Hellobee Boards

I’m so sorry you’re in this place.

I had the hardest time with my last loss. Truthfully it changed the entire year for me, perhaps more because we didn’t get pregnant again quickly and faced the ttc rollercoaster. And a lot of it just sucked. I felt sad, isolated - very alone in how I felt. My family didn’t understand, DH didn’t understand really, and I kept a lot to myself.

I did learn how to keep going from that hard place. I found solace in writing in a journal, in the community here. I learned how to keep showing up as a parent even when you’re sad inside and struggling. I learned how much I wanted another baby, but also I learned to make peace with the idea of not having one as it didn’t seem like it was going to work out.

In the moment it was really hard. Now we have that third baby but I can look forward and see that we are going to need that same resilience for other things. Our parents getting older is a big one. Other unexpected life changes with health or jobs or whatever. Certainly, pregnancy after loss is different than before, much more anxiety, but still worth it.

Sending lots of hugs your way. It’s just hard

So sorry you're in this position.

I was already a pretty strong advocate for myself before my losses, but they definitely made me feel more confident in asking hard questions and saying no to medical procedures I didn't want when there were other options available, and making a case that was convincing enough to get a reticent doctor on my side.

As others have said, it definitely shows you how resilient you can be. After my first loss in particular, I went to a really dark place. And a lot of the support I thought would be there for DH and I just didn't show up, which meant we did the hard part almost entirely on our own.

But I would also say that the losses have really strengthened my relationship. We were lucky before these past couple of years and didn't have a lot of up hill battles. My husband especially led a pretty charmed life for his first 30 years. But having to go through our losses has brought us closer and made us know and care for each other better. I feel really lucky that we both chose to put in the work to face this together.

@breakouttheicecream: I truly learned that there are some things I simply cannot control. I found peace and freedom in that. It took three miscarriages to get there but for this pregnancy, I’m there.

Sorry for your loss.

I again understood to trust in my body with the way it dealt with it. It also brought home the fact of some things you can’t control.

I learned some similar things to other people here. For the positives, it wasn't exactly something learned, but my relationship with my husband is stronger now. He didn't totally get what I was going through, but he was extremely supportive and gave me space/time/support whenever I needed it. I also learned that I can handle something very difficult even if other people around me don't exactly know how to be supportive. I also learned to give up control about the whole TTC/pregnancy process. I'm 12 weeks pregnant now. And in some ways I'm more anxious because I have a more real sense of how things can go wrong. But I think mostly I've realized that there's not much I can do to control the outcome of this pregnancy. And that's more relaxing.

The one negative thing I learned is how little the medical establishment respects the experiences of women. When I went in for my first ultrasound at 8 weeks and there was only a gestational sac, I was shocked that my young female OB didn't trust that I understood my cycle, when I had gotten a positive pregnancy test, how my symptoms had been lessening, etc. She kept saying, early pregnancy is mysterious, maybe your dates are really off. Even when I was certain that the pregnancy wasn't viable. That was extremely frustrating.

@Shantuck: Agreed!

This is just my experience but for me I learnt that losing our third pregnancy wasn’t the end of the world (ours was a missed miscarriage that completed at 9-10 weeks).

Miscarriage is such a shitty thing to experience however you feel but I felt like I’d lost a pregnancy rather than a baby and because of that I felt like a bit of an outlier.