Confession and thoughts

My name is Jen. I have had 2 miscarriages. And I'm pregnant for the 3rd time.

There. That feels like I am in an alcoholics anonymous meeting or something like that. But it's really hard to admit that I've had miscarriages and to talk about it.

As I write this, I am 4 weeks and 2 days along in my 3rd pregnancy. The only people who know so far about this one are doctors and management at work. My sports doctor for running knows. I went to the midwife center to ask what I can do to avoid another miscarriage. (Basically, I just need to be as healthy as possible but there isn't really anything I can do differently this time; it's just something that happens.)

I don't know if I'll ever post this. Miscarriages are a lot more common than people realize. For both people who have kids and for people who have been unable to. When I do tell someone (for whatever reason), more often than not they say, yeah, we had a miscarriage or miscarriages as well. But that doesn't make it any easier.

I always wondered why it doesn't get talked about until I had my first. While it's fairly common, people don't know how to react to it. Even worse are people who don't understand or who haven't been through it themselves. It really takes going through it to truly understand. I'll admit I never really thought of it as a big loss until I actually went through it myself. I didn't understand why people would remember it years later. But the two babies I carried for 10 weeks each will always be remembered.

It makes you realize what a miracle each and every baby is. There is a lot that goes into fitting two sets of chromosomes together to make another person. A lot of the time it just doesn't work and it can't be explained away.

The things that make it hard to talk to others about are the reactions.

People ask what's wrong with you. Which just hurts. I'm already blaming myself for things. For example, with the 2nd, we went to Cedar Point when I knew I could have been pregnant but it wasn't far enough to get a positive test. I asked an OB/GYN nurse who asked a doctor and she said that as long as I hadn't gotten a positive test, it was ok to ride the rides at an amusement park. Which they still tell me is ok and didn't cause issues. So I rode roller coasters and other rides and got a positive test 8 days later. And miscarried that baby 5 weeks after that. I still kick myself about that one. But you also can't put your life on hold month after month hoping that you're pregnant but not knowing. And the midwives and another doctor reiterated several times that the roller coasters did not cause the miscarriage. Anyway, I'm already kicking myself and it makes me feel even more guilty when someone asks me what's wrong with me. (Which honestly it could be an issue with my own chromosomes that would require testing. But they don't usually even consider testing until you have 3 miscarriages in a row just because this is so common, even having 2 in a row.)

I've had a few people tell me it's not a big deal or try to downplay it. In fact, one person in particular told me it's not a loss because it wasn't a baby. Maybe that's how she felt but I felt my body change both times and I knew I had babies both times inside of me.

Maybe I'll talk more about this in a future post, and I'm considering writing posts but waiting to publish them until we're further along in this pregnancy and ready to go public with it.  For now, though, I'm going to save my thoughts and continue to write as I go through this.

In the meantime, I think this article is very fitting. It deals specifically with infertility but also has points that are relevant to miscarriages as well. If you have 3 miscarriages in a row, they do refer you to a fertility doctor and that's when you can try to take tests to see if something specific is causing the miscarriages. Even with that testing, of the people who have had 3 miscarriages or more, at least 50% of those couples will not be able to identify anything that is causing the issue.

http://jennandtonica.com/ifcomm-101/

8/1/2012 Update: This post was written when I was just over 4 weeks along in this pregnancy. As of publishing of this post I am almost 14 weeks (tomorrow) pregnant! Just wanted to put this in perspective; when this was written originally. I have weekly posts written out from 4 weeks to 14 weeks that will be posting once a day until I'm caught up to real time. It has really been therapeutic to write this down and I hope maybe it helps someone else. Dave and I have truly been blessed with this pregnancy and my heart aches for everyone who has gone through this themselves.