Hellobee Boards

First of all, I'm so sorry for your early loss, I found my chemical harder to process than my 8 week miscarriage.
Secondly, congratulations!

FWIW: everyone is different, everyone is reassured by different information, please let yourself grieve, feel all the feelings, and don't hold yourself to any standards of "normal." For me, it helped to focus on what I could do today, and not think too far ahead. I'm a planner, that was hard. But living in the moment of "I'm pregnant today" (something I learned here on Hellobee) was helpful.

My family members didn't even understand what a "chemical pregnancy" was because that tech didn't exist when I was born 40 years ago! It was hard to explain and not easy to process. They understood the miscarriage, but also hadn't been through it personally.
For me (full disclosure, I'm a scientist), knowing that early losses are usually due to chromosomal abnormalities and there was NOTHING I could do helped. The fact that we never would even KNOW about these pregnancies without these super sensitive tests was reassuring.
But my brain and my heart still took a little while to catch up to each other.

My chemical was about 6 months before my next positive pregnancy test, but it definitely made me test more to look for "progression", and not let myself get excited until I had more than a week between positives. Then we were anxiously awaiting the first OB appointment for confirmation before we would "really, really believe it."
That appointment didn't go as planned. The baby was measuring around 5 weeks when it should have been 8. My OB was encouraging us to be optimistic, but we knew our timing wasn't 3 weeks off.

The miscarriage occurred on its own, at around 10 weeks. It was literally my busiest week at work (including news interviews, being on camera and radio, the works!), which helped keep me distracted, but added a layer of anxiety as I didn't know what to expect. I had no complications and didn't need to go to the ER. Once I was able to get in with an OB (mine was out of town), he suggested waiting a month before trying again. I knew (from chatting with friends in the medical field) that this was mostly for dating purposes, but also for our mental health. For us, it was more important to connect when we felt moved, rather than wait for the sake of waiting.
Well, we got pregnant that month and I'm currently 36 weeks. For us, every ultrasound was a sigh of relief. We tried not to look too far ahead, to focus on the next milestone or test, not the one after the next. The blood test another reassurance, passing the first trimester another, and finally feeling her move (I have an anterior placenta, so that took forever!) was the final reassurance I needed that she was in there and ok. But I had to take it one day at a time and put a lot of faith in God and nature to take care of everything because there was nothing else *I* could do.
We have since found out that she has a dilated renal pelvis, so there have been and will continue to be specialists and more appointments, but it's not a life-threatening condition, and again, there is nothing we can do right now.

I do think I was more low-key and less excited with this pregnancy, but it's also hard to say why as we have a 3 year old and have been dealing with Covid-19. Again, focusing on what I *could* control and not what I can't has been key - with the toddler and with all of the Covid risk/precautions/etc.

I hope you can find joy as you go through the waiting. I hope you seek and find support when you need it. I hope you're posting baby pics here in 9 months!
Good luck

I’m so sorry for your loss, but congrats! Like you, I got pregnant with my rainbow baby the first cycle after losing my baby at 8 weeks. I’ll be honest, it was hard to relax throughout the pregnancy, but I focused on being happy with what I had at that moment, because what else can you do? Sending you sticky dust wishes!

I had a chemical and then a successful pregnancy right after. My daughter is now 13 months. I tested like crazy the second time. Sometimes it brought me comfort, and other times it was just more stress and worry. Honestly, I was worried for the first half of my pregnancy, but I think I would have been regardless of the chemical pregnancy. I deal with anxiety. I hope you can find joy in this new pregnancy, and find peace knowing that it is very common to have a successful pregnancy after a chemical, like pp said. Hugs!