Danielle, Dave, Piper + August

St. Louis, Missouri

Danielle: All of the sudden within the last month, I have wanted to talk about it. I am a really open person, but when this started happening with us, I didn’t talk about it with anyone. My husband knew, obviously, and my mom and I are close, and some of those closest to us had no idea. I am always an open book so it was kind of weird to have this part of my life that I was not comfortable opening. It was kind of a weird feeling. So many people experience it but no one talks about it.

It started before we ever got pregnant with our daughter. When we started trying, you know, like Let’s get pregnant! We had just gotten married not quite a year before. Right after we got back from our honeymoon we took a pregnancy test and had a positive, but a really faint positive. And so I was like,  Oh, I’m pregnant! So I called the doctor and they said, Well, your levels are really, really low. I took another test and it was even fainter. Within a couple of days it was gone. So I started learning about what a chemical pregnancy is. And that is basically getting a positive and then it’s gone in a couple of days. So it’s a very, very early miscarriage. Some people don’t want to call it a miscarriage. The doctor said, Try again, these things happen and they may happen more than we even know as pregnancy tests have become so sensitive. So the next month we tried again, and it happened again. And you know I was like Am I the unluckiest person? What’s going on? It was that whole emotional roller coaster again of being excited and then kind of wondering is this normal? 

That June we got pregnant and it was sticking, so we were super excited. But there was this part of me that just couldn’t believe it, because I thought that it could happen again, but it seemed to be sticking. We went on vacation and I started spotting. We came home and it was confirmed that that’s what was going on. 

I called this new doctor, and had never met them before, and she called me back herself. I had been used to my other doctor, I would always get a call back from a nurse, which was so impersonal to me. I just felt like I wasn’t being taken seriously at all. I guess I had that intuition that something was going on, even though they said it could be totally normal. So at eight weeks I miscarried. You know, you don’t get prepared for what is going to happen. No one told me that I would have contractions. No one told me that I would pass a baby. And it was so traumatic. I mean, I’m a pretty strong person so it also took me off guard to be blindsided by it. I had my appointment and they said it looks like everything will be taken care of by itself. We had dinner scheduled with my in-laws that night and they were in the driveway when I went to the restroom and, you know, passed the rest of the baby which was pretty awful. They knew at that point so at least we were able to be comforted by them. 

But it was just really hard. Everyone around me at that time, all my friends, everybody was getting pregnant. And so I had this secret inside, that like things weren’t working for us. And then it’s like you feel like you’re stuck in a movie where its rainbows and couples skipping along pregnant. And here you are on the other side of it with things not working out. I take such good care of myself, I’ve always been healthy, and it’s like why is my body betraying me?

I had in the meantime done all this research, read about baby aspirin working for people. I asked my doctor and she said lets try that and progesterone. And you know its a shame that at this point everything is so technical, you know it is no longer a point of Let’s try to get pregnant and if it happens, it happens. Now I test to know when I ovulate, and it’s such a technical process. 

We tried that and boom, we were pregnant with my daughter. It worked. We were just, wow. Baby aspirin, who knew? Obviously I was paranoid the entire time I was pregnant thinking, when is it going to happen? So it was so hard to be excited as I was just worried when it was going to happen. I just kept pushing along and everything was looking great. I had lots of ultrasounds because of the prior losses. But everything looked great and we delivered a beautiful, healthy daughter.

Fast forward and we try and go for my son, and somehow, I guess having a child and mommy brain, I forgot about the baby aspirin being the magic trick. And so we go to get pregnant again and I was just on the progesterone and I had another very, very early loss. I was like I think we forgot something… So I took baby aspirin and then we were pregnant with our son. 

Now fast forward again. We have been trying again the last two months for baby number three, and I’ve had two losses the last two months. It’s back to, What’s going on? We thought we had the magic ticket, we thought we had it all figured out. So the last two months I get my positive, and within days it’s gone. So now this month I’m in the midst of other tests and ultrasounds.

So, I’m obviously at the point where I talk about it more because I’ve got two kids. I think before I had my daughter, it was the question of, Will I ever be able to carry my own child? It was so devastating because it was something I’d always known I’d wanted. And same with my husband. It was really hard not to feel like a total let down to my husband. Obviously we’re having no trouble with the conceiving part, we conceive almost every single month that we try. Which is…we feel very fortunate for that because there is a lot of couples that that is not the case. But then I felt like my body is failing us and not holding up it’s end of the bargain. Finally, I think I’m finding it therapeutic to talk about it. You know, I’ve been sharing it more with friends.

I’ve also had this big problem in my head of sometimes I feel, almost…not a phony…I mean I know I had the eight week pregnancy, but to talk about the other losses… Sometimes I feel like… Are people like, You know, that is not really a loss because it was so early. But just to think now, it’s happened a total of five times, that brings up, What is going on? That could have been five other babies. No matter what, it’s a loss. Obviously the one I had at eight weeks was much more traumatic. And now we have kids. So, it’s even hard to talk about, as you know, there is someone out there that has a harder story, and that has been through a rougher time. So then it’s hard to…. not, like discount your emotions… I don’t know, like feel like I should be this upset. I don’t know if that makes sense, but…

Dave: The one constant has been our relationship. Like Danielle said, it’s funny to go through like in the movies, get pregnant and they’re running around and nine months later it’s Yay! and here’s a baby. I just remember each time we got a positive it was This is good, right? We’re happy, right? You know, Yay? It’s a very reserved kind of Yay. It’s like a nervous Yay. 

It’s the weirdest thing. It’s such a shared thing for people who are trying, but it’s also uniquely individual.