How We Lost It is the final chapter of a three-part series exploring our not-so-straightforward pregnancy/fertility journey. Visit Musings of a Maybe-Mama for Part I, and How I Told Him for Part III.

A dull ache persists in my abdomen, on the lower right side. I wouldn’t describe it as stabbing, per say, but it is causing significant discomfort. It’s Saturday morning and we’re driving two hours north for our friends’ camping and skiing wedding-weekend. I told my husband about the pregnancy five days ago, and I knew for certain for five days before that. Now we’re excited to sleep in the woods while trying to maintain the appearance that everything is business as usual. This secret in my womb is ours, and ours alone, to cherish for now.

We stop for gas at a quaint old station where the gallons are represented in analog numbers, wheeling around on an escalating loop. I love old gas stations. They remind me of ever-shifting time.

Wanting to stretch my legs and see if I can get rid of the cramping, I go in search of the bathroom, winding through the maze that is the corner store. 

The toilet paper is red.

White as a ghost I walk outside to find my husband still fumbling with the fuel. I tell him about the blood and he touches my shoulder gently, reassuring me it’s probably normal – nothing to worry about. Bleeding during pregnancy is common, especially early, he says. Before I have a chance to confirm that he’s right, we drive out of cell phone service, where we will remain for the next 36 hours.

I am seven weeks pregnant.

—

We arrive at the wedding venue; a group campsite nestled in the foothills of the North Cascades. An open field dressed with white chairs and a simple wooden alter sits adjacent to a large dirt ring, our home for the evening. My stomach still cramping, I get out of the truck and make a beeline to the outhouse. I don’t need to look to know what color the toilet paper will be.

Why does it have to be an outhouse?

When we’d pulled away from the gas station, the analog numbers wheeling back to zero – resetting – I cried softly, silently. But there’s no time for that now. I need to hold it together. The ceremony begins in 10 minutes.

Tears are appropriate at weddings, so as soon as the service starts I allow them to fall again. My friends are so in love. Their ceremony is beautiful, and I’m truly happy for them and the life they’re beginning together. So I cry for love and loss and joy and heartbreak and hope. My husband holds me tight.

When weddings are over, you’re supposed to celebrate. But how can you when your insides won’t stop swirling? Let’s go home, I think. Leave early and provide a vague excuse later. I can hardly keep one secret, and now I’m holding two. Everyone will understand.

No, I think. Going home won’t change anything. We will stay.

—

I drink La Croix and make small talk and play Corn Hole while sneaking away every hour to check on the “progress” and cry in the outhouse. I don’t need the Internet to tell me what’s happening. Only an hour into what will be a six-day ordeal, I know in my bones that I am losing the baby. I know in the same way I knew I was pregnant before the little white stick smiled up at me. 

In a way it’s fitting that this should happen at a wedding. What a perfect analogy for life: joy and grief walking hand in hand. We go for a walk too, a group of us head through the woods to a lake, my husband staying close by my side. Smiling for pictures on an idyllic bridge, we laugh when our friends make duck calls by placing long blades of glass between their thumbs and blowing with all their might. We walk back through the mud, dressed in our Sunday’s best.

I am here, but I am not here.

Finally, mercifully, the sky grows tired and dark. Time for sleep. Relieved to be enveloped in my husband’s arms, I let myself fall into darkness. Into nothing.

The morning finds me feeling worse, much worse. I get dressed while lying down, not wanting to allow gravity any extra time to make a mess. I take quick, heavy steps into the green plastic room, foreboding my constant companion.

This time the toilet paper is covered with dark, angry clots. 

Our baby is the size of a blueberry, my pregnancy app told me yesterday morning. Is one of these clots my little blueberry?

—

I attempt to help with wedding cleanup but I can barely lift a spoonful of yogurt to my mouth, so I sit in the car and read instead. I’m here with some of my best friends, but they can’t change what’s happening and I don’t have words to share my grief anyway. The weight of this loss is overwhelming. How is it possible to love and grieve something you’ve only known for ten days? How can you be surrounded by people you love and feel so isolated? I have never felt so utterly and completely alone.

As we drive away from the campsite, en route to the mountain where we’re scheduled to go skiing as part of the wedding weekend, I let myself fall into sorrow. Big crocodile tears cascade down my face, interrupted by deep, heaving sobs. So this is what it feels like to be viscerally heartbroken? The immensity of the physical pain surprises me. 

We stop at the store so I can buy pads, which are conveniently located two shelves beneath the pregnancy tests. I don’t know how I make it to the checkout counter.

We join our friends to ski a few laps at the mountain. We decided to go skiing too because, what else are we supposed to do? Besides I have pads now. A little human engineering to take care of a common act of nature.

We hike as a group and pose for photos and can be heard yipping and yoo’ing on the way down. For a minute I almost forget about the secrets I carry, the secrets erasing themselves as we speak. I cry myself to sleep on the way home.

The bleeding continues for four more days. I stay home sick at my husband’s insistence, occupying the couch where I sit and sleep and cry and feel this loss with every fiber of my being. We visit the doctor who confirms with an ultrasound. When I imagined the warm jelly on my belly for the first time, the wand dancing atop my flesh, these were not the circumstances I had in mind. I would cry some more, but I’m all dried up.

—

This three part series was written in June 2019. A second miscarriage at five weeks immediately followed the first. After time off to let my body and our hearts heal, we visited a fertility doctor who helped us get pregnant with the baby I’m carrying now – a double-rainbow baby we can’t wait to meet at the end of this year. Knowing other women who’d bravely shared their stories of loss was one of the few things that carried me through my grief. I thank those women, and my husband, for their unwavering support. Please know that no matter where you are in your fertility journey, I’d love to be here for you as they were for me.

If you missed Parts I & II, visit Musings of a Maybe-Mama and How I Told Him. If you need a mood lifter, check out How To Be Happier.