My Natural Miscarriage Story – Part 1

This is my natural miscarriage story. It may contain graphic details of my miscarriage. Please use caution when reading this story if you are sensitive to material such as this.

I’ve put off writing this story for a year and a half. A YEAR and a HALF! I thought maybe if I didn’t write about it I could bury it so far down I could just pretend it was all a bad dream, but it wasn’t. I finally feel ready to tell my story and I think it needs to be told. Miscarriage is not talked about enough. I think that is because miscarriage is often an invisible pain, and I say that because other people can’t physically see your loss, so I don’t think they know how to respond. I’d had three babies before I miscarried and when I did miscarry I had no idea what was going to happen to my body, nor did I know what to expect emotionally. This is the story of my natural miscarriage…

It was December 2013. My husband Luke, had come home from a 12 month deployment to Afghanistan two months before. We’d always talked about having a fourth baby, so we had not tried to prevent anything. That first week I felt very odd. I was so exhausted. I remember going over to my grandparents’ house with the kids and falling asleep on their couch. I never sleep during the day. 

The next night a strange, yet familiar feeling came over me. When I’m in the first trimester of pregnancy, I have this weird nauseous, yet starving feeling. I feel like I need to eat carbs in order to not be nauseous. It was about 9 p.m., all the kids were tucked into bed and I just had to eat pasta. I made myself a bowl of garlic parmesan pasta with tomatoes. I said to Luke, “I feel like I’m pregnant, but I never get this feeling until I’m at least 7 weeks in. I haven’t even missed my period yet.”

The odd feelings did not go away the next day and I was beginning to wonder what the heck was going on. I’d had three babies before and I knew my body well. December 22nd was the day after our sixth wedding anniversary. Luke and I were finally able to go out to eat alone at our favorite Mexican restaurant. “I need to just buy a pregnancy test,” I said. So, we headed to Walmart and I picked up a cheapie test. 

I couldn’t wait to take the test and headed straight for the bathroom as soon as we got home. My period wasn’t due for another three or four days. If it was going to be positive, I expected the two blue lines to show up slowly, and be somewhat faint. That was my experience with testing early before.

I was shocked when the positive line showed up immediately. It was very dark. Darker than the control line. I started questioning myself. I was still nursing my one year old and my periods were usually very light. My last period was extremely light. “Could it be that I was actually pregnant when I had what I thought was a period?” I was so confused because my body never did weird things with my cycles. I’d never had bleeding during pregnancy. Intrinsically, I knew something was not right.

Just before Christmas I told my mom I was pregnant. I remember saying, “Please don’t say anything to anyone. Something just doesn’t seem right.”

By the time Christmas came I was not feeling quite as sick as before. By New Years’ I was spotting light brown. I started freaking out. I NEVER spotted like that during pregnancy. When I called my doctor’s office, the nurse assured me some spotting was normal. As a side note, it really ticks me off that they say that. I mean, it could be normal or it could mean a person is going to miscarry. I wish she would’ve said that and told me what to expect! Instead, all she said was if you end up in pain with bright red bleeding, go to the ER.

The very light brown bleeding continued on for days. At times it was barely there and I thought maybe it would go away. On January 5th I had light pink spotting. I KNEW something was wrong. Part of me was very afraid I may have an ectopic pregnancy. I really did not want to be home alone with my kids while my husband was working and end up with a ruptured Fallopian tube. 

And because this post is getting long, I’m splitting it up. Part 2 of my natural miscarriage story is up on the blog.