One in four pregnancies end in Miscarriage. The estimated rate of miscarriages in the US is 50% in all conceptions and 15-20% in all confirmed pregnancies. Most miscarriages occur within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and research shows that the risk of miscarriage drops dramatically throughout the first trimester of pregnancy, usually from 9.4% at six weeks to 0.7% at 10 weeks.If you have suffered from a miscarriage in the past, your chances of having another one is 25%, and if you have had three consecutive miscarriages in a row, you have a 40% chance of having another miscarriage. There are several factors that can cause a miscarriage, but the direct cause is unknown. Miscarriages can occur up to 23 weeks, although your chances go down throughout the pregnancy, after 23 weeks and the fetus is over one point, it is considered a still birth.

Losing a child, any way shape or form, is something no parents should have to ever go through.

June of 2016 was when I went through the tragedy of losing a child I hadn’t even met yet. My period had been late by almost 8 weeks, and although my Boyfriend and I were stressed about taking on a fourth child, we were excited for our new adventure as a family. I hadn’t told my family or friends about the pregnancy, and neither had my boyfriend. We wanted to wait to find out more details so we could tell our families our exciting news. It was around June 13th (everything is still so foggy) when everything changed. I woke up in the middle of the night to severe cramping and I felt sick to my stomach. Now, I have given birth to two children, it isn’t a far cry when I say I literally felt like I was in labor, the pain was so intense and burning my insides, through my abdomen and my lower back. I hunched my way to the bathroom and sat down on the toilet, feeling the urge to push. Nothing was coming out, all that was on my mind was the terrible amount of pain I was in and trying not to vomit all over myself. I finally went to the bathroom, or so I thought, but when I pushed myself to my feet and wiped myself, all I saw was bright red. I looked into the toilet and saw golfball sized blood clots and the water and toilet bowl was stained red. A part of me just knew… I fell to the floor and just put my head in my knees and sobbed. I don’t know how long I was in that bathroom for, could have been hours for all I know. The rest of the night is still a haze, I still don’t remember how I managed to clean myself up and climb back into bed, next to the love and warmth of my boyfriend. The pain and nausea continued into the next morning when I woke up, and I was still bleeding a good flow bright red with clots here and there. Once my boyfriend was up and going, I decided to tell him I thought I was marrying because I had started to bleed that morning… I withheld from him the extremely of what really happened, I was so emotional myself I couldn’t put him through that, a part of me didn’t want him to know I was suffering. He had to work, so I had a friend of mine take me to the hospital. I was an emotional, nervous wreck the whole time. Sobbing, I explained to the lady at the admitting desk what was going on, and she had me in a room right away. The doctor came in and had me sent for an ultrasound. At this point, they had given me two shots of morphine so I was in no pain at all and I was able to think a little more positive about the whole situation. The ultrasound room was so cold, and so dark. The technician put the jelly on my lower abdomen, and all I kept thinking was “God, please, please let this Baby be okay, please let this ultrasound technician find a fetus.” The technician didn’t say a word to me, nor would he look at me. I kept asking if he saw anything, if everything was going to be okay, but he wouldn’t respond… And I knew. I just laid back on the cold, hard table with the flat pillow, shivering, as my face got hot and the tears started streaming down my face. I was quietly sobbing and mourning the loss of my child. The doctor told me that there was an empty sack, and that I was about 8 weeks along in my pregnancy. The doctor had no medical cause as to why I had miscarried.

The weeks following were extremely hard to bare and it was the most emotional time if my life. For the first week or so, I was so depressed I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat, my job was on the line, my relationship was suffering. I had felt so alone, and so misunderstood by everybody. You don’t talk about having a miscarriage because everybody either wants to throw you a pity party which really only makes you feel worse and even more guilty, or they want to blame the miscarriage on you and your life choices. So I never talked about it… I stayed behind closed doors to everybody, including my boyfriend, about how damaged I really was after losing my baby. MY BABY! I never got to see my baby, even on an ultrasound, I hadn’t even went to my first appointment for the pregnancy yet, and I lost my baby, I lost everything. I went into a downhill spiral of depression and shutting everybody close to me out. I felt so many emotions, grief only being one. I found myself being angry with my boyfriend for not being “emotional enough” through this hard time, and I still feel that way at times. I felt like I was the only one who really cared and the only one what was completely broken.

Through therapy and some proper medication, I have learned to cope with my loss. There are definitely days that are a lot harder than others, and of course I have the days where I think “what if?” What if I didn’t miscarry? Would I have finally had my son? What would I have wanted to name him/her? What would he/she look like? I think about all of those things quite regularly, and my therapist says I probably always will. Miscarriage is too common, and the scary thing is, while there are things that can cause a miscarriage, there is no defined reason as to why women miscarry, its one of those terribly unfortunate things that happen.

I have a beautiful angel baby looking down on my family and I, an angel I can’t ever forget. Even though we never got to meet, I loved you from the very start, and I will never stop loving you. “An angel in the book of life wrote down my baby’s birth, then whispered as she closed the book, “too beautiful for Earth”.”