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There’s a story about this pregnancy that I’ve never told anyone. I guess it’s not even a story, really, and it might seem sort of insignificant to anyone else. But to me it’s more than that; to me it tells another story, the story of everything that has happened the last three years.
It was my sixteen week appointment, and it was the dreaded I-can’t-find-the-heartbeat-but-it’s-probably-nothing scenario. I avoided my husband’s eyes as the nurse went to see if the ultrasound tech was available. I convinced myself the nurse hadn’t really even looked that hard for it — she wasn’t even an OB, after all — and we shuffled to the ultrasound room holding our breath.
I’m skipping the details, but let me just say this: Those pictures from that ultrasound — not the 3D ones or the more developed ones that everyone said I would love so much from our 20 week appointment — but those 16-week ultrasound pictures, the one of a perfectly formed tiny hand reaching out to us, are the ones that I still look at every day on our fridge.
Okay, I lied; I’ve told people that part of the story before. But not the next part — the part where I left the ultrasound room sobbing. Not crying; sobbing. Okay, again I take that back — we made it out of the room and to the elevator before I erupted in hyperventilating, shaking sobs that had my husband looking at me in bewilderment (he’s the emotional one; not me) and onlookers pitying me and wondering what terrible, life-threatening diagnosis had just befallen me (I was leaving the hospital, after all).
I don’t tell people that last part for two reasons: 1. I’m the blink-back-tears-at-a-funeral kind of girl. I hate crying. I don’t cry. And I certainly don’t sob. (I know, I know, don’t psychoanalyze me please…) But perhaps because of that, here’s the second reason I don’t tell people this part of the story: 2. I anticipate their response: the all-too-knowing smile, the kind but seemingly condescending wink and words, “Oh, it’s the pregnancy hormones,” on their lips.
Because it’s not the pregnancy hormones.
The sobbing is for everything else. It’s for the last three years. It’s for every other time I should’ve sobbed but didn’t.
It’s for all the times I had to ask the teacher next door to watch my class for a minute, so I could answer another call in the planning room from another on-call nurse with news of another bad test result before hurrying back to class to finish teaching as normal, as if everything wasn’t falling apart.
It’s for the time I left emotionless from the doctor’s office after being told matter-of-factly that I could schedule another ultrasound in 10 days, but that I likely wouldn’t have a baby by that time anymore so it wouldn’t matter anyway.
It’s for the time we ran back to our car in the pouring rain after an emergency ultrasound on a Friday night at 10pm, the tech’s expression betraying her promise to the doctor not to reveal the results.
It’s for the time I raced back to work just in time for the start of my 3rd hour after the fertility doctor in the fancy corner office informed me that she didn’t know the reason I wasn’t getting pregnant, and when did I want to schedule my first IUI treatment, since the chances of a natural pregnancy were so low after we’d been trying this long?
It’s for the time the on-call doctor called me at midnight to wake me up to tell me that she was “sorry, girlfriend,” that I was more than likely having an ectopic pregnancy and would have to terminate it the following week.
It’s for the time I smiled and told my assistant principal I had a great weekend one early Monday morning following a sleepless night of miscarrying my child.
The sobbing is for all the medical bills; all the negative tests; all the baby showers I’ve thrown in the last 3 years while wondering if I’d ever have my own.
But most of all, it’s for knowing that things could’ve easily gone either way that day at the doctor’s office: I could’ve left with an appointment for a D and C, or I could’ve left clutching a picture of a tiny, perfectly-formed hand.
I truthfully don’t know why God chose the latter, though I do know now that it certainly has nothing to do with me deserving it. And so I have no choice but to sob in the midst of overwhelming gratitude for this new life inside of me after so long; any other expression of thanksgiving would be insufficient.
I’m telling you: It’s not the pregnancy hormones.
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Hi Jen,
Thank you so much for opening up to share your story of heatbreak and blessing. You have gone through so much. It can be hard to share about the pain of these kinds of personal struggles, but I truly believe we need to be open with each other, because so many of us have gone through some degree of difficulty and even trauma trying to have children.
I have not had the infertility struggles you have gone through, but I have had several losses. My motherhood journey started off with a very much loved and wanted baby being miscarried (read that story here: https://mamarissa.com/my-beginning-of-motherhood-miscarriage/) Then we had my daughter. We did not take her for granted, we knew she was special because she was a healthy baby.
But we have learned even more how special she is in the past two years that we have been trying to have another one. After a breastfeeding delay, I had a complete molar pregnancy that we didn’t discover until 16 weeks (read that story here: https://mamarissa.com/my-complete-molar-pregnancy-story-pregnant-with-a-tumor/). After numerous blood draws and a medically-mandated wait to try again, we concieved a pregnancy that was lost only a few days after I got my big fat positive.
It’s a rough road for so many women. But the encouraging news is that the majority of women who miscarry (even multiple times) are able to also have healthy pregnancies. I am so happy for you that you have your healthy pregnancy now. You are right, none of us “deserve” it. But God often grants us gifts in answer to prayers for things we don’t deserve.
Thank you so much for your comment and for sharing your story, too! 🙂