and went in a blur. I remember not filling my pain medicine prescription because I wanted to feel every pain there was because it was the last bit I’d have to physically remember this baby by. I thought once the bleeding stopped and my body healed it’d be over, it’d be better and somehow, the next few months were even harder. Life went on, it felt like the entire human race was pregnant and my heart still felt shattered. I felt all the emotions. If I had a good day I felt guilty for not mourning, if I had a bad day I felt guilty for not being all there for my son. It was such a mental battle. Mother’s Day was especially hard. I kept replaying in my mind where I thought I would be, six months pregnant with a second healthy baby. I have another brother, a twin, and for Mother’s Day we all got together, and I remember him and his wife giving me a necklace with an August birthstone. It was a defining moment for me, it was thoughtful and unexpected. I didn’t realize until later, they’d given me exactly what I needed, validation.
The grieving process has been so messy for me. When I got pregnant the fear of giving birth took so much of my joy in those first few weeks. And then when I miscarried, I would’ve given anything to go through all of it again just to have a healthy baby.
So here I am, six weeks pregnant. The first two times I was pregnant and felt it as soon as I saw the two lines and loved it and never looked back. This time, I took 11 tests just to be sure. I believe only God can create life and He’s done it, a third time, in my womb. So I’m not distancing myself or waiting to tell people. I’m learning to enjoy it, and trust and hope for the very best. I’ll wait until I’m eight weeks to go to the doctor. I do feel more guarded but I don’t want to be, I want to enjoy every minute. This journey has been so much more emotional and messy and up and down than I thought it’d be but I’m learning to find the good in everyday and enjoy every moment.
Mary Margaret Byrd
