It’s a rather difficult subject to write about, and I haven’t openly disclosed this experience of mine besides to a few very close friends and family members.
To get pregnant when you desire to be is a limitless amount of joy, and even more so if you have a partner to share it with. It becomes this common lived miracle that suddenly transforms every aspect of life, and the way you interact with each other.
You start dreaming and projecting very quickly. In our case, everything felt new and exciting, so much so that at 5 weeks, we were already buying baby clothes in thrift stores and collecting free baby items on Facebook Marketplace. And even though we knew that pregnancy carries its share of risks and unexpected turns, we were rather positive and optimistic.
So, the shock was rather great that day, at 8 weeks, during the doctor’s visit and ultrasound, the doctor’s face suddenly changed, and her tone became cold and distant. Maybe this is all an exaggeration, but it is how I lived it, how I felt it, and how it was imprinted in my mind to never ever leave.
Daiki and I looked at each other in silence until she told us that there was no heartbeat.
We left and drove home in that same heavy silence. It took us a while to collapse and cry, and there again, it felt so unreal. What felt very real, though, was the medicine I had to take the day after, to remove the pregnancy leftovers from my body, and make sure that it didn’t get infected and end up killing me… yeah.
That pain, the physical pain I am talking about, was the worst I have ever experienced. For almost 3 days, I folded myself into every position possible, trying desperately to minimize it, without much effect. The mental pain, though, came later.
And unfortunately, Daiki had to leave for Australia for 3 weeks, a trip that he unfortunately couldn’t postpone, and there I was, alone at home, with a loss that no one knew about… My coworkers, whom I talked with each day, and my friends who texted me, none of them knew.
I felt alone like I never did before.
Indiana started acting up. She wouldn’t sleep, started peeing in the house, and biting herself to the point of bleeding. So I carried my miserable self to the vet, to see what was wrong with her. But somehow I knew that I had to disclose to him what I was going through, because somehow, Indiana was going through it too.
So there I was, crying ugly tears in the veterinarian’s office, telling him about my miscarriage and Indiana’s weird behavior. He is wonderful, so of course, he listened and made me feel seen and heard.
I survived these 3 weeks like I was walking through the trails of hell, holding on for dear life through comforting movies, crying to repeated songs, and puzzling. Yes, that’s the only thing I was able to do to take my mind away, physically building puzzles on my dinner table. Weird metaphor of trying to put myself back together.
But I did.
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