My Miscarriage.

 I’m supposed to be 11 weeks and 2 days pregnant today.

Instead, our first personal experience with pregnancy met me with everything I needed to nurture our baby, but no baby. This is called a blighted ovum. Basically, a fertilized egg implants into a uterus, but never forms into an embryo. This happens in about 2% of pregnancies total. There is not a definite answer as to why a blighted ovum occurs, although it is likely that it is because of a chromosomal abnormality, which is the cause of almost all miscarriages in the first trimester.

Experiencing this type of miscarriage has come with many feelings of confusion as well as feelings of humility. 

I am a Christian, so I believe that life begins at conception. I knew I was pregnant when we conceived, and I confirmed that knowledge on July 20 before I ever even missed my period. Keegan and I stood over the bathroom counter, eyes locked on a couple test strips.

“Keegan… that’s a line forming.”

“No, it’s not… oh my gosh, it is!”

I cried and we held each other. I looked at myself in the mirror and recognized myself for the first time as a mother. There was indeed a baby in my womb. I was only 3 weeks and 4 days pregnant. I called my mom and left her speechless. “I didn’t know it would happen this soon!” We didn’t either! It was only our first “try!”

I didn’t call the OB until I had officially missed my period a few days later. My first appointment was scheduled for August 29th. That seemed like forever away, but I was going to have to wait even longer.

The next few weeks, I slowly began to experience more symptoms, most notably nausea and fatigue. At 7 weeks and 4 days, 3 weeks after finding out I was pregnant, my nausea almost completely disappeared. I was thankful, but it also made me very suspicious. Why was this extreme nausea suddenly gone overnight? Google said everything would be fine, so I tried to move on. I was still experiencing extreme fatigue some days as well as other symptoms. This was just going to be my experience, right? And who is going to complain about not feeling nauseous?!

The next week, my OB cancelled my appointment less than 24 hours before it was scheduled because their ultrasound tech called out, forcing me to reschedule for another week and a half out on September 9th – one day shy of 11 weeks and a day Keegan was supposed to work. “Can you call the Sergeant before you and just ask him to stay over a couple of hours?” Luckily, that Sergeant agreed.

I texted my mom and told her about my disappointment. I was anxious to see that everything was okay. I had just texted my mom days before saying “I feel like my pregnancy symptoms are becoming less severe and that makes me scared that something is wrong.” Well, Becky Oldham is a connected woman. She had a friend who was willing to do an ultrasound for free for us on Sunday, August 31st.

So Keegan and I drive out there. I’m excited to finally see that everything is okay, hear a heartbeat, stop worrying. I’m 9 weeks and 4 days at this point. Baby should be pretty easy to locate.

She starts with an abdominal ultrasound, things are not easy enough to see. I don’t immediately panic. This can be normal this early in pregnancy, right? So we move on to a vaginal ultrasound. She’s quiet for a while, looking around. She clicks a few buttons and measures my uterus. 

“There’s no way you’re nine weeks pregnant. You’re measuring 6 weeks and 4 days pregnant.”

“I KNOW I’m 9 weeks pregnant. I test positive 6 weeks ago today.”

“It’s possible you could have tested positive at only 4 days pregnant. Pregnancy tests are very sophisticated these days.”

“I’m telling you, there’s absolutely no way that that should say only 6 weeks pregnant.”

She pointed out some signs that things are okay, even though we weren’t able to locate the baby or the heartbeat that I knew should be there. She tried her best to quell my worries, but in that moment, my fears were justified. I just knew something was wrong.

We got back in the car. My eyes welled up with tears as we drove back home. Keegan was telling me not to worry. We go to the doctor in only a week and a half and if things are growing right, then we’ll be almost 8 weeks, then we can know for sure that things are okay. Maybe it just happened later than we thought. (Spoiler alert: I was right.)

So I spend the next 9 days waiting to hear what I already knew in my heart, but hoping that it wasn’t true and my doctor could give me some explanation as to how this happened. I’ve been tracking my ovulation and cycle for YEARS at this point. How could something so obvious have slipped by me? I wanted to be wrong.

Finally, we arrive to our first appointment on September 9th. There are 3 Rebecca\Rebekahs in the waiting room. We were the last to go back. Again, the tech tries the abdominal ultrasound and has to move to the vaginal ultrasound. I don’t panic. If the last ultrasound was right, that would be okay.

Then, I see almost nothing in the vaginal ultrasound. Not even the small amount of things I saw in the first one. Just an empty chasm where my baby was supposed to be.  Maybe that was normal, though; right? I saw “7w0d” pop up on the screen. It must’ve only been up on the screen for a second, but I stared at it for what felt like a century.

Keegan must have missed it because as the nurse left so I could get dressed, he asked if she could tell us how far along we were. She said she couldn’t tell us anything. When she left, I told Keegan what I saw. Maybe I saw it wrong. Maybe I misread it. I didn’t have the heart to point out the fact that we didn’t see a baby at all. I let him have hope even though mine was all gone. Again, I was still hoping I was wrong.

Next came the long wait. It was only about 20 minutes, but it felt like hours.

“Keegan, I know that she’s going to come in here and tell me I’m having a miscarriage.”

“No, she’s not. Don’t think like that.”

“I’m just saying, I know that’s what’s going to happen.”

Mind you, Keegan was supposed to have left for work at this point. Luckily, the Sergeant before him was totally understanding and was telling him to take all the time he needed. We’d even originally planned for him to leave after the ultrasound, but he wanted to meet the doctor and have a chance to ask her some questions.

She finally entered the room and we exchanged good mornings.

“Things aren’t looking good, guys.”

Even though I knew it was coming, the hope that had held me up for this long flushed out of the soles of my feet. I covered my face with my hands and wept quietly.

“I’m so sorry. This is what’s called a blighted ovum. Basically, your body forms a placenta and an amniotic sac and everything else, but when it’s time to form a baby, the chromosomes just aren’t there. It doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you or you. It’s just bad luck. I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear today.”

She was so kind with her words, but they still felt like they were stabbing me.

Keegan stepped out of the room to call his Battalion Chief and tell him about the situation and that he needed to be with me today. While he was out, I told her about the sudden loss of nausea that happened at about 7 weeks. She confirmed that that was likely when the miscarriage happened and my body stopped trying to grow the baby. 

I had housed an empty womb for at least three weeks. What would have been my baby died inside of me three weeks ago.

She told us about our options going forward and we left.

It’s so surreal watching people go about their daily lives when you feel like yours is over. Sitting in an OB parking lot after you’ve just been told that you never even had a baby in your belly is excruciating. As I was walking out, I thought about the other Rebecca/Rebekahs and hoped that they both went in and heard what they were hoping to hear.

I got in the car and called my mom. 

“Hello.”

“Hey, mom.”

“What’s up?”

“There’s no baby.” I thought my throat was going to pinch itself in two.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Bekah.”

I tried to tell her all the reasons why it wasn’t that bad, mostly trying to convince myself.

Because how can I be grieving a baby that never existed?

I spent the rest of the day texting friends and family who knew, all who sent their condolences and prayers and offerings to do whatever they could. Some told me about their experiences with blighted ovum and that everyone they knew who’d had one went on to have healthy babies after.

I also scheduled my D&C for Thursday. I decided the experience of knowing that my womb was empty was traumatic enough.

I cried a little bit, but the full realization didn’t come until the following morning. I spent most of the morning just crying and texting whoever would talk to me about it. I was (and am) so disappointed and confused. And even though the doctor said it wasn’t my fault, how couldn’t it be? It feels like the joy of my future pregnancies has already been stolen from me.

But after I spent the morning lamenting, I picked up a devotional that Ms. Gay Jeffries had left with my mom to give to me. It is called “Held,” written for moms going through miscarriages.

The first line was a journal entry the author had written after she found out about her miscarriage: “I’ve never been this close to death. It’s literally inside of me. Where life should be.”

Wow. That stung.

I read on. In the work section, it instructed me to read Psalm 139. Verses 15 and 16 struck me the most:

“My frame was not hidden from you

    when I was made in the secret place,

    when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

    all the days ordained for me were written in your book

    before one of them came to be.”

I was reminded in that moment of God’s mercy, that God knew my sorrow better than I do, and that God sees me and knows me and actually cares. And I was reminded that even though the world won’t recognize my baby as a baby, life begins at conception, and God’s eyes had seen my baby’s unformed body.

I then started compiling a list of God’s mercies in this experience:

1. I never heard a heartbeat and I never saw a baby. While this seems like a weird and wrong thing to celebrate, I can’t imagine the excruciating and traumatic experience of hearing a heartbeat at one appointment and not hearing one at the next. 

2. God prepared me for three weeks to hear that news. I knew it was true before anyone told me.

3. Nothing is wrong with me or Keegan. This is just something that “happens,” as much as that stinks. We can (and will) try again and the odds of us having a healthy baby are still just as high as the next couple.

4. Keegan was there. Remember, he was supposed to have left for work after the ultrasound. I didn’t have to call my husband and tell him that the baby we loved was not there.

I went on Thursday 9/11 to get my empty womb removed from my body. It was the very first time I’ve ever been put to sleep. I was ready to be on the healing side of this experience. It was a long 3 hours waiting to go back for surgery. The surgery lasted about 15 minutes and I woke up about 45 minutes after that. I had the best apple juice of my life that my body would decide it didn’t like about 20 minutes later. I’ll spare those details. I finally got to hold my husband’s hand.

He had held onto my wedding and engagement rings while I was back for surgery, and he asked me to marry him again when he put them back on. He’s a pretty special guy.

I added to the list:

5. I didn’t have to experience a traumatic miscarriage. I was able to have the death removed from my body. I wasn’t home alone and contracting what I may have thought was a perfectly healthy baby out of my womb. And this is really what I thank God for the most.

Let me be clear: I’m not praising God that I had a miscarriage. I am praising God that he arguably gave me the best possible experience that I could have had in this situation. At least I got to be pregnant and I get to love that baby for the rest of my life. We decided to name them Riley (Keegan’s middle name) because it’s gender neutral and because it’s easier to grieve the person our baby was with a name.

Riley will always be my first baby, even if they never became a baby to anyone else in the world. My body had changed and is still a reminder of what had been happening inside of me. And now, Riley is in heaven with my Gran and at least one aunt or uncle (my sister and I decided it’s Uncle Seth because that’s what my mom would have named the baby she miscarried before us if they’d been a boy) and I WILL get to meet them one day. Oh, we can add that one to the list:

6. I will get to meet Riley in eternity.

Riley’s soul will only ever know love.

7. Riley’s soul will only ever know love.

God’s mercies abound, “his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning” (Lam. 3:22-23).

And God’s greatest mercy and gift of grace is the hope of Heaven, where we WILL all be reunited one day.