Hannah's Story

I don't think that I was a young woman who was ever really sold on the idea of being a mother or being a wife. But everything changed when I met Mike. He told me very early on that he really wanted kids, and that was the first time that I really entertained the thought. I don't think I really ever believed I would be a great mother, until Mike made me believe it. I think that was part of the whole loss process as well. That I thought finally that I could do it.When I found out I was pregnant, I was so excited to tell Mike. I bought these little Vans to give to him when he came home from work. It became everything... it consumed every decision, everything I ate, where we went, everything we bought. It was life changing, even if it was just for a short time. I really don't think I ever thought I would have a miscarriage. This baby was so wanted, and so loved. It was everything we wanted.I was at nine weeks when we shared the news online, and it was really only because we had gone and had a sonogram and heard the heartbeat. We had read the statistics that after you hear a heartbeat past eight weeks your risk of miscarriage drops below five percent, and we were just so excited. I remember leading up to that, I was picking one person a day to tell that I was pregnant because I was just so excited I couldn't contain it. It was almost a week after we heard the heartbeat and had the sonogram that we announced it on social media. And it was so shitty, because it almost felt like a jinx. It was ten days after that that we lost the baby. People were still "liking" the photo on social media. We were just two week shy of the second trimester.I don't think before I had even entertained the thought of us losing the baby, but I started spotting one day, and immediately scheduled an appointment. I was scared, but trying to stay calm, and I told Mike, 'it's just so I can hear the heartbeat again.' I went on my lunch break. But as soon as the nurse put the sonogram screen up I knew something was wrong. We had done this before and I knew what it was supposed to look like. I knew the heart wasn't beating. She was just quiet, and I knew... I knew what that meant.I just remember getting into my car and screaming at the top of my lungs. It was Mother's Day weekend.When I got home that night, I grabbed this blanket that Mike hates and always calls it the ugliest blanket, and we went into the back yard together wrapped up in this blanket and cried.I've lost things before. I've lost close friends of mine, grandparents that I was close with... I've known loss before but there's nothing that compares. There's nothing else. It's just this feeling of hopelessness, of defeat and disappointment and you hate your body for giving up on you and for failing you. And you also hate your heart because of some of the things you think. Things like 'why couldn't it have been her, why was it me? This was the perfect time for us, and she didn't even plan her pregnancy.' Some of the things you think are just so ugly.That was one of the hardest things for me to stomach. I hated my body for failing me. And I hated myself for becoming so vulnerable, for thinking this was something I could do. I also hated my heart for feeling some of these things that I never would have felt if I hadn't been so desperate. If I hadn't wanted someone to validate what I was feeling, and to tell me that it was ok. It was ok to be angry, to be angry at God, to be angry at other people for not reacting the right way.We went away the next day. There were too many reminders at home. We had started to transition the nursery already. I remember it being so surreal, walking around and thinking, 'no one knows there's a dead baby inside of me'. We scheduled the D&E the following Monday.

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Afterwards, I think the hardest part for me was the feeling that I had let Mike down... like I had lost the baby because I didn't want it bad enough. And I did want it. But at first it was the only way I could comprehend the emotions I felt. I had let down someone who made me feel like I could be a mother and that I'd be great at it.When you miscarry, there are so many awful things that people say without realizing they're being insensitive... One of the worst was 'at least you know you can get pregnant' and I just wanted to say fuck you. How do you even know I wanted to be pregnant to begin with? How do you even know I want to be pregnant again after having gone through this? That does nothing. Why would you even say that?But even worse were the things that people didn't say. We had so many friends who had congratulated us when we announced we were pregnant who didn't even acknowledge our loss. I mean, you can't imagine someone's dog dying and not saying anything to them. So for them to say nothing was hard for us. And it was hard not to have people acknowledge it as Mike's loss too. He had taken family medical leave, and when he went back to work, HR met with him and was telling him 'we're going to have to look over this paperwork and determine what kind of time your wife needed for this' and he just started crying and said 'what about me'.It was just so unfair. There was such an outpouring of love and support for me from other women who had experienced this. They were there with stories and advice, but there was none of that for him. You don't even have to say the words 'I'm sorry' if you want to reach out. Just acknowledge that you know that someone has lost something valuable to them. I think dads get forgotten a lot of the time.I think my sister was a really great example of how someone who has absolutely no experience with pregnancy loss can be extremely loving and supportive throughout this. And I really admire her for that. She had never experienced miscarriage herself, and even as a doula she'd never even had a client who's lost a baby, but she was so supportive, and always listened to me. She even gave me a necklace that had the sound wave of our baby's heartbeat. Ultimately, a support network is the most important thing to have. The more you talk to someone, the less bitter, the less angry it makes you. And I know that time heals a lot of things... But until then, it's important to take care of each other.

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This narrative has been compiled from conversational excerpts and edited for length and clarity with Hannah's permission.