Our Miscarriage

I always appreciate it when people are willing to share their lives with others. And not just the good stuff, but the hard stuff as well. I believe there's great power and strength in sharing the ups and downs of life with each other.

Robbie and I had a miscarriage in April of this year. I've been thinking a lot about it because this past weekend marked the due date of that baby. The miscarriage was something we kept to ourselves, only sharing with immediate family and a few close friends. I've never felt weird or uncomfortable sharing our experience with others. In fact, it has been a healing experience to share what we went through. It made me feel loved when people would ask me questions about what happened and how we were feeling. But on the other hand, we never wanted people to feel like they had to throw a pity party for us or act differently around us. So much has happened in the last 6 months, and I hope to do an adequate job conveying our feelings since then.

Robbie and I found out we were pregnant in January, which was much sooner than we had imagined. We were very surprised. Nevertheless, we were thrilled to embark on this adventure. Like, we were over the moon excited. However, for some reason I worried about losing our baby from day one. Robbie was full of faith and hope (like always) and expressed so much confidence in a bright future for us and our children. I eventually got to a point (around 9-10 weeks) where I stopped worrying and let myself get excited and share in his faith and hope. We knew miscarriage was an option; we definitely didn't deny that. But we chose to not focus on it, and instead enjoy every day we had to be pregnant. It was a happy time.

The day of our 12-week appointment arrived and we were so looking forward to seeing our baby's heartbeat. Physically, I was feeling great, and emotionally we were both optimistic. We met with our doctor and he got his little machine out. We got a beautiful glimpse of our baby, which looked pretty small. Babies are small at 12 weeks though, right? I watched with nervousness as the doctor quietly maneuvered the machine around. My heart was pounding. Thankfully, Robbie was holding my hand. He said the baby looked much smaller than it should at 12 weeks, and he wasn't seeing a heartbeat. I think both of our hearts sunk at that point. I remember saying out loud, "I knew it." The doctor told us he hoped he was wrong, but that he was going to send us over to the hospital to get an in-depth ultrasound to see what was going on. He left us both and said to come up front as soon as we were ready. I was surprised I hadn't cried yet, but once I was alone with Robbie the tears freely came. Robbie was strong as ever and was holding on to that small glimmer of hope that maybe the doctor was wrong. I, however, was convinced he was right and that my life was over. Emotionally, I was not in a great state whatsoever.

The ultrasound ended up confirming what the doctor had thought. There was no heartbeat and the baby was definitely not the size of a normal 12-week baby. They told us the baby only lived to 9 weeks 2 days. They called our doctor, who then could talk to me on the phone and tell us this news. I sobbed as it began to really hit me. He told me my options for moving forward (we ended up doing a d&c later that week), told me to go home and pray about with Robbie, and then meet back with him the next day. I remember feeling so angry. "You mean, I've had a baby in me for the past 3 weeks that wasn't even alive, and I didn't even know it?!" To think we had told our families we were pregnant when the baby wasn't even alive was so upsetting to me. At one point, I even felt stupid for being so excited for this baby the past few weeks, when in reality our baby wasn't alive. Satan really got to me and I thought and felt some pretty terrible things that day and the weeks following.

Deep down, I knew it wasn't my fault, but for weeks I still looked for any reason I could think of as to why our baby didn't live. Was there anything I could have done differently? Anything? In the end, the answer was no. Robbie and I had done everything we could. We hadn't done anything wrong.

Robbie and I told our families shortly after we found out, and spent the evening doing our best to wrap our minds around everything. I was so thankful we had each other. We both took our turns being emotional (I had many, many more turns than he did), but the other person was always there to offer comfort. By the end of that night, Robbie told me he thought he was done being emotional. Done? My tears had just started, haha. I remember getting to a point where I couldn't be in a different room than Robbie. Emotionally, I felt so unstable. Thankfully, bad days always come to an end. Even just a week later, I felt much better and could talk openly about our experience without crying. The emotions of our experience would creep up on me every so often and I'd breakdown, but Robbie and the power of prayer always helped me get back up on my feet again. Bless Robbie's heart. He was such a rock through all of this and was always strong when I didn't know how to be. He always knew what to say to calm my heart. He always knew when to talk me through my feelings and when to just let my cry. He was optimistic and happy, but once in a while the reality would hit him as well. We truly relied on each other to make it through those first few weeks.

During this whole experience, we had many tender mercies. Our doctor was the BEST and sent us flowers the next day. He was so kind and sensitive, gave me a hug every time he saw me, and genuinely cared about how I was doing. He brought the gospel into our conversations about the miscarriage and that brought me a lot of comfort. In fact, the last thing I remember before going under for my d&c is our doctor smiling at me and grabbing my hand. Such a good man. Members of both of our families sent flowers, fresh bread, jam, dinner, and thoughtful notes. We felt very loved and taken care of. Their service and care for us reminded us how much our Heavenly Father loved us and was watching out for us. Having testimonies of the Plan of Salvation and of God's love for us truly pulled us through all of this.

Through any hardship, we learn great lessons. Here are a few very important ones we learned:

• God is in control. And thank goodness He is! This experience truly humbled us and reminded us that God has a plan for our family. It is a "perfect for us" plan and the best we can do is go about our days seeking to do His will and live as He would want us to live. We have every reason to trust Him. Everything that happens to us is for our good. We have to learn to see that.

• God doesn't want us to worry. He truly desires for us to experience joy. Up until this point, I had never had something tragic happen to me or anyone that I was really close to. It really hit me hard. Trials are real and hard (and real hard) and can happen at any time. That's just how life is. We can't go worrying day after day about the bad things that could happen. That is a waste of our precious time on earth. God wants us to enjoy our lives and seek out and dwell on the good and happy. Sometimes we just have to let ourselves be happy and stop listening to the awful thoughts and feelings Satan puts into our hearts.

• Hardships present a choice to either withdraw or come closer together. The closeness Robbie and I feel, as a result of our miscarriage, has been one of the greatest blessings of our lives. We had to rely on each other in a way we hadn't before, and work together to pull through and be better people as a result of our experience.

Losing our baby was the hardest thing that's ever happened to me. It challenged everything I had ever learned about faith, hope, and trust. It raised some questions in my mind about life that I've had to work hard to find the answers to. But Robbie and I both know that God's hand was in all of this. We don't know why it happened, but we don't need to know why. God expects us to trust Him and keep carrying on and doing our best to be happy. And happy, we are!