Faces of Loss, Faces of Hope

Wendy

Miscarriage August 4th, 2002

Belle Fourche, South Dakota

My husband and I decided to start a family about six months after we were married in September of 1999. After a year of trying we made an appointment and did the whole fertility workup, but the doctor couldn’t find any reason why we weren’t conceiving. Another year went by with no luck and we were at the point of pursuing further testing.

On July 26^th, 2002 I decided to take a pregnancy test because I was feeling kind of “off” and was about four days late. To my shock, there were two lines almost immediately. My husband was visiting a friend and I called him to come home. When he got there I handed him a little picture frame I’d bought that said I <3 my Daddy, with a printout in the picture spot that looked like construction tape and the words: Under construction, estimated completion 4/1/03. It took him a few seconds to process what I was telling him but he was absolutely ecstatic.

We knew we should wait but within 24 hours we had told everyone we knew that we were finally going to have a baby. The next several days were absolutely wonderful. We had picked names at least a year before and immediately started making plans for our baby. My health insurance provided free car seats to new moms so I called to find out what kind of seat they offered (I was already a little bit of a car seat nerd) and left a voice mail when nobody answered.

The following weekend we took a little road trip about six hours from home. We did some touring around and I window shopped for the maternity clothes I’d soon be needing. Sunday morning we got up and headed for home. On the way we decided to stop at my husband’s childhood best friend’s house for a quick visit. We stayed for about an hour and I made a quick trip to the bathroom before we left. It was then I noticed that I was spotting. It made me nervous but I didn’t say anything right away because I knew it wasn’t uncommon to bleed a little early on.

That afternoon when we got home, I checked and saw that I was still bleeding so I decided to go lie down and take it easy for a while. We called the nurse line and they said just to take it easy because there was nothing they could do at that point. My husband got a call and had to go in to work very briefly. While he was gone I had to use the toilet and that was when I passed the baby. I flushed the sac without even thinking about it, and immediately wished I hadn’t. My husband got home as I was flushing. We were absolutely devastated.

I took three days off work and spent most of them sobbing. At some point I got a call from the insurance guy who deals with the car seat program. I almost felt sorry for him because all I could get out when he told me who he was is, “I won’t be needing a seat, I lost my baby.” The day I returned to work there was a huge bouquet of flowers on my desk, a gift from the guys I worked with. I will always remember that bouquet because I was so incredibly touched that a bunch of guys (I was the only woman who worked there) were so thoughtful.

For the first several years I made a point of releasing a balloon on both my due date and the date of my loss, but as time has gone on and my heart has healed, the pain is much less sharp and I just take a few minutes to remember. I wonder what my baby would be like today, and marvel at the idea that I should be the mom of a 4,5,6, 7 year old. This year my child would be 8 and in second grade, but I never got a chance to know him.

It wasn’t until 5 ½ years later that we were finally able to get pregnant again (long after we gave up hope) due to our undiagnosed infertility problems (which I suspect were due to PCOS). Our son is the absolute light of our lives but each milestone he reaches is a tiny reminder of what we missed out on with our first.