I have been blessed to have carried two beautiful boys and to have brought them into this world. I get to see them grow, learn, and love. Having children after a miscarriage makes you appreciate it all even more.
It would be a lie, however, to say that my losses have been erased by this joy.
One in four women will experience a loss in pregnancy. I am one of those four. I have been that one in four several times. It never got easier. It was not something that suddenly got better after my sons came along. The pain has dulled over the years, but there are times when the pain is made fresh. Due dates that should have been birthdays come and go. Children born to friends around the same time mine should have been hit milestones and along with their milestones come new types of pain.
I can’t help but wonder who those children would have been.
Boy or girl? Curly hair or straight hair? I imagine that blue eyes would be a given now that I have seen that our boys seem to come standard with them. Would they have a sense of humor? Would they be kind?
What would they have done? What would their place be in the world? Could they have been a doctor or a world-famous scientist? Maybe they would have become a pilot or maybe they would have been an artist.
Would I be a different person?
I can’t imagine that I would have been the same mother at 20 that I am now at 31. And as much as I wonder who they would have been, I wonder who I would have been.
The most difficult part of this journey is that I did most of it in silence and alone. Miscarriage is a subject no one likes to talk about. I can’t help but wonder why? What is it that we have to lose by acknowledging that a loss is a loss, whenever it occurs?
I loved each one of my children from the moment I knew of their existence. I feel that my healing process was halted by the fact that no one wanted to seem to recognize that those pregnancies were real, tangible losses to me.
We seem to want women to struggle with these losses on their own. To be alone in their grief. We need to break this stigma. This is a topic that needs to be talked about. We need to be there to support each other – not just through the joys of pregnancy and parenting- but also when it doesn’t go well. When losses happen.
I know that I will never be able to answer the what-ifs that come along with losing a child. They are questions that will probably linger for the rest of my life.
I will never be completely whole. It’s something that I don’t think is possible after such a loss. I will say that hearing someone else acknowledge my pain, my loss, it made the healing process more concrete. This loss wasn’t just something I experienced alone in my womb, it became something that was real to someone else.
I hope that by being open with my miscarriages, it can make others not feel alone. To know that someone else out there knows what the feelings that accompany such a loss feels like. To be acknowledged.
It’s okay to hurt.
It’s okay to be sad.
Just know that even if you don’t want to talk about it, you are not alone.
October 15th is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. If you would like to add your baby’s name to our Forever Loved Remembrance Wall, please send an email to info@cedarrapidsmomsblog.com.
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