Trigger warning: pregnancy loss and description of miscarriage.
Humans often seek comfort in routine, rhythm, and patterns.
It’s natural to shape our experiences into stories, helping us process life’s events as they unfold. This may be why knitting feels so soothing—the steady rhythm of knit-purl-knit-purl invites a quiet focus, allowing us to settle into our thought--and allowing me to navigate grief and healing. I recently found myself knitting this baby blanket once again.
I started this blanket five years ago when I found out I was pregnant for the first time. Immediately, I had a sense that I was pregnant with a boy, so you know my first stop after work was Hobby Lobby. I grabbed a cozy, but masculine yarn and began knitting a blanket for this boy I wanted to bring home, but never did.
If you've read around on this website, you'd probably read the short biography I wrote for myself. It paints a lovely picture of a woman with fertility struggles who found medicine that helped her get better. My reality is that healing has not been so easily linear. After the birth of my second child and fourth pregnancy, I experienced another miscarriage while she was about 7 months old. I was still breastfeeding and I chalked this loss up to a depleted body and lack of sleep. Fast forward, that baby is now over a year old and we were well ready to add another to the family. We got pregnant in one cycle and were thrilled. We waited a few weeks before telling people, just to feel more confident in the pregnancy, since all three of my previous losses occurred at 6 weeks or before. I had an ultrasound at 7 weeks and saw the heartbeat. We were thrilled and shared the news with our families and the kids we have at home.
I was determined for this to be my healthiest pregnancy yet. I kept working out, kept running, ate healthy and did everything exactly "right." I ran a 5k when I was 8 weeks pregnant and had my best race time since I was in college! I felt nauseous, but great. The nausea does not usually hit me until I am about 6 weeks along and this time it hit hard, but eased quickly around 8 weeks. I was so relieved to start feeling better. I was suspicious of feeling better so quickly, but my labs (HCG and progesterone) were rising appropriately and looked great.
At 9 weeks and 5 days, I noticed some brown tinged cervical mucus. I asked my midwife about it who told me not to worry since it was only one observation one time, so I tried not to panic. Thanks to my training, I was definitely panicking. I knew what brown mucus can mean, and with my history I was scared.
Two days later, I started spotting. A low-intervention person, I was surprised when my midwife told me to go to the ER for an ultrasound, but we went. Sitting in the ER, my husband and I tried not to panic and prayed that this was just a subchorionic hematoma or something else besides a loss. I was supposed to be 10 weeks to the day. A doctor rolled in the traveling ultrasound machine and pressed it firmly into my lower belly and before he said anything I knew. I saw it there on the screen: a big, black, blank gestational sac. A missed miscarriage. In layman's terms- my body has not figured out that the baby has already passed.
Spotting explained. Immediately, I was ready to go home, but they drew some labs and did an ultrasound on the stronger machine to be sure. We requested to let the miscarriage pass at home so they discharged me and we went home to tell the family and kids. Explaining a miscarriage to a two year old is not fun. 0/10 do not recommend.
The following day, I spotted super lightly all day until 4pm. I was leading a meeting for work, when I felt a huge gush of blood and bled through my pants into the work chair. I went home hoping it would slow down, but it did not. By 5pm, I had soaked 5 pads, two pairs of pants and through it all into our bed mattress, passed a tiny placenta and dozens of palm sized clots of tissue so we went back to the ER because I was losing so much blood so quickly. It was hard for me to stand up without being super dizzy.
They admitted me and gave me IV fluids and were monitoring how quickly I was losing blood. We had an ultrasound to confirm the loss. By 8pm almost all the clots and pieces had passed except one and blood was slowing down to a normal amount, so they discharged me and sent me home. I was told I'd follow up in two weeks in the clinic with an ultrasound again to ensure all the pieces came out properly. I was likely to spot for a few weeks and was now considered postpartum again.
Over the weekend, my husband was so wonderful, he barely let me walk on my own, I swear. He brought me meals and helped make sure I took it easy to recover from all that blood loss. We cried, we cuddled and began the healing process.
As the days went on, I felt a heaviness in my uterus. I assumed it was from the trauma of it all and chalked it up to needing pelvic floor PT. I made my appointment with Dr. O'Brien and went on with my days. I was barely bleeding- just spotting really for almost two full weeks when my blood turned black very suddenly and something was not right. I will spare you all the gorey details, but I landed myself in the OB clinic for another ultrasound.
The OB and sonographer both in the room, but again, I could see the mass perched just at the top of my cervix before they said anything. I had retained tissue, likely an infection based on my symptoms and would need a D&C. The OB was wonderful at giving me an overview of the options, but it boiled down to the procedure in the clinic or in the operating room. I called my husband and opted to do the procedure in the clinic since it was already late afternoon and I did not want to have to come back early in the morning. I was sick of hospital rooms, so I chose the quickest way out.
Things moved quickly. I listened to the OB outline risks of the procedure for me (she did a really great job), signed a consent form and waited for my husband to come hold my hand. Due to how long the tissue had been inside my uterus, they did an ultrasound guided D&C to make sure it was all gone this time. I got a couple injections of pain medications in my hips, which was by far the most painful part by the way, and the procedure began. Due to the medications, I do not really trust my memory of the procedure in details, so I'll just say it took only about 20 minutes from start to finish. Retained tissue was confirmed in the lab to be placenta. Antibiotics in hand, we went home, hoping to put this all behind us.
I teach fertility awareness. I know the statistics that pregnancies often end in loss even in a perfectly healthy adult. I see women who suffer losses all the time. I cry with them and I help them navigate their newly-weird postpartum without a baby. Somehow, that made it a little easier on me to grieve, I think. I know that I am just a fertility awareness teacher, but for most of you, I truly feel like friends. I felt less alone having walked through this with so many of you.
So, to wrap my reflections on all this, on the very final day of Pregnancy and Infant Loss awareness month, no less, let me say: if you are newly pregnant and unsure if it's "time" to tell people yet, if those people will give you support, do it. I am so thankful that we told everyone about this baby. I am so thankful that our families can mourn with us. People from our church have brought us meals, and so many things to help us.
Our earlier losses we didn't tell because we did not want to make people feel uncomfortable with it. And now I say: let them be uncomfortable with you. People have really stepped up more than I could have planned and for that we are grateful. If anyone else is going through this with me, my email is always open. Thanks for reading, and thank you for your prayers. I truly hope this reflection helps someone else out there going through a loss feel less alone.
In Christ's Peace,
Rachel P
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