August 10th

One year ago I miscarried a baby that I believed was a boy.  That day was the most painful day of my life.  I remember going to the doctor knowing that I was bleeding and cramping and knowing that I was either in the process of miscarrying or had miscarried.  Matt and I went into the ultrasound room where our doctor (who didn't turn the screen away from me...and for that I have been very thankful!) looking inside my uterus, I looked at the screen and saw NOTHING.  There was NOTHING in my uterus.  The little baby I saw two weeks before was gone.  She hugged me and said she was sorry (she meant it!) and left me to get dressed.  She sent me to have HCG levels drawn to make sure that my body was going to return to normal.  At the time there was a lab in the same building so Matt and I went downstairs to the lab where I sat and cried.  The lab gal called me back, looked at the lab she needed to draw, saw my tears and figured out what was happening.  She was very kind and gentle with me and told me how sorry she was.

Matt and I went home and after lunch he went to his doctor's appointment and I went outside to water my flowers.  As I was out there I thought to myself, I need to go to the store, I don't have any pads and I need stamps!  I went back in the house, picked up my car keys and was going to go to the car when I panicked!  I was so frightened to go anywhere alone, so I waited for Matt to get home and we went to the store.  I remember feeling so ashamed and not 'safe'.  My body had failed me.  I couldn't talk to anyone that wasn't Matt, I couldn't talk to my mom, anyone in my family, any of my friends, and most importantly I couldn't talk to God.  I sent a text message to my mom and my best friend telling them that I had lost our baby and even as I typed the message I felt so much shame.

Matt stayed home with me for the rest of that day and the next day and then he went to work for a bit on Friday.  I called my mom because panic had started to set in, I was alone and didn't feel safe.  Mom told me that I was ok and to have Matt come home so I texted him and told him to please take me somewhere to do something so I could get out of the house, he came right home and we went to a mall down in Colorado.

I went back to work the following Monday and tried not to freak out.  About halfway through the day I was starting to panic and I asked my boss if I could go home to my Matt where it was safe.  She had been through a miscarriage when she was my age and kinda knew what I was going through.  She let me go home and I cried some more.  The next couple of weeks I found that I only felt 'safe' when I was with Matt.  If Matt wasn't near me, I started to panic.

Over the last year I have faced many milestones, 20 weeks, where we would've found out the sex of our baby, our first Thanksgiving where we would've had a baby bump to show off, Christmas, our due date, Mother's Day, Father's Day, the day I conceived, the day I found out I was pregnant, and now the day that I miscarried.  This last year has been both a physical struggle as we've tried to conceive again, the emotional struggle as my heart aches, and the spiritual struggle where I have really struggled to find God in this pain and to trust that God's plan is much better than what I ever imagined.

I don't know if children are in Matt and my future, I pray that they are.  I feel like God would not have put the desire in my heart to be a mother if I wasn't meant to have my own children.  I know that I have changed in this journey to become a parent and I know that it's not all for the better but I am thankful that God gave me a partner to travel this journey with who puts up with my sudden bursts of anger, joy,  anguish, and tears.

When I woke up this morning and thought about what today means, I found that as I looked back on the events of the day I felt a certain amount of sadness, but not the earth shattering sadness I felt last year.  I have prayed for healing and it's here.  I know that when I think of the day I miscarried I will always feel sad, but I see it as a sign of progress that I don't want to crawl in my bed and escape the world awhile.

I am a work in progress and I pray that God will continue to help me grow, even if I do fight every step along the way!