More Than Miscarriage

We were gearing up for our next transfer, and all we needed to do was wait for my next period.

This time, we had changed the amount of estrogen I was taking. My lining had been thick enough during our previous transfer, but my estrogen levels needed to be higher. So, more estrogen it was.

At this point, I felt like a human pin cushion.

But if it gave me a baby, it was worth it.

I went through all the normal monitoring appointments, blood draws, ultrasounds, medications—the things that had somehow started to feel normal during IVF. Everything was looking great before transfer.

I felt great. I felt hopeful.

I was also emotional and moody.

Hello, HORMONES.

The extra estrogen really did a number on me.

Then, finally, transfer day arrived.

I was READY.

I was so ready to be pregnant until proven otherwise.

This time felt different from our first transfer. I wasn’t nearly as nervous or anxious because I knew what was going to happen. The first time, everything had been unknown. This time, I knew the process. I knew what transfer day looked like.

We transferred our embryo, and I was so incredibly happy.

I went home, relaxed for the rest of the day, and then began what every IVF patient knows all too well:

The wait.

The Longest 10 Days

Those 10 days felt like forever.

I wanted to take a pregnancy test every single day. But I had promised my husband that we would wait until my blood test.

So he hid all of my pregnancy tests.

Yes. Literally hid them.

He knew I wouldn’t go out and buy more. LOL.

Somehow, I survived those 10 days.

Finally, beta day came.

I went in for my blood test that morning and then went to work.

I remember watching the clock.

12:00 p.m.

When were they going to call?

I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I couldn’t focus on work. I was just sitting there waiting for my phone to ring.

And finally, it did.

I WAS PREGNANT.

Finally.

After a year and a half of trying, treatments, appointments, medications, needles, disappointment and waiting…

I was pregnant.

I left work a little early because there was absolutely no way I was getting anything done after that. I immediately went to Target and bought a onesie to surprise my parents.

I couldn’t wait to see my husband.

For the first time, I felt like I could relax.

We did my second beta two days later, and my numbers were doubling appropriately.

Everything was working.

Everything was finally going to be okay.

Or at least, that was what I thought.

Then I Started Bleeding

About two weeks later, at 5 weeks and 2 days pregnant, I started bleeding.

I had no idea what was happening.

I immediately called my doctor, and they got me in the next day for an ultrasound. She explained that it was still very early. We probably wouldn’t see much yet, but we should at least be able to see a gestational sac and possibly a yolk sac.

During the ultrasound, we saw the gestational sac.

We also saw a subchorionic hematoma.

That was the explanation for the bleeding.

We went home hopeful. We were told that the hematoma could resolve on its own, and I hoped more than anything that the bleeding would stop.

But it didn’t.

A couple of days later, I started bleeding again.

This time, it was different.

There was more blood.

And there was pain.

At around 2 a.m., I woke my husband up and told him we needed to go to the hospital.

The entire time, one thought kept running through my head:

This is it. We’re losing our baby.

At the hospital, I was taken back quickly. The doctor was incredibly kind. She ordered an HCG blood test and an ultrasound.

When the ultrasound tech came in, I told her I wanted to see everything.

I needed to see.

After IVF, ultrasounds weren’t new to me. I had stared at that screen more times than I could count.

She turned the monitor toward me but warned me that she wasn’t allowed to tell me what she was seeing.

I told her that was okay.

I just needed to see it for myself.

And then I saw it.

A gestational sac.

A fetal pole.

And…

a heartbeat.

Our baby had a heartbeat.

I was so happy.

I told the ultrasound tech about the subchorionic hematoma, but she couldn’t see it.

Instead, she saw something else.

Another gestational sac.

Another fetal pole.

And another heartbeat.

There weren’t just one.

There were two.

We were having twins.

TWINS.

Twin boys.

We walked out of that hospital around 5 a.m. absolutely overwhelmed.

We were so, so happy.

And if I’m being completely truthful, I was also terrified.

I knew I could handle one baby.

But TWO?!

We didn’t even have room for two babies!

My husband kept reassuring me.

“We’ll be okay.”

And slowly, the shock turned into excitement.

We were having twins.

Our Secret That Wasn’t Much of a Secret

I couldn’t contain myself.

I told my whole office.

My boss bought me a book about twins and stuffed animals for the babies. She knew how badly I wanted this, and she was incredibly thoughtful and understanding.

Everyone at work was excited for us.

I had always been very open about my IVF journey. Honestly, you almost have to be when you’re constantly disappearing for appointments.

At our next appointment with my reproductive endocrinologist, I walked in and told her:

“We’re having twins.”

She couldn’t believe it because our first ultrasound had only shown one gestational sac.

But there they were.

Two babies.

She confirmed that they were doing well, and she was happy with how everything looked.

We learned that they were Mo/Di twins—identical twins sharing one placenta but each having their own amniotic sac.

We left that appointment carrying our ultrasound pictures with the biggest smiles on our faces.

Then came the fun part:

How do we tell our parents there are TWO?

We showed my parents the ultrasound and had onesies announcing the twins.

My husband’s dad and stepmom were coming into town, so we waited to tell them in person.

His dad was SO excited.

We told him not to tell anyone because it was still early.

Apparently, that instruction expired the second he entered the airport.

On his way home, he told basically anyone who would listen that he was going to have twin grandchildren.

We told my husband’s mom and stepdad, too.

Everyone was so happy.

These babies were already so loved.

Ten Weeks

I continued bleeding throughout the pregnancy, but I was told not to worry unless it became extremely heavy.

So we kept going.

Week by week.

Ultrasound by ultrasound.

Every week, we got to see our babies.

And then we made it to 10 weeks.

Ten weeks felt huge.

At our second-to-last ultrasound, everything looked good. Baby B was measuring about two days behind Baby A, but we were told that could be completely normal.

Don’t focus on it.

So I tried not to.

Three days before what was supposed to be our final ultrasound with the fertility clinic, I went to work like any other day.

I was getting ready to leave in a couple of hours when I stood up to talk to a coworker.

And suddenly, I felt it.

A gush of blood.

I ran to the bathroom.

There were clots.

My pants were soaked.

There was blood everywhere.

I remember looking around that bathroom and thinking it looked like a murder scene.

I started crying.

I knew.

Or at least, I thought I knew.

I’m losing my babies.

One of my coworkers came into the bathroom to check on me. She gathered everything from my desk and brought me my phone.

I called my husband sobbing.

Another coworker—a mentor of mine and someone who had experienced miscarriage herself—walked me to my car.

She offered to drive me to the hospital, but I wanted to go to the hospital near our house and near my doctor.

So I drove.

Thirty minutes.

Crying the entire way.

My husband stayed on the phone with me for almost the whole drive.

When I finally pulled up to the hospital, he was already there waiting for me.

He had brought me clean pants and underwear.

“They Didn’t Care”

If you’ve ever been a woman sitting in an emergency room while actively miscarrying, you may understand what I’m about to say.

They didn’t care.

I was actively bleeding.

I asked for something to sit on because I was bleeding onto the chairs.

They didn’t care.

I asked for a bed.

They didn’t care.

Large amounts of blood and clots were coming out of me.

I was cramping.

I was terrified.

And I sat there.

I called my mom and asked if she could bring me another change of clothes and take my car home.

Of course she came.

That woman would drop anything if one of her kids needed her.

Eventually, I got a room. I was given disposable underwear and a huge pad.

Then the bleeding started slowing down.

For a moment, I let myself hope again.

Maybe this was just the subchorionic hematoma.

Maybe the babies were okay.

They took me for an ultrasound.

This ultrasound tech wouldn’t let me see the screen.

So we waited.

And waited.

It felt like years.

Finally, we got the news.

Baby A was okay.

Baby A looked healthy.

There was a heartbeat.

But Baby B…

Baby B was gone.

I had lost one of my babies.

I wasn’t having twins anymore.

I was devastated.

I couldn’t understand how we had made it this far—10 weeks and 3 days—and suddenly one of our babies was gone.

But Baby A was still there.

So we held onto that.

We went home broken over the baby we had lost and desperately hoping the baby we still had would stay.

And Then We Lost Them Both

The next day, we went back to our fertility clinic for another ultrasound.

This time, there was no excitement in the room.

No smiling.

No joking.

No talking about how big the babies were getting.

The room felt scared.

Silent.

My doctor performed the ultrasound.

And then she stopped.

She told us the worst news I have ever received.

Baby A was gone too.

Our remaining baby was no longer there.

We had lost both of them.

Both.

I had miscarried both of my babies.

I wasn’t pregnant anymore.

I couldn’t comprehend it.

We had to return the next day for another ultrasound to officially confirm the loss.

I didn’t want to go.

I didn’t want to go back to that clinic.

I didn’t want another ultrasound.

I didn’t want another person to tell me that my babies were gone.

I wanted to crawl into bed and never get out.

But we went.

We confirmed it.

And we broke.

The Day I Realized My Husband Lost Them Too

We had to decide what came next.

I could take medication and allow my body to pass the remaining pregnancy tissue, or I could have a D&C.

I chose the D&C.

I couldn’t live through this nightmare over and over again.

I wanted it to be over.

We went home, and I crawled into bed.

At some point, I realized I didn’t know where my husband was.

I went looking for him.

He was outside.

Just standing there.

Looking up at the sky.

And that moment has stayed with me.

Because until then, so much of the focus had been on me.

My body.

My pregnancy.

My bleeding.

My surgery.

My grief.

But standing there looking at my husband, I realized something.

He lost his babies too.

He was grieving too.

He was broken too.

But he had put so much of his own grief aside because he was trying to hold me together.

He was the person I needed most, and he was there.

There is something people say about marriage: don’t just find someone you can enjoy the good times with. Find someone you can survive the bad times with.

I understand that now.

My husband is the most loving and caring person, and when my entire world fell apart, he stood beside me in the pieces.

After the D&C

After my D&C, I was not okay.

And I don’t mean that in the casual way we sometimes say, “I’m not okay.”

I genuinely could not function.

I stayed home for two weeks.

I couldn’t go to work.

I didn’t want to leave the house.

I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

I didn’t know how to exist in a world where I had been pregnant with two babies one day and suddenly wasn’t anymore.

I was depressed.

I was grieving.

And I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do with that grief.

My husband and my mom eventually started encouraging me to get out of the house and try to return to work.

When I went back, I couldn’t handle full days.

For about a month, I worked half days, often sitting alone in a conference room.

I couldn’t bear being around people.

I couldn’t handle the looks.

I couldn’t handle wondering what people were thinking.

My hormones were all over the place, my body was recovering, and emotionally, I was exhausted.

I would come home from work and go straight to bed.

I didn’t want to do anything.

Eventually, I realized that I couldn’t do this by myself.

I needed help.

Learning How to Grieve

I found a therapist.

And somehow, I found exactly the therapist I needed at exactly the time I needed her.

She had gone through IVF herself.

She understood a part of my heartbreak that was so difficult to explain to someone who hadn’t lived it.

Slowly, she started giving me tools to deal with my grief.

Not to “get over it.”

Not to forget my babies.

Not to magically make everything okay.

But to learn how to carry it.

About two months later, I finally started feeling like I could function again.

I could go back to work.

I could be around people.

I could start participating in my own life again.

I was still grieving.

I was still broken.

But I was learning how to live while being broken.

Because miscarriage creates a kind of grief that is incredibly difficult to explain unless you’ve experienced it.

You don’t only grieve the baby you lost.

You grieve the pregnancy.

You grieve the due date.

You grieve the nursery you pictured.

You grieve the birthdays you imagined.

You grieve the version of your family that existed so clearly in your mind.

For us, there were two babies.

Two futures.

Two little boys we had already started making room for in our lives.

And suddenly, they were gone.

But I Wasn’t Ready to Stop

Even in all of that grief, I knew something.

I wanted to try again.

I didn’t want this to be the end of our journey.

That didn’t mean our babies were replaceable.

Trying again wouldn’t erase them.

Another pregnancy wouldn’t suddenly make losing them okay.

But I still wanted to be a mom.

So we waited for my HCG levels to return to zero.

We started talking about next steps.

We did more testing.

And eventually, we started getting some answers.

Our journey wasn’t over.

Neither was our grief.

And I think that’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned since my first miscarriage:

Grief and hope can exist at the same time.

I could desperately miss the babies I lost and still hope for another baby.

I could be terrified to try again and still want to try.

I could be broken and still keep moving forward.

Those two little boys changed me.

They made me a mom.

And even though I didn’t get to bring them home, they will always be part of our family, part of our story, and part of me.

This was my first miscarriage.

It wasn’t “just a miscarriage.”

It was the loss of my babies.

It was the loss of the future I thought we were finally getting.

It was one of the darkest periods of my life.

And it was the beginning of learning that sometimes grief doesn’t disappear.

You just learn how to carry it.