On Friday I found out that my 10 week old baby had no heartbeat. It was the worst day of my life followed by the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th worst days of my life. The loss of a child at any point from conception on is absolutely tragic and something that parents should never have to go through. For us, our experience was even more devastating because I suffer from endometriosis. For this reason we conceived via IVF after 18 months of trying to get pregnant naturally, followed by months and months of testing and fertility treatments, which ultimately ended with IVF. As part of our IVF process we did genetic testing on our embryos to make sure there were no abnormalities with our future babies. This genetic testing is supposed to significantly reduce the risk of miscarriage which is one of the main reasons we decided to go through with it. So after seeing our baby at 7 and 8 weeks with a perfect healthy heartbeat and knowing that it was free of genetic abnormalities, we thought we were in the clear. But 2 weeks later we learned differently.
During our whole IVF process, we have been very open with our friends, family, and really anyone who asked "so when are you going to have another baby?" I am not one to keep things private just because you are "supposed to" and neither is Townsend. So all of our friends, family, coworkers, and several random other people knew that on June 1, we would be finding out if we were pregnant. And we were thrilled to tell all of these wonderful people who had been praying for us, lighting candles, sending flowers, that IT WORKED!!
We kept everyone updated as the weeks went on and we got more and more positive news, slowly telling more and more people because we had been waiting so long for this news and were so happy to be finally sharing it with everyone.
When we got the news of our miscarriage, we were shocked and so upset to find out that despite all of our best efforts, all of the work we did to get to this point (I'll have to do a post on fertility and IVF to give you and idea about what I mean here), our baby did not make it. All of the dreams we had made for this baby, all of the plans we had, were over.
Soon we started to inform our friends and family and everyone who knew about our situation. And at one point, someone suggested to me, maybe next time dont tell everyone so that if something like this happens again, you dont need to make the rounds to "untell" people.
This struck a cord with me that prompted me to open my computer, while recovering from the D&C I had this morning, and write about how much I disagree with this comment. I have SUCH a problem, with the world telling women that we need to be private or secretive about infertility and miscarriages. I am allowed to feel grief, and sadness, and disappointment over the loss of my unborn child. I am allowed to feel like the world is unfair for choosing me to be a person who cannot conceive naturally, or by just looking at my husband a certain way. And I REFUSE to go at this alone, in private, without telling anyone. I believe that this mindset causes women to feel guilt, shame, and blame themselves for the experiences they have been through and circumstances they have NO control over. I will not continue to reinforce the stigma that women should keep it a secret, and whisper to their friends later on about how they suffered from a miscarriage, or struggled for years to conceive.
So, in order to stand by my beliefs, I am telling the world, "I just had a miscarriage and it was the most horrific experience of my life!" And I will also add that women go through much more difficult experiences than what I have been through when it comes to fertility, pregnancy, and childbirth. Hopefully this will bring comfort to someone who has been dealing with the pain from any of these things alone or in private and the courage to speak about it to friends and family if it is something that would make them feel better. We all have a choice, and I am choosing to speak up about it instead of quietly blaming myself in private. End rant. I'm going to take a nap now.