Grief.

12:38 PM
By Beka Burke
40 Comments

I was pregnant.

And now I'm not.

Now I'm a statistic, a grieving statistic.

I can't tell you how excited I was to share my future little equestrian with you, my experiences as a pregnant rider, and this whole adventure of bringing a human into existence. But now I'm not. I also can't articulate the immediate and all-consuming love. I didn't expect to love the child until he or she was in my arms, but I loved my baby from the first stirrings.

On April 4th, Archie's birthday, the hubs and I went for my first ultrasound. 8 weeks and 5 days and super excited to see my little gummy bear and hear the hopeful 180 beats per second.

Only, there were zero beats per second, per minute, per hour. There was nothing. My little gummy bear was a tiny gummy bear, nothing compared to the google images of an eight-week-old fetus.

That bottom portion should show the spikes of a heart.

I bawled. I broke. I exited the back while my husband made a follow up appointment and I called my mom. Because mothers make it better, even if all she does is sob with you. I wanted to be that mother to my child, only my child didn't make it far enough to share my tears.

The plan, before my heart was ripped out, was to use Archie's birthday to announce my pregnancy. To this blog and to the rest of the world. Early, sure, but what could go wrong? Except everything.

I went back Tuesday of this week to have a follow up appointment. My friends have come out of everywhere to support me and I received a dozen texts before the appointment time, wishing me hope, wishing the doctor was wrong, sharing my plea for a miracle heartbeat.

But now I'm not pregnant. Because there was no heart beat.

Because the baby was smaller than she'd been the week prior. Because my 9 week and 5 day old baby had died three weeks ago.

Images aren't enough for me. Images can lie. Technology can hide. My body is a giant mess of organs and tissues and I wanted as much confirmation as science could provide, so I begged for blood work. After the second ultrasound, I sat in the tiny lab room and was stuck by the super proficient tech as we talked about tattoos. For a comparison of my HCG levels, to make 100% sure that they weren't secretly rising as my baby was apparently dying.

The way that HCG works is that it nearly doubles every two days from conception. These magical little pee sticks are just measuring the presence of HCG, as only pregnant women have it.

So I went back on Thursday, my 10-week mark, and chatted up the little technician and joked with her about the bruise left on my arm as she stuck a different vein. And my new friend walked the blood work over to the lab instead of waiting for the nightly pick up, so I would know immediately.

My HCG was 24k on Tuesday. By Thursday, it had dropped to 19k. My body is starting to clear up the evidence.

And because the emotional pain just isn't sufficient, my body will be working on the evidence, destroying the last remnants of my baby, over at least the next week or so.

If you've never had a miscarriage, you can't understand. It's a group no one wants to be a part of and that no one gets to leave. I'll never be the same.