Congratulations! You Have Unlocked Advanced Coping Skills

Jason and I started trying for a baby.

And then…

One year passed. Then two.

At that point, we realized there was a real possibility that something wasn’t working the way it was supposed to.

There were appointments. Tests. Procedures. Surgery. More appointments.

This was when I was diagnosed with endometriosis. At the time, my doctor told me they didn’t believe it explained why we weren’t getting pregnant.

So we kept trying.

Three years passed. That was when we decided we needed more help.

We started going to a fertility clinic in St. Louis because there wasn’t a clinic closer to us that would take me. That meant driving an hour and a half. Sometimes weekly. Sometimes several times in one week.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

Because we wanted a baby. And we were determined.

Eventually, we started IVF. There were hormones. Shots. Pills. Appointments. Bloodwork.

Just trust me. I put my body through a lot.

Then came the egg retrieval. After everything we had done, we retrieved three eggs.

I was crushed.

And of those three… only two made it. Two tiny chances. Two little possibilities.

We transferred one of our embryos.

Until one day…

For the first time in my life, I saw that word on a pregnancy test.

Pregnant.

After years of staring at negative tests, suddenly there it was. We were going to have a baby. I was going to be a mom. We were so excited.

We went back to the clinic again and again so they could watch our baby grow. And he was growing.

Until one night, I started bleeding. A lot. It was everywhere. I was sick. I was sobbing. I felt completely helpless. And there was nothing I could do except wait until morning.

I was convinced we had lost our baby.

I remember going into the clinic expecting the worst.

And then… there he was. That tiny little flicker. His heart was still beating. Our little fighter was still there.

I cannot explain how much hope I found in that tiny heartbeat.

There was a subchorionic hemorrhage that we needed to watch, so we went home.

Around six weeks, we went back for another appointment. On the way home from the clinic, I started bleeding heavily again. There was cramping. But this time, somehow, I wasn’t as afraid. We had already been through this once. He had been okay. I told myself he was okay again.

Over the next few days, the bleeding slowed. I started feeling better. And when it was time to go back to the clinic, I felt confident. Our baby was okay. He had to be.

I laid down. They started searching.

I watched the screen too. I didn’t see anything. Nobody said anything. You could have heard a pin drop in that room.

I looked over at my mom. She looked at me. And she shook her head.

Before anyone said the words… I knew.

After what felt like forever, they told me that our baby didn’t have a heartbeat anymore.

I cried. A little piece of me died that day.

A new fear was unlocked. I didn’t want to cry because I felt like if I really let myself start… I might never stop.

We named him Samuel.

Samuel means “God has heard.”

And when I was pregnant with him, I truly believed that God had heard us.

After years of praying… years of waiting… years of asking… I thought Samuel was the answer. For those few weeks, I thought our prayers had finally been answered.

And then he was gone.

After that, everything became a blur. There are whole stretches of time I don’t remember clearly. But there are little pieces that have never left me.

I remember sitting at home looking at the sonograms we had of him. Crying over those little black-and-white pictures because they were proof that he had been here. That for a little while, he was ours.

I remember lying down and staring up at the bright lights of the hospital operating room. I remember a baby-blue blanket. I remember holding it with my baby inside. And I remember wondering…

Why us? Why after everything we had already gone through? Why give him to us only to take him away?

I was heartbroken. Not sad. Not disappointed.

Devastated.

There is a kind of grief that hurts. And then there is a kind of grief that changes you.

We gave it a few months. Time for my body to heal. Time for my heart to at least try.

I don’t know that your heart ever really “heals” from losing a baby. I think you just learn how to carry the place where they should have been.

Eventually, Jason and I decided we needed to get away. Away from appointments. Away from fertility treatments. Away from being the couple who had been trying to have a baby for years. Away from everything.

So we planned a trip to Arizona. A reset. A little bit of desert and sunshine before we came home and tried again. Because we still had one embryo left. Our last little embryo. When we got home, we were going to transfer it. That was the plan.

Pffft. Plans.

Apparently, my body had plans of its own. Because little did we know… I was pregnant in Arizona.

Naturally. No transfer. No IVF. No clinic. Somewhere in the middle of our attempt to escape infertility for a few days… I had gotten pregnant.

When we came home, we found out. And then we found out that pregnancy wasn’t going to last either. It was a chemical pregnancy.

Another baby. Another hope. Another goodbye.

We named her Caroline.

We named her Caroline.

I wish I could tell you that after losing Samuel, I knew exactly how to survive losing another pregnancy. I didn’t. Grief does not hand you a manual after the first time. It doesn’t say:

You just… keep going. Somehow.