I lost the baby.

So I lost the baby. Yes, I was pregnant. Yes, I had a miscarriage. Yes, there is no more baby.

I am writing this post now because I want to capture my thoughts and feelings, but it most likely will be awhile before I actually post this onto the internet for anyone who is bored to find. Pregnancy is such a hush-hush type of thing. You’re not supposed to tell your friends or family you are pregnant until ~12 weeks. You’re not supposed to tell anyone at your work. It’s like you’re a criminal hiding a stolen treasure in your uterus.

I have a big mouth – both figuratively and literally. It was hard for me not to share the news of my pregnancy with every person I cared about.

When I first tested positive at my home pregnancy test back in January, I was disappointed and panicked. Even though I am married now and my husband and I have agreed to start a family together, I didn’t expect to get pregnant so quickly. I suddenly felt very attached to my current lifestyle. I was devastated I couldn’t drink alcohol anymore, eat sushi, or get promoted at work. Even though this was “according to plan”, I suddenly didn’t know if I liked this plan.

As the days and weeks went by, I started to feel unwell. I was incredibly tired. Some days I could barely get out of bed – I would sleep for an extra 4 hours. My stomach hurt from cramps to the point where I could not even muster a “hey, my stomach hurts”. I would sit at my desk in my office, pretending like everything was fine when in fact, everything was not fine and I couldn’t tell anyone about it.

I went to my first ultrasound half not-believing I was pregnant. I was bloated and basically waterboarded myself chugging 1-2 L of water before my appointment. It was a very painful and uncomfortable experience. It is not a stretch to say I almost pissed myself in a parking lot.

The ultrasound confirmed I was 5 weeks pregnant and there was for sure, something alive inside of me.

In the midst of all this, I was excited. I looked up baby names, fantasized about how to decorate my future home, and researched babymoon destinations. My husband was even more attentive and loving than usual – I appreciated it.

At the same time, I distanced myself. I slapped my own wrist for searching up baby names before reaching a “safe period”. I would talk vaguely, in phrases of “if this continues”/”If the baby arrives”/”if everything goes well”. I knew a miscarriage could happen.

Miscarriages are more common than you may think. I’ve heard different stats thrown around, but the odds are around 1/4 pregnancies or 10-15% end up in a miscarriage before 12-20 weeks.

I knew things took a bad turn when my blood test results came back with a drop in hormone levels. My family doctor warned me that this is a bad sign and any search on the internet or Reddit increased my anxiety.

The night before my second ultrasound, I lost one of my earliest pregnancy symptoms – my boobs stopped hurting. This made me spiral and I had a strong sinking feeling that I lost the baby. But like a fool, a very small part of my heart hung onto a hope that perhaps at my ultrasound the next day, they will see something and tell me everything is fine.

Everything was not fine. The ultrasound confirmed that there is no baby to see. At 8 weeks, you should start seeing a peanut shrimp looking kind of thing. Mine was just a sac with a whole lot of nothing inside.

I left the appointment feeling so empty and confused. The entire week I had already prepared myself that I most likely had a miscarriage. The ultrasound confirmed to me that there isn’t anything really inside of me. I didn’t understand why I felt so sad.

Because I knew yeah, this is a sad thing. But I also thought I wouldn’t care because there’s no brain, no heartbeat, no nothing. I am sad over a sac of tissue and fluids. I am sad over something that I do not consider alive.

Was it my hormones being all different and wack? Was it the crushing feeling of disappointment because there were so many things I was excited for? Was it shame? Did I do something wrong? Did I lose the baby?

I truly have never felt such a strange and hollow type of mental confusion and sadness. But the challenges do not stop there.

Shortly after, I was referred to BC Women Hospital to talk about my options and next steps. Essentially, I had 3 choices:

1. Natural/wait for miscarriage to leave my body
2. Take medication to speed up the process
3. Do a small procedure called D&C

Like any normal person, I leaned towards option 1 and 2 prior to my appointment. However, during the appointment, the nurse let me know that options 1 and 2 will cause me to bleed roughly for 2-3 weeks. I thought wow, I do not have time for that. I would be back at work and how unpleasant is it to drive in traffic for 2 hours and sit in meetings in your Aritzia Effortless pants and be bleeding through a sanitary pad for half a month?

So I ended up choosing option 3 – the “small procedure”. I didn’t think much about it until the day of the actual surgery.

My partner was not allowed to be with me during this procedure. It was mostly communicated to me as a simple 15 minute procedure, but the reality is that it took 3 hours of my day from start to finish.

When I arrived at the facility, I was told to get changed into a hospital gown and be butt naked underneath with all of my hair stuffed into a hairnet. As I laid in that hospital bed next to a bunch of other hospital beds and curtains with women who were there for the same reasons as me, I suddenly started to feel nervous.

I mean this is a real hospital bed and the nurse hooked me up to an IV and everything (the IV felt pretty good). I had never been in one of these. I had only seen my friend Jackie lie in these beds when he was battling cancer. But now, I was the one lying here with people coming up to me, looking down at me with their careful voices and empathetic eyes.

Time passed by as I answered 100 questions about my health and 5 different health care professionals talked to me about what’s going to happen next and that none of this was my fault. Miscarriages just happen! Well yeah, it happens and it still sucks.

When it was my turn for the surgery, I was escorted into the operation room. When the doors opened, I suddenly felt fear.

The room was quite big with these giant UFO-looking lights on the ceiling. There were fridges of blood and a table full of sharp and scary looking tools. There was also like 6 people in there. Why was there so many people? I assumed it would be a quick open up your vagina and I’m gonna use a little sucky sucky tool and suck out the leftover dead baby stuff and it’ll only take 15 mins.

I looked at my anesthesiologist and actually started to cry because I felt afraid. My angel anesthesiologist looked at me and said, “Don’t worry. I will give you some fentanyl now. Hey Lisa – play that Bridgerton playlist!”

Within seconds, I was high on life and felt drunk. Time seemed to pass so quickly. Before I knew it, the operation was done and I was lying in another bed drinking apple juice and eating a cookie.

The rest of the days blurred past back into what my life was like pre-pregnancy. I felt my energy come back and I was no longer nauseous for no reason. Now, my goal is to get back into a healthy routine as my body recovers from both the surgery and the miscarriage.

Maybe when I publish this post, I will be pregnant again and this will all just be a prequel to the next chapter of my life. Maybe I will never get pregnant again. I don’t really know how this works or how it will end.

I just know that this was all quite unpleasant.

Sincerely, Loewe