A good friend once asked me
what it felt like after our first miscarriage and my only reply was, ”I
wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.”
Stephanie and I have been through
three miscarriages. What I write is not exhaustive of everyone that has gone
through a miscarriage. Also, it isn’t necessarily the best example of a way to
go through them. This is our story.
After being married for
three years Stephanie and I decided we would not hinder the possibility of getting
pregnant. She had been taking birth control pills and stopped. Her periods were
irregular so it was hard to track the ovulation cycle. With that it then took
another three years before we got pregnant.
My brother and his wife had
gone through the situation of a miscarriage, but, like most things in life,
until you experience it yourself you’ll never truly understand. Just like being
a parent for the first time is incomprehensible in the feelings that you’ve
never known to exist, so is a miscarriage.
Not having thought that a
miscarriage could happen we told anyone and everyone. The reason people wait
until after the first trimester to tell the big news is because the fewer
people that know, the fewer people to make it into an awkward situation.
Stephanie started spotting
and was nervous about it. Quite a few
people said not to worry about it since it can be normal in pregnancy. Several
went on to tell her how they spotted during their pregnancy and it ended up
being nothing. The other thing Stephanie did was Google it. It’s helpful that
you can find anything online but also not at all. You could have the smallest
symptom and end up thinking you have one week to live (like when I got nine
tick bites, although I did end up with some pretty nasty stuff).
The doctor’s office had us
come back several times and drew blood to check on “numbers”. I know what that
means now but it was weird at the time. Ultimately the numbers weren’t
increasing like they were supposed to so they did an ultrasound. We were around
nine/ten weeks at that point. The body size in the scan showed growth to about
seven weeks (right around when we were telling people, which doesn’t account
for any degeneration) but for some reason her body wasn’t trying to force the
tissue out.
Not long after finding out
we were pregnant we were looking through one of those pregnancy books with
pictures of the baby at different points of development. We had jokingly started calling the baby
“Wally” because one of those early pictures looked like a walrus. One of the most depressing images to this day
was seeing the tissue slumped on that 65” plasma TV as it looked like Wally
lying on his side, not alive.
The doctors office talked us
through what was next; letting the body do its job or having a D&C. They gave us pamphlets to look at and read. A
miscarriage is horrible for a woman but also bad for the guy. In the pamphlets
they called him the “silent sufferer”. There is nothing you can do for your
wife or your child that didn’t make it. We were distraught, confused,
disappointed, hurt, and more, but I will assume you get the point.
They scheduled the D&C
for a couple days later. Everything went as planned. We had some very kind
friends stay the entire time with us through the procedure. For your first one
you slip in and out of moments of normalcy, lunacy, and comprehension. You’d go
from sitting there thinking nothing to tears streaming down your face (thanks
Coldplay) in seconds.
Through it our friends and
family were very loving. Checking in on us. Simple things make a big
difference.
One of the saddest moments was
when I came home from work, walked into the bedroom, and Stephanie was sitting
on the bench in front of our bed holding her stomach weeping. Her only words were
she missed Wally.
The baby’s due date would
have been my grandfather’s birthday, March 16, 2010. One problem with telling
too many people early is for weeks and months people would walk up to Stephanie
and ask how far along she was, if she knew the gender, and how she felt. Makes
for some pretty terrible times. It’s not their fault, they didn’t know.
Through all of this I spun
into depression and made a series of bad decisions that were already in a long
line of them. I wondered if, since my life wasn’t right, I caused this. The
enemy won out on that one. It takes hitting rock bottom to get back up again. I
should have made my bottom a lot shallower than I did. I live with a lot of
regrets but God is merciful and full of grace. He has blessed me with a
wonderful family, great friends, and an awesome church.
So as not to thoroughly
depress you, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. After a miscarriage
you’re told to wait three cycles before you try again. Unintentionally, we got pregnant after one.
On July 9, 2010 Frankie Jane
Maddox was born. In May 2010 I took the necessary steps to set everything right,
as I wanted to make sure I was bringing a little girl into the world to a Dad
who was the husband and father he was supposed to be.
Love you, Wally! We can’t wait to hold you.
Part 2 will entail our
second miscarriage and the first time in my life that I ever called 911, which
the call didn’t go through the first three times (curses AT&T)…
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