On Miscarriage and Loss, part 2

This week, I would be 18 weeks and finding out the gender of my baby, if there was a baby…

When I was about 8 weeks along, I read Jessie Leigh’s posts about her miscarriage and D&C. I remember reading them thinking “how awful…I’m glad this isn’t me.” But I still felt a great need to read every word, and commit her posts to my memory. I had no idea how much they would help me when I went through my own miscarriage a few weeks later.

At 12 weeks I went in for my first appointment. There had been signs for 3 weeks suggesting something was wrong, but I was still experiencing pregnancy symptoms. When the nurse went to listen for the heartbeat, for some reason I wasn’t surprised to find there was none and left feeling numb.

An ultrasound was scheduled for the next week, where (at 13 weeks) I found out that the embryonic sac was empty and had stopped developing at 6 weeks. There was no baby.

I felt betrayed! My body had lied to me for over 7 weeks. All of the sacrifices I had made for the baby that wasn’t even there went through my mind…all the food I did or didn’t eat, all the naps I had to take from sheer exhaustion, every single prenatal vitamin I took…all of it made me feel utterly betrayed by my own body.

To be continued…