One Year After My Miscarriage: How I'm Doing And My Advice For Others Who Miscarried Recently

Well, it's officially been a year.  A year ago today, I suffered a miscarriage.  I knew it was going to happen (the ultrasound two days earlier prepared me for what was to come), but it didn't make what was happening any easier to handle.  I was emotionally traumatized by the event, and while I was eventually able to start healing afterward, it took getting pregnant again (and learning that this pregnancy was going to make it) to fully gain closure on the whole ordeal.

Now that I'm able to put this all behind me, it's easier to look back on the experience and reflect on how it's affected me as a whole.  Overall, I feel that it's made me a stronger person.  Something awful happened to me and I survived it.  I was able to make peace with it and avoid falling into a full-blown depression.



The experience has also helped me to appreciate this current pregnancy all the more; I'm calmer and less worried, especially now that I'm confident that this baby is going to make it.  I don't stress out on what I'm not doing right nearly as much as I did before, and the actual delivery doesn't seem quite as scary (it's still a little unnerving, but at least I know what contractions feel like when things get started).

Finally, despite feeling like a walrus and other pregnancy complaints, I'm still immensely grateful that I'm having this baby and that I was able to conceive again.

I overcame the worst day in my life and I feel at peace.  But I know that there are women out there experiencing the horror for themselves, and some are having a worse time than I did.  There are women out there who lost their baby at a later point in their pregnancy, and there are those who miscarried more than once.  There are even some out there who have been trying unsuccessfully to have a pregnancy come to term for years.

Compared to these women, I was lucky.  Compared to them, my one miscarriage barely counts as devastating.  To these women, all I can say is:  I'm so sorry.  Remembering what I went through and knowing that your heartbreak kept going after mine had long since healed....I can only imagine how hard and emotionally draining it must be for you to make it day by day, how much you must be suffering when people aren't looking.  How difficult it must be to leave the house and become surrounded by people who have children or who are proudly announcing their pregnancies.  How sad it must feel when someone asks you "do you have children?"   I only have an inkling of how you must feel, and I'm just. So. Sorry.  And I know there's nothing I can do or say to help you make it through.

I think, though, that for the women who recently suffered their first (and hopefully only) miscarriage, I have some advice that might, just might, help.  I know from personal experience that if you've just lost your unborn baby, you're probably now scouring the internet for answers and advice that will make you feel better and help you feel normal again.

So here are a few things that I'd like to say that I hope will help you gain that sense the peace that you're trying so hard to regain.

1) It Wasn't Your Fault

This was the first thing the ultrasound technician told me when we discovered that our unborn child had died.  And it was true.  It wasn't my fault.  I did everything by the book (literally too, I was a pregnancy-researching fiend back then), but the embryo/fetus still passed on anyway.  It just happens sometimes (terrible to say, but still true).  Most of the time, it's because there was a mistake in the baby's cellular development that created a domino effect and subsequently led to a major problem that couldn't be fixed, so the baby dies.
Think about it: a handful of cells are expected to create an entire human being within a matter of months!  Plus, the environment in which these cells have to grow has to be within certain parameters for a successful development; and it's so sensitive that even the slightest chemical imbalance can cause a problem.  It's practically a miracle when everything goes right!

2) You're Not Alone

When I miscarried, I already knew of two people who had miscarried on the first go and had successful pregnancies afterward.  When I opened up about what happened to others, I discovered even more women who had similar experiences to mine.  It was a huge eye-opener for me.

Miscarriages are surprisingly common.  Most websites say that 15-20% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.  My OB/GYN told me it was actually more like 25%, and that's for reported cases.  There's a good chance it's even higher than that because some miscarriages go unreported.

When a miscarriage happens, you feel like the only living soul on a deserted island.  You suffered a loss, and you feel surrounded by normal people who don't know what it's like. 
But that's not the case.  If you talk to others about your ordeal, you will soon find other women who went through the same thing you did.  So, don't keep your miscarriage a secret.  Talk.

3) There's Nothing Shameful About What Happened

Now having encouraged you to talk about it, I have to say this: it's not easy to talk about your miscarriage to others.  I wasn't secretive about mine, but I didn't often bring it up in conversation because it's such a downer of a topic.  In fact, many of my friends and acquaintances didn't know that I had suffered a miscarriage until I had published a blog post about it back in March (see the post here).
There were times, though, that I didn't talk about my miscarriage because I felt ashamed about it.  This feeling didn't happen often, but it did still happen.  The rational side of me knew there was nothing shameful about it, but my emotional side frequently didn't listen.  I sometimes felt like my body was a baby killer, that miscarrying was somehow my fault and that made me a bad mother.
Looking back, it made sense that I was feeling that way (especially during the times when the pregnancy tests would be negative yet again).  It was an emotionally turbulent time and all of those thoughts were just a natural part of the grieving process, at least I feel that they were.
To all you ladies out there who are currently having these feelings: you might not believe me right now, but there's absolutely nothing to be ashamed about.  Once again, the miscarriage wasn't your fault and you are not alone in your suffering.  Seriously, talk to people, or attend a miscarriage group therapy session.  Or at least make a Facebook/blog post about your ordeal.  Talking about it will help you feel less ashamed about your miscarriage because, once again, you'll find that you are not alone.

4) It's Okay To Grieve

You're probably feeling a huge pile of emotions right now.  Sure, you've probably accepted the miscarriage at one point and thought you had found closure and could move on.  But then you start feeling a whole bunch of things.  Anger, fear, frustration, sadness, shame, hopelessness.....You're feeling it all.  You are grieving and you don't know when you'll be able to move on, if at all.

All of this is probably hitting you pretty hard right now, but it's okay.  Go ahead, grieve.  Let it all out.  It's perfectly okay what you're feeling.  Take your time grieving and trying to heal; there's no deadline to feeling normal again.  Your baby might never have lived, but that doesn't mean you're not allowed to grieve like any other mother who has lost a child.

5) No One Will Say The Right Thing

Another blogger said this and it's totally true.  When I told people I miscarried, everyone had something to say.  Sometimes it helped, especially when I spoke with a woman who had also miscarried.
A lot of the time, though, it just felt like no one was saying the right thing to make me feel better ("they just don't understand me!").  It really wasn't their fault; they were being sincere, but I was just not in a good frame of mind at the time to accept and appreciate what they said to me.
And that's the thing to remember when you're grieving: no one is going to say the right thing.  Trust me, you're currently in a turbulent place that has impossibly high expectations.  So, let people try to help you, but don't get angry at them for not saying or doing what you think you need at the time.

6) Stay Busy

My social worker husband Dave has since told me that there were times where he got pretty worried about me.  I did admittedly hit some really bad lows from time to time.  It's very easy to enter a very depressed state of mind when you haven't found closure yet.  What helped, though, was doing everything I could to stay busy.  I worked around the house, I exercised, I hung out with my family (I remember playing a card game with my parents one night and feeling so much better afterwards).  Dave even took me to the Renaissance Fair, as well as a weekend trip to a Harry Potter festival in Philadelphia.  

I did numerous things to stay busy and distract myself from the fact that I still wasn't pregnant again.  While it didn't keep the sadness completely at bay (I still had some bad days), it did keep me from going off the deep end.

So, be as active as you can be.  Avoid the TV, and do things that feel either productive or at least fun.  Distract yourself as much as you can with activities that you can enjoy doing, especially the ones that take you outside or away from home.  It won't solve anything, but it'll certainly help.

7) Don't Give Up Trying Again

When you're ready to try again, just remember that it's going to take some time.  It took me five months, and I was pretty lucky with that number, I think.  My menstrual cycles were a little out of whack after the miscarriage; I went from having normal 28-day cycles to irregular cycles that were often over 30 days long (once, it was 36 days long.  I had started to hope that I was pregnant and was so crushed when it turned out I wasn't). 
Trying to figure out when I was ovulating became a tricky and frequently frustrating business, and I began to loathe the days when my period made its unwanted appearance.  It was the leading cause of my depression.

What actually helped me start healing was something my Ob/Gyn said when I went in for my annual checkup.  I confided to her my fears that I wasn't going to conceive again, and she told me that even if Dave and I timed everything exactly right, there's still only going to be a 15-20% chance of conception.  Only 2-3% of the man's stuff is actually viable at the best of times (sorry guys), and that 2-3% has to swim upstream through the gargantuan cave that we call a uterus, traverse the endless tunnels that we call fallopian tubes, and find that one tiny little egg to merge with.  To make matters worse, that egg needs to be in exactly the right place to be found, and the sperm has a deadline of only a few days to find it.  It's a seemingly impossible mission.  Once again, pregnancy proves to be a miraculous event from beginning to end!

When I was told all this, I instantly felt better about my situation.  I found myself feeling okay with the hard truth that the next pregnancy test I was going to eventually take was probably going to be negative again.  I was finally beginning to heal and move on.  Ironically enough, it was at this point of acceptance that that test showed a positive result, and to my astonishment, I discovered that I was at last pregnant for the second time.

So ladies, don't give up trying!  Do your best to relax and enjoy yourself.  You'll feel pretty impatient and frustrated at times, but try to remember through all of this that it's going to take a while.

Ok, I've said my two cents.  Miscarriages suck; the experience itself is scary and awful, and you end up feeling miserable for a while afterwards.  But the misery does end eventually.  I'm back to normal now.  I'm finally where I wanted to be; happily pregnant and confident that I will succeed in bringing in to this world a healthy baby boy.
To all the women out there who have recently miscarried for the first time: there is a light at the end of the tunnel.  I know you don't believe me because it doesn't feel that way right now, and it probably won't feel that way for quite some time, but it will happen.  You will eventually find closure in your own way, and you will eventually feel happy again.  All I can say for now is: good luck and keep your hopes up.