It's been a month now since this photo was taken. I was exactly eight weeks pregnant when I took this, just beginning to get the baby bump. My plan was to start here and then take a picture every four weeks, just to chronicle this pregnancy.
I never made it to the second photo...I lost this baby at ten weeks, two days. I am absolutely devastated. This is my first experience with miscarriage. My previous two pregnancies, while difficult from severe morning sickness and fatigue, otherwise went smoothly and resulted in two very healthy babies. I am always somewhat nervous the first trimester, since that is the time that "things can go wrong" and the chance of miscarriage is the greatest. Once I hit week twelve I breath a sigh of relief, in fact I feel more relieved with each passing week as it brings me closer to week twelve.
This time around felt no different, the all day nausea, bone-crushing fatigue, and near constant trips to the bathroom, while unpleasant, were indicating that the hormones in my body were doing their thing at sustaining this baby. I would be more worried if I had no symptoms at all. I sailed into week ten thinking: only two more weeks and I can tell everyone about this baby. Just fourteen more days. At this point only my parents, my mother-in-law, and just a couple other people knew.
I feel now like I became to complacent. I should have kept worrying. Only a couple days after the reassuring thoughts, the cramping and the spotting began. Blood tests done over the next couple days confirmed my HCG levels were dropping. The first check revealed the levels were somewhat low for ten weeks, a second test done only two days later showed they had dropped by over two thirds.
As of this post, the physical symptoms have disappeared. What sucks is that I feel like I am not allowed to talk about it. There feels like some sort of secret shame if I would even bring this up. So, I feel like I must suffer in silence, lest I put a damper on anyone else's good day. I feel some sort of unspoken pressure to "just get over it." If only it were that simple. I would love to just get over it and get on with my life, but I can't because I feel like I am not allowed mourn the loss of this baby, because I feel like I am not even supposed to acknowledge the existence of this baby.
