A Time We’ll Never Forget
Sometimes bad things happen to really good people.
We all have stories and truths and challenges to overcome. Life is wonderful and works in mysterious ways. It can also be cruel and make no sense at all. What I have learned (and to my absolute joy, my friends are starting to learn) is that telling our stories is therapeutic and creates a beautiful sense of freedom and surrender. Writing down the facts and talking about our unique experience matters. While your story might feel like it's only happening to you, the capital T truth is that there is someone in this universe that has been where you are. When we share we start to dispel the painful feeling that we're flawed or shameful or alone. Someone has been sitting where you are, and while your circumstances may have looked different, you're both human and you're both, eventually, going to be ok.
My friend Lisa has a story that you need to read. Whether you’ve been pregnant, are trying to get pregnant, have lost a baby or are a human being with a heart, you will feel her words in your bones. Love you Lis.
Anyone who knows John and I well enough knows that we love to share. This won’t be an easy read for some—maybe it’s too raw, or too much information, maybe I swear too much, but for us, sharing the pain, the joy, and the truth of our experience is a hell of a lot more comfortable than sitting alone in silence. Heads up that some of this is graphic, so if that’s not your thing this might not be the read for you. To the hundreds of thousands of members of this club that no one wants to be in know that I see you, I hear you, and I’m so sorry for everything you’ve gone through.
From the moment we found out we were pregnant, we knew we wanted to be open with our highs and lows along the way with our friends and family. Some people decide to wait until some magical moment that apparently happens at 12 weeks where your risk of miscarriage significantly decreases, but we didn’t want to keep our joys or sadness to ourselves. So, we decided that whoever we wanted to share our joy and excitement with, we’d also want to share our grief and sorrows with (heaven forbid).
Writing has always been therapeutic for me, so I wanted to put this out in the world to share what happened. Though we’ve needed some time to process (I don’t know if we’ll ever fully process), I don’t want people to be afraid of us or to think we’re drowning in a puddle of sadness, because we’re not. The truth is, this has been hard. Like really fucking hard. Pushed down a flight of stairs and landed in a pile of shark’s kind of hard (my friend made this analogy, and its precision can’t be matched). Mentally, physically, emotionally—all of it has been worse than you can imagine. But life, though sometimes cruel, works in the most mysterious ways and I can honestly say that I know we’ll be okay, not today but one day.
At 8.5 weeks, we learned that we were pregnant with two sweet little identical twins, a 1.7% chance, out-of-the blue gift. I was referred to a fetal medicine specialist due to the type of twins I was carrying—Monochorionic Diamniotic (one placenta, two separate amniotic sacs). Lucky for me, a person with high medical anxiety, I landed in the hands of the absolute best care team. My OB has been a godsend and has made me feel completely calm and at ease (to the extend anyone unexpectedly having twins could be) throughout my entire pregnancy and miscarriage. Due to the risks associated with this type of pregnancy, I would have regular ultrasounds, frequent check-ups, and more blood work than a typical singleton pregnancy. We had 12.5 weeks of pure excitement. We had picked out names for our babies, dreamed of what it would feel like to hold them, laughed about how we would never ever be able to afford anything ever again, panicked about how we’d make this work in our one-bedroom apartment, cried about so many what ifs, and talked blissfully with our parents and friends about what September would bring us. This is the kind of joy that you just can’t describe. You have to feel it.
I hate doctor's appointments and had to work really hard to challenge the anxious thoughts in my brain. I swore to my best friend I wouldn’t touch Google, and I worked daily on trusting that my body knows what to do. Turns out, your body 100% knows what to do (even when it’s not what you want it to do) and I’ll forever be in awe of it. From day one I was breezing through the pregnancy—no nausea, a few weird aversions here and there, gagging every time I brushed my teeth (John still thinks this is hilarious), but overall, I felt amazing.
I was scheduled for a routine ultrasound on Tuesday March 30th and up until that point, I felt the same way I had all along. We walked over to RCH, John waited in the waiting room (thanks, COVID) and me and my full bladder went into the ultrasound room. If you’ve ever been in one of these rooms, you know it’s not a warm and fuzzy place. A dark space with big machines and bad music playing in the background. The tech was friendly, but I knew almost immediately there was a problem. I kept studying her face, trying to stay calm and make small talk but I could just tell something was off. After about 15 minutes of clicking around on her screen, she left to “ask the radiologist if the images were clear enough”. She was gone for what seemed like an eternity, and after what was probably only about 10 minutes, she returned to say she was sorry but they would need to examine internally to get a better look. After another 10 minutes of fiddling around with the camera and screen, she left for a second time. Again, more pictures were needed and more uncomfortable probing needing to be done between my legs.
I was laying there, half naked, and I hear Taylor Swift singing “uh oh uh oh uh oh…” Seriously, you can’t make this shit up. She comes back into the room and asks if anyone is here with me today. My heart was beating out of my chest. She went to get John from the waiting room and the radiologist joined us. He cut right to the chase: “I’m so sorry but neither of the twins have a heartbeat.” Some other words were exchanged after that, but I blacked out. There was no warning, no spotting, no cramping, just complete and utter shock. The radiologist was kind and compassionate, but I immediately hated him. He is the bearer of the worst news. Ever. They left John and I alone and we collapsed into each other. I put my clothes on, wiped the disgusting gunk from between my legs and fled the hospital.
Minutes later, my doctor called. He is an angel who calmly walked me through my options. At this point in my pregnancy there was a 50/50 chance I’d be able to “complete” the miscarriage at home naturally, but medical (prescription drugs) or surgical intervention (D&C) might be neccesasary. We went home absolutely devastated and beyond consolable. I reached out to a few close friends and sent out a blunt text message briefly explaining what happened but saying I wasn’t ready to talk. I’m ready now though. Our sweet friends dropped off dinner and booze and treats while John and I cried and held each other. By 8pm that evening I had an intense headache, my jaw, teeth and entire face felt like it was going to blow off my head. We slept that night for almost 9 straight hours straight.
I woke up the next morning and my body started making choices for me. I’ll spare you the details, but in the following 48 hours I started to empty my uterus at home. I had a panic attack when it started, but John sat with me the whole time, comforting me and telling me it was going to be okay. He followed me around like I was a puppy, cleaning up my mess everywhere I went. I love him so much more than I thought I already did. At any point during this process I could have gone to the hospital (which is thankfully across the street). It was best to avoid it, but I could also lean on painkillers to help me through it.
I chose to do this at home for a number of reasons and I feel lucky that it was even a choice. As I write this, I am feeling like the worst is behind us, but I won’t know for sure until I have my follow-up appointment in a few days. It’s possible I’ll need medical or surgical intervention but for all I’ve experienced so far, I’m hoping that the gift to us is that it’s over now. Our employers, friends and family have been amazing, sending love, dropping off treats and giving us the time and space we need to heal. We know this is something that will always be etched in our stories, but we’re trying to find the humour in it, looking for the silver linings where we can and feeling grateful that we were dealt the best-case-scenario is this fucking devastating situation.
Though we’ll never know exactly what happened, our OB gave us a couple of likely possibilities to explain why I miscarried. If you’re interested, look up twin-to-twin transfusion. The fact is, something wasn’t right and these babies weren’t meant for this earth. We know that our time to be parents will come, and we will be overjoyed when we finally get to hold our precious little gifts. For now, we’re sitting here feeling it all, counting our blessings we have in this life, namely, each other.