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Miscarriage

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, miscarriage, pregnancy loss

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Today is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day so, I want to share my story. I wanted to remember my Declan, who I never got to hold in my arms. I don’t get to celebrate his birthday or his milestones. Instead, I mark time by mourning what could have been on what should have been his due date and on the day we lost him. I know it sounds morbid but these two days are all that I have. I don’t even get to talk about him. I’ll never have a picture of him on my wall or get to hear him call me “mommy.” I was robbed of all of it, even though I desperately wanted him.

I lost my third child on May 1, 2012. That day is seared into my soul and the wound is still as fresh today as it was that morning as we drove to the hospital. I was sitting there in the car with my husband but I felt more alone than I’d ever felt before. That day changed everything for me; not just my perspective of the world but who I was and how I would move throughout that world for the rest of my life. I’m not the same woman I was before that moment I was told that my baby no longer had a heartbeat. It’s not an easy story to tell, but I think it’s important. Maybe you’ve been through something similar, or maybe you know someone who has. Either way, I hope sharing this helps in some small way.

The Day It All Fell Apart

It was a Monday morning. April 30, 2012. Just another day, right? Except it wasn’t. I was 10 weeks and 4 days pregnant, and I had a routine ultrasound appointment to confirm everything was okay because I had some slight spotting. No big deal, I thought. I’d done this before with my other pregnancies. But the moment I saw the tech’s face, I knew. You know that feeling when your heart just… drops? Yeah, that. I wanted to disappear and stop everything.

I didn’t want to hear whatever they were about to say. I knew. She didn’t even have to say the words. But she did anyway. “I’m so sorry, we couldn’t find your baby’s heartbeat.” And just like that, my world imploded.

The Aftermath

You know what’s weird? How the world just… keeps going. There I was, my entire existence shattered into a million pieces, and outside that window, people were still walking their dogs, grabbing coffee, living their lives. It felt so wrong. Nothing felt alright. I didn’t even recognize myself. The grief and sadness were primal.

I remember sitting in my car afterward, just… wailing. I’ve never cried like that before or since. It was this primal, gut-wrenching sound that I didn’t even recognize as my own voice. And then, because life is cruel sometimes, I had to pull myself together to pick up my daughter from preschool. Can you imagine? Pretending everything’s fine when your heart is breaking into pieces? Even speaking was nearly impossible, the lump in my throat was choking me. How was I supposed to survive this?

The Silence That Followed

We hadn’t told anyone about the pregnancy yet. You know how it is – that fear of jinxing it. So when we lost the baby, it felt like this secret engulfing grief. Like I was carrying this enormous weight that no one could see.

I wanted to scream it from the rooftops. I wanted everyone to know that my baby existed, that he mattered, that I loved him fiercely even if I never got to hold him. But instead, I was quiet. Because how do you even begin to explain that kind of loss to someone who hasn’t been through it?

But this was too big to keep from those who mattered; those who loved us and would want to help shoulder the pain. I sent a text to our family and my closest girlfriends and told them the news. I dropped this catastrophic bomb that had just blew up my entire life and asked them not to contact me because talking to anyone, forming words and making sound, was too big an ask for me in this state.

Breathing felt like a privilege that I didn’t deserve. How could I go on living when my child could not? You’ve not known survivors guilt to this magnitude until you’ve had to go on living in a world where your beloved child cannot exist.

The Physical Reality

Let’s talk about something that people often gloss over – the physical aspect of miscarriage. It’s not just emotional pain; it’s physical too. I remember begging my doctor, “Please, get him out of my body.” I know that sounds harsh, but the thought of carrying my baby, knowing he was gone, was more than I could mentally bear. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was existing in feral and  primal mode. I just wanted to disappear from everyone and everything I’d ever known.I felt shame for my body failing my child. I know, rationally, that it wasn’t my fault but when you are desperate for answers to why something so heinous happens, your mind can go to dark places.

The next morning, at 6 AM, May 1, 2012, I was at the hospital for a D&C. It felt so final. Like I was saying goodbye before I ever really got to say hello. My heart was broken wide open and I was hemorrhaging every rational thought that I had ever had. I was so detached and in so much mental anguish that I couldn’t even muster enough care to even ask my husband how he was feeling. I didn’t have the bandwidth to care about anyone; I was just trying to survive the most traumatic event of my life.

The Lingering Pain

Here’s the thing about losing a baby – it doesn’t just go away. Even now, 12 years later, I can feel that lump in my throat when I think about my Declan. That’s what we named him. He existed. He was real. He was loved. He was going to be Declan Wayne, carrying on his father’s name, as is the tradition in his family.

I still get angry sometimes. Why us? It’s not fair, and it’s okay to feel that way. Healing isn’t linear, you know? Some days are easier than others, but that dull ache? It’s always there. My arms are always just a little empty; my heart always holding space for our little boy. Every happiness is tinged with a little sadness because he should be here to celebrate with us. I don’t think there will ever be a day when I don’t feel this loss; this longing for something that’s missing. 

Finding Light in the Darkness

I won’t lie to you – this journey is tough. There were days when getting out of bed felt like climbing Everest. But here’s what I’ve learned: we’re stronger than we know. Somehow, we keep going. We bend, but we don’t break.

You know what helps? Talking about it. Sharing our stories. That’s why I’m telling you mine. Because maybe, just maybe, it’ll help someone else feel less alone. And that’s something, isn’t it?

A Message for You

If you’re reading this and you’ve lost a baby, I want you to know something: Your baby mattered. Your grief is real. Your feelings are valid. And you are so, so strong.

It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to laugh and then feel guilty for laughing. All of it is okay. You’re navigating something incredibly difficult, and you’re doing it the best way you know how.

Moving Forward, Not Moving On

People talk about moving on, but I don’t think we ever really do. Instead, we move forward, carrying our babies in our hearts. We find ways to honor them, to keep their memory alive.

For me, writing helps. Sharing my story helps. And on October 15th, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, I’m lighting a candle. It’s a small thing, but it matters. It’s my way of saying, “You existed. You were loved. You are remembered.” Our Declan, he is at the top of my Dia de Los Muertos ofrenda. This is a sacred place of honor to me and when anyone comes to my house, they see his ultrasound scan. The one I insisted they take that morning before my D&C. The only tangible proof I have that he ever existed to the outside world.

A Final Thought

I know this is heavy stuff. But I’m glad you’re here, reading this. Because it means we’re in this together. We’re part of a club no one wants to join, but here we are. And you know what? We’re going to be okay. Not the same as before, but okay.

So, if you’re struggling, reach out. To me, to a friend, to a support group. Don’t carry this alone. And if you know someone who’s lost a baby, just be there. You don’t need to have the right words. Sometimes, just sitting in silence and acknowledging their pain is enough.

Remember, your story matters. Your baby matters. And you, my friend, you matter too.

Take care of yourself, okay? And know that you’re not alone in this. Not ever.

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how does miscarriage affect a woman

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Cry. It’s the only thing my body could do when I heard that cruel word – miscarriage. I wanted to scream, to rage against the injustice, but I couldn’t. The words stuck in my throat as an icy fist gripped my heart. All I could do was cry these deep, guttural sobs that seemed to emanate from the core of my soul. How does miscarriage affect a woman? It changes everything about it. 

My unexpected miracle, that little life I never dreamed I deserved, was gone. Snatched away far too soon. Those two bright lines on the pregnancy test had filled me with hope, excitement over the promise of a love like no other. But in an instant, that beautiful promise was shattered, coldly labeled as nothing more than a “miscarriage.”

I shattered right along with it. My heart broke into innumerable pieces as I struggled just to breathe through the anguish. Uncontrollable sobs wracked my body as despair closed in – I had never felt so lost, so utterly and hopelessly broken.

The Devastation No Mother Should Face

We hadn’t shared the joyful news with anyone yet, too petrified of jinxing our fragile happiness. I had seen my sister’s devastation after her miscarriage at 9 weeks. At 10 weeks and 4 days along, I thought I was safe. I wasn’t.

The haunting look on the ultrasound tech’s face said it all before she could speak the words – there was no flickering heartbeat, only a perfect, still little life within me. My world imploded in that moment. Waves of screaming anguish and denial crashed over me, the physical pain indescribable.

How Miscarriage Shatters a Woman

The torment of losing an unborn child is one of the most traumatic, heartbreaking experiences any woman can endure. It leaves you hollowed out and gasping, struggling just to draw your next ragged breath through the searing pain. An icy numbness seizes you as your hands desperately clutch your body, craving the feeling of that life within that’s been so cruelly torn away.

You want the world to stop spinning so you never have to move past this nightmare moment when your deepest hopes and dreams withered before your eyes. The thought of others pitying you, or trying in vain to rationalize your devastation, makes you want to curl deeper inward and shut everyone out.

Just let me be, you want to cry out. Let me feel the full weight of this mountainous loss, this betrayal of everything I’d dared to hope for. Don’t try to placate me – simply allow me to bear the burden of these primal, animalistic screams of grief tearing from the depths of my very soul.

Don’t touch me. Don’t speak empty condolences. Just let me drown in my darkness, my personal hellscape where life makes no sense and all dreams have turned to ashes.

For that tiny life was your promised dream of unconditional love, a blessing you never imagined deserving. And that promise now lies horrifically shattered, leaving you hollowed out, empty, and feeling irreparably betrayed by life itself. Words hold no meaning when every shallow breath reminds you of the indescribable anguish clawing at your lungs.

All you can do is cry.

When the Anguish Never Fully Fades

As you read these words, I was at the hospital having a D&C because I couldn’t fathom carrying my lifeless child within me a moment longer. I should have been joyfully sharing our pregnancy journey, but instead I’m laying bare the most visceral, agonizing loss a mother can endure. Writing it out is the only way I know to keep breathing through this all-consuming pain.

Even now, over a decade later, I can still feel the lump permanently lodged in my throat whenever I think of my Declan – the son I loved with every fiber of my being yet never got to hold, not even for a fleeting moment. His entire existence amounted to morning sickness, wistful daydreams, and countless tears. So much he’ll never experience – sunrises, sunsets, his sisters’ laughter, his dad’s soothing voice at bedtime, my whispers of unconditional love and pride surrounding him.

I’m angry and feel forever cheated, because he’s been gone longer than he was ever here. It will never make sense, this unfathomable cruelty, and I’ll never stop feeling gutted by the gaping wound his absence left behind. Even on my calmest days, the injustice still leaves me wanting to rage at the universe, to throw tantrums and scream at the sheer unfairness of it all. Why them and not us? Why don’t I deserve that happiness too?

This pain ebbs and flows, but it never fully goes away. There’s always that dull yet persistent ache, that sense of missing your own vital organ whenever you see other mothers and sons embracing the futures you’ll never experience. I mask it and pretend I’m okay, but I’m not. Not completely. Miscarriage leaves invisible scars that indelibly change you.

A Call for Compassion and Healing

If you know someone suffering through the unimaginable agony of miscarriage, don’t minimize their pain with platitudes or toxic positivity. Extend a compassionate embrace, a listening ear, and an acknowledgment that their grief is valid and whole. Let them cry, scream, and metabolize their shattering loss however they need to in that moment. Offer your presence, not pity.

Because having a dream, a part of your very soul, ripped away…it leaves a deep wounding that time doesn’t fully heal. We owe it to ourselves and each other to remove the stigma around pregnancy loss and create spaces where women can openly process their breathtaking pain without shame or judgment.

Share stories like mine, or those of your loved ones, to raise awareness. Let other women know they don’t have to suffer in silence and loneliness when their worlds have fallen apart. Validate their anger, their confusion, their soul-deep mourning, and remind them that this sisterhood of survivors has their back.

One compassionate conversation at a time, we can make spaces for healing and grace to coexist with the anguish that consumes us on our darkest days. Because even if we never “move on” from such a shattering loss, surrounding each other with empathy and love can ensure that no woman has to bear miscarriage’s tremendous burden alone.

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how my miscarriage still affects me, anniversary of loss, loss anniversary, moms mental health

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Today is May 1st and it’s the day I dread all year long. This year particularly because it’s been a rough year, month, week and day. 10 years ago today, I lost the baby who would have been our third child. It’s weird because on that day, a part of me did die. I am not the same woman I was the day before. I have been broken beyond repair and put back together with existential gorilla glue or maybe just sheer mother’s love because if it weren’t for my 2 living daughters, I’m pretty sure I would have just given up which is saying a lot considering that giving up has never been in my wheelhouse.

I’m sure that anyone who has never survived a miscarriage or loss of a child thinks I’m being overly dramatic but I assure you, when my baby died, I wanted to follow suit. I was shattered and felt betrayed by my body, by the world and even by God. God, is the one thing, I have always had an unshakable faith in but in those moments after hearing that my child no longer had a heartbeat, I wasn’t so sure what I believed anymore. I was angry, sad and felt like I had been completely blind-sighted by the events that were unfolding at an alarming rate. I felt vulnerable and helpless and worthless simultaneously and I hated myself and everyone else for that. Why couldn’t I make this better? Why didn’t I stop this? How could I have prevented this? Why me?

Why me, indeed. You know, I used to think that child and pregnancy loss was something that only happened to other people. I didn’t think I was better. I just thought that it didn’t happen that often and I was probably safe. There was no genetic history of miscarriages happening on either side of my family. For some reason, I thought I was exempt from the possibility even though rationally, I knew horrible things happen to everyone and I’m not special but maybe on some level I thought I was. I’ve survived a lot of tumultuous shit in my lifetime, maybe I just thought I deserved a break.

But when it happened and I was falling apart in every way possible, an invisible community of women who most I had never even met or spoken to previous to this catastrophic moment in my life, rallied beneath me and lifted me up in compassion, understanding and love. From the nurses who wheeled me back to my D & E, to the other moms who read this website and I’ve come to know and love over the years, to my IRL friends who comfortingly disclosed their own losses and even strangers who read my post, these women across the world swooped in like superheroes and saved me from myself. How could I give up when so many stoic women who had gone through this same thing were holding their hands out to me to give me the strength to carry on? How could I give up when I looked into the teary eyes of my little girls who knew but could not comprehend what was going on with their mommy? They needed me and I needed them to be my reason why and they were.

You know, I was so devastated on that day that I became the most selfish version of myself, I had to in order to live. I still feel really guilty about this but in my soul-crushing pain, I never once asked the Big Guy how he felt. I couldn’t even face him. He was the one person who I felt the most that my loss had let down. I’ll never forget in the minutes after finding out that our baby had died, my Obstetrician, Nina (yeah we’ve become close like that after the gynecological tragedies we’ve shared), made me call my husband and tell him so that he could take care of me. She saw me disintegrating before her eyes. She knew a total collapse was imminent.

He knew I was seeing the gynecologist and he answered the phone with his usual jovial, kind, caring voice, “How’s our baby?” I’m crying right now just remembering. When I told him, when I tried to say the words I felt as if I was going to choke to death. I tried to swallow them down and rewind time. Nothing made sense and everything was hazy. I felt like I had betrayed him in a way that I can never undo and that somehow made it all worse. My husband is my best friend and the one person I love and respect more than anyone else in this world. We’ve built a life together, we made an unspoken deal when we got married to always be there for one another and I feel like I didn’t keep up my end of the bargain.

But today has been 10 years since I lost our baby and it still hurts as much as it did on that day, even if I sometimes feel like I am the only one who remembers or commemorates the day. But how could I pretend that today is like any other day when I so vividly remember the devastation that I felt on that day 10 years ago?

Even though I feel completely alone in my loss, I know that I’m not. My husband gives me space and my beautiful, sweet, kind, compassionate girls are extra tender with me every May 1st because they know. They’re only 14 and 17 but they feel the love that I have for them on a daily basis and they sense the gravity of my loss; the void in my heart, the heaviness of the emptiness of my arms that tinges my life every day with sadness that grows just a bit heavier every May 1st. 10 years ago today, I died a little bit.

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miscarriage, national pregnancy and infant remembrance day

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Today is national pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day. I knew that I wanted to write about it but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. This morning, I heard the song that played as we drove to the hospital for my D & E ( A Thousand Years by Christina Perri). This week my professor assigned this video for my storytelling marketing class and suddenly, it all came flooding back like it was yesterday.

My miscarriage happened on May 1, 2012 but to me it feels like yesterday. I’m sure it’s like that for all moms. It’s a day that we never forget and a child that we think of daily, even when no one else remembers. Just because our children are not in our arms does not mean that they do not live on in our hearts forever. They do.

I would love to say that the pain of missing a lost baby or child gets easier but it doesn’t. It dissipates to a tolerable level of grief but it never goes away. There is always a void because something is missing; a huge part of ourselves, our child. I loved my baby from the first day I knew I was pregnant with him. I loved him as much and as deeply as I love Bella and Gabs, every bit as much.

It didn’t matter if I got to hold him or meet him, he was part of me. He grew inside of me for an entire trimester. He was endless possibilities and promises and then he was gone. Gone.

There was no medical explanation. He wasn’t sick. Everything was normal. He was perfect but his heart stopped beating and on that same day, in many ways, so did my own. I am not the same woman I was on April 30, 2012, and I will never be that woman again. When he died, so did a part of me. If you’re a mom who has experienced a pregnancy or child loss, you know exactly what I mean.

The news was so unexpected that we were completely blind-sighted. There was nothing I could do but cry. I have never felt so helpless, angry and sad in my entire life. There is no other pain like it and I can’t imagine a worse pain for a mother than losing a pregnancy or child. It felt like a betrayal, like the universe and my body cheated me and didn’t keep their end of the bargain. It felt like I was watching the whole thing from outside of my own body.

First, I was so overwhelmed with sadness and despair that I sobbed the most primal howling animalistic cry that I’d ever cried. The sound that emitted from my broken body and heart was pure grief. It was a loss greater than my own death because it was the loss of my baby. It completely broke me. I sobbed in bed for weeks trying to understand how to go on without my child.

Then, I went numb. Numb and quiet like the green sky before a tornado destroys everything in its sight. I had cried so much that I felt weak to my very soul. I became too tired and weary to fight my pain.

I looked into the face of my grief and gave myself over to my fate. I sank so far down into my despair that I thought I would never come out of it nor did I want to. Somehow, moving past it felt like disloyalty to the baby I lost but staying in it felt like a disservice to my daughters. 

So despite the hole in my heart, I lived each day looking for the light in my daughters’ faces. I forced myself to be there for them, even when I had to push myself back together and function in pain. Finally, one day, the pain became tolerable enough to live with.

There is nothing I can do to change what happened. I am not alone and there are so many women who observe national pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day because it is a day to honor the babies we loved and lost. I am writing about my pregnancy loss because it helps me process and it reminds others that my baby was here, he mattered and he is missed. It’s not a dirty secret and I didn’t do anything wrong. We need to remove the taboo of remembering the babies we lost and let moms speak freely about their experiences instead of holding all of that pain and grief inside alone.

Over the years, I’ve written many posts on my experience with my miscarriage. I will list them below:

The Truth about Life after Miscarriage

Surviving the Aftermath of Miscarriage

When a Tattoo Heals Your Heart

Some Things Change You Forever

Lost Baby

Chrissy Tiegen is Every Mother Who Suffered a Miscarriage

Why it’s so Important to Reflect on Loss and Grieve

A Thousand Years

The End of the World as We Know it

Lingering in Loss

An Unexpected Pregnancy at 40

Mommy, I want another Baby

The Worst Day of My Life

How to Survive the Loss of a Pregnancy

The Kindness of Strangers

A Sky Full of Paper Lanterns

I shouldn’t have Looked

For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn

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I stumbled on to the photo of Chrissy Teigen in the hospital losing her baby. In that vulnerable, raw, real moment, Chrissy Teigen is every mother who suffered a miscarriage and we love her more for bravely showing the world what pregnancy loss really looks and feels like. I felt it. I felt it in my soul. I’ve been there and at that moment, that black and white photo thrust me right back into those horrible moments of the most devastating seconds of my life. The visceral moments that changed me forever.

It instantly transported me to a place of raw emotion and primal pain. To a moment in time where I felt so helpless and vulnerable that I questioned if living was even an option. At that moment, I was so destroyed that I wanted to disappear because the pain was mind, body and soul-shattering. The loss was too big, it was incomprehensible and almost unsurvivable. That photo of Chrissy Tiegen transcended time and space and in that moment, it wasn’t 8 years ago, it was right now. I was back there, begging and pleading for my baby to live for this not to be real. With the photo below, the wound was ripped wide open, all the air in the room was gone and all I could do was cry in commiseration.

National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day , Never Break, Chrissy Teigen, Miscarriage, John Legend,

There is nothing else you can do for a woman who has lost her child. There is no soothing or salve for our souls. Our entire world has imploded and our precious baby was the collateral damage. The thought of that kind of cruelty is unbearable, innumerable and unrelenting.  All we can do as mothers is hold on for dear life and hope we are not too broken to continue because when this happens, absolutely nothing in our lives make any sense. There is no reason and no rationalization, there is only regrets for things to never come. There is mourning for what will never be and that never ends.

READ ALSO: Surviving the Aftermath of a Miscarriage

I broke on that day. May 1, 2012. The breaking started on April 31 at 10:30 am when I laid on the cold examination table in the ultrasound office and saw the expression on the tech’s face. I’ll never forget the blank, pale silence of her face. The “without words” expression that told me all that words would fail. Words made no sense in those following moments. I heard her compassionately give me the worst news of my life but it was too quick, I couldn’t process it.

I played along and held my breath as she silently led me the back way to my obstetrician’s downstairs waiting room. The silence was deafening. I was sure that at any moment, I would collapse to the ground and die myself. I willed it so. I would have preferred anything to the hellish pain I felt in my soul in those moments. I felt hopeless. My body was betraying me and my heart was breaking and there was nothing I could do to save either of us.

We arrived in the doctor’s office, I sat under the bright overhead lights afraid to breathe, move or speak a word…waiting; suspended in time, enveloped in disbelief before I even heard the words spoken aloud. It was like waiting for a bomb to detonate with no way to escape.

I braced myself to be inundated with pain.

My obstetrician came in, donning that same blank poker face as the tech as she spoke to me with pity and compassion on her breath. She said the words I tried my best not to hear. “Debi, I’m so sorry, we couldn’t find your baby’s heartbeat.” I felt trapped in a nightmare. God, please wake me up and let my baby be alive. But, no reprieve came for me on that day.

How could she tell me so calmly that my child didn’t have a heartbeat. The child I was growing and loving inside my body. The baby we had hoped and longed for since Gabi was born. After that, my mind went numb. I just sat there, deflated and defeated. My world was crashing down around me and my only weapon against self-destruction was to be as quiet and as still as possible and to hope the moment passed and this was all a bad dream. But it didn’t.

The only words I could whisper, after being informed that my pregnancy had ended but my baby was refusing to leave my body and there was no idea when it would happen, was,

Please get him out of my body.

I realize that sounds harsh but my mind was breaking and the thought of holding on was too much to bear.

I wanted to run as far and fast away from this day and those events as possible.  I know it sounds cruel that my first thought was to get the baby I lost out of my body but the wait and see if my body would do its own thing plan at almost 11 weeks was more than my mind could handle. I was so broken the only thing I could believe in was rebuilding myself. I’m not one to sit in my brokenness. This break could be the one that permanently left me immobile. We scheduled for the next morning at 6 am. In less than 24 hours, the dream would be irrevocably broken.

What came next, was more than my heart could tolerate. My doctor, seeing my state, and knowing that I had come to this “routine” visit alone, informed me that I must call my husband and tell him because she didn’t want me to shoulder the entire burden alone. She was witnessing my undoing and her only mercy was to demand that I let someone help me. But in that trapped moment of unfathomable pain, I felt shame and failure. My mind knew she was right but …

my heart didn’t want to accept it because once I said it aloud, it would be real.

I dialed the phone, in complete silence. I could barely breathe for fear that I’d start sobbing and never stop. That was the hardest phone call I’ve ever had to make. He knew I was at the obstetrician. He answered the phone, “How’s our baby?” The words stuck in my throat. They were choking me. I couldn’t make my mouth betray my heart with the words. My eyes burned with tears that seemed to be never-ending. Finally, I choked out the cruelest words a mother could ever have to say. That was the moment I turned from a mother losing the most precious thing she has to a feral animal. I ran out of the office to my car as fast as I could and sat there and wailed in the most primal way that I have ever cried in my life. It was harder and louder than I knew possible and I didn’t recognize my own voice in those minutes before I had to leave to pick Gabs up from preschool.

Every Mother Who Suffered a Miscarriage knows this moment of restraining yourself from giving yourself over to the pain entirely in order to be stoic for the people you love.

That’s the thing; my world was falling apart but the rest of the world was carrying on and there was no one else to pick her up from school. The only thing I could do was lose my mind in the car, by myself, outside the obstetrician’s office full of round bellies and sob alone, it was the only comfort I was afforded. I changed on that day. I am not the same woman who went into that office morning. She’s gone and will never return. Then, I picked up my daughter and pretended for the 30-minute ride home that I hadn’t just experienced the most devastating moment of my life. It felt like an out of body experience that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

That’s where I went when I saw the photos of Chrissy Teigen. What I’m trying to say is that I know that pain on her face, many women do, and though we cannot take that immeasurable pain away or make it better, we can hold her up in love and commiseration. She will never be alone.

National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day , Never Break, Chrissy Teigen, Miscarriage, John Legend,

Tonight, John took the stage and sung Never Break and dedicated it to his wife. I can’t imagine how hard singing that song with the weight of what they are going through right now. My heart goes out to her and John because that is the hardest thing a couple can go through. Wishing them both some peace.

I’ll be honest, when I see those pictures, I see myself and I want to protect her and make the world leave her alone because in the end, the burden of this loss falls heaviest on the mother because, as a mother, we wouldn’t have it any other way. No two people experience or process a loss the same but in the end the result is the same, we are changed for the rest of our lives.

READ ALSO: Why It’s so Important to Reflect on Loss and Grieve

I just hope that Chrissy and every woman who has gone through, is going through or will go through a loss, please give yourself grace, allow yourself to grieve for as long as it takes, feel your feelings and take care of you but be willing to let those who love you a little space to get into your crumbling world and remove some of the rubble, at the very least hold you while you cry. It never stops hurting but the pain does get tolerable. The wound grows a scab but there will always be a scar where our babies should be.

The thing about moms and our hearts, even when it breaks, it repairs and replenishes; it grows. But we moms, we don’t actually break, we just bend really, really fucking far. In the end, we survive and live to hold the hand and heart of the next mother whose world gets blown up and through this inexplicable pain, we become salvation and sanctuary for another woman. This is a small blessing that you cannot fathom when you are in the beginning of it but you will become stronger from surviving it; stronger to help someone else. Your pain will not be wasted entirely. You are a warrior, you have survived the hardest thing you’ll ever need to endure.

Chrissy Teigen, We love you. We are you. You are not alone.

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signs of miscarriage, miscarriage symptoms, causes of miscarriage, grief, sadness, loss, miscarriage, lost baby, how to carry on after a miscarriage

I’ve realized that loss never really leaves you, not truly; not the big ones. They remain right beneath the surface, just deep enough for you to get by, to go on living in that forever changed, never the same way only the loss of someone you love more than yourself affects you. A miscarriage or losing a baby/child is different than losing anyone else.

Last night, I watched the movie Return to Zero on Netflix. I stumbled into it like a drunk falling into a wall and then I stayed there for the duration because even though it hurt when the wounds were reopened, it was familiar. The knowing washed over me like a warm surf pulling me into the undertow. Gasping for breath, the pain of drowning reminded me that I was alive.

READ ALSO: All I Can Do is Cry

I think I’ve been living in a protective state of comfortable numbness for the past 7 years. Maybe it’s where I need to stay for the rest of my life because I can’t let myself feel everything, all the time. I can’t live like the exposed nerve that my soul sometimes is. I mask it with levity. I tell myself that I’m letting go but then I see something, hear something or remember something and my dam of grief breaks wide open and it all comes flooding back. Vulnerability replaces the protective cover around my heart.

Return to Zero is a movie about a couple who loses their child in utero at 9 months from a health complication. The baby’s kidney develops a cyst and the organ bursts. The baby, thought to be completely healthy and normal, dies. No rhyme, no reason and no explanation that can ever console a grieving parent’s heart. Just immeasurable and unfathomable loss. The kind of loss that swallows you up whole. The kind of loss that makes it painful to breathe. The kind of loss that is almost not survivable.

A couple of things have happened in the past month that has really brought it all up for me again and least of all, not being that I am less than a month away from the anniversary of my own loss. I know it sounds weird to remember and mark a day of loss but when you are left with a loss this big, that no one else seems to feel as strongly as you, you feel like you have to hold on to that memory with everything that you are or your baby will disappear forever. You have to fight for it. If not, it will be as if he/she never existed and that is too much to bear so you hold on because, as a parent, you feel like it is your responsibility to that child to make sure the world knows they were here. You are the keeper of their legacy; however short lived it was.

READ ALSO: The TRUTH about Life After Miscarriage

Last month, my friend lost her full-term baby to Trisomy 13. She went through 9 months of unimaginable hurt and loneliness, culminated in the worst kind of pain. That is what losing a baby is like, you feel so alone with your anguish and emptiness. A different friend lost her baby soon after announcing. Other friends are still learning to live in the losses of their children who are gone. Yet, another friend is struggling with fertility and I keep finding myself getting angry because I am afraid that she is going to get pregnant and experience loss. I was so afraid after my loss that I never tried again but I don’t want my fear to color her experience. There’s just been a lot of things going on that have been reminding me of my own empty arms and since I had to have a hysterectomy last fall, the finality of it all has been hitting me harder than I ever could have anticipated. It’s been 7 years since my miscarriage with our third child but the weight of that loss is as heavy as it ever was.

I don’t cry every day anymore. I don’t wear my grief like an armor these days. It’s much more subdued and quiet but it is there and can be felt as strongly as it was on May 1, 2012 in my heart. There are certain things I will never forget; the minute they didn’t see the heartbeat, sitting in a waiting room full of beautiful bellies full of living babies as I sat there with my silent womb. I remember calling my husband to tell him and no words coming out of my mouth, the primal screaming and sobbing that I did alone in my car in the parking lot as my heart broke in between the doctor’s appointment and preschool pick up, the emptiness that I felt in my soul that afternoon, my 4-year-old hugging and kissing my belly telling the baby she loved him at 4  in the morning before I left to the hospital for my D&E, A Thousand Years playing on the seemingly eternal drive to the hospital, the sick child I saw at the hospital that morning and feeling sorry for her mother.

Surviving the Grief, Loss and Aftermath of Miscarriage

I’ll never forget the way I refused to go ahead with surgery until they performed one last ultrasound, the photo I made my husband snap of the ultrasound machine of our baby, the helplessness in his eyes, the loneliness that I felt as they wheeled me back to surgery as the nurses lovingly told me of their own losses, the sadness I felt when I saw their eyes fill with tears and the helplessness that I saw on my brothers’ faces when I found them waiting with my husband in the waiting room while I was in surgery. The love that I felt for each person who tried to hold my heart and protect me from the inevitable pain that was to come next.

The emptiness that emanated from my womb throughout my entire body. The endless crying and guilt. The disappointment at my body’s failure. The blame that I wholly accepted. The solitude and hatred that permeated every single thought for those coming weeks. Laying silently in stillness feeling unworthy of breath. Looking into my daughters’ eyes and seeing the confusion. Fake smiling to survive. People telling me that God has a reason. Someone asking me if I was relieved. People telling me that my baby was in a “better” place as if my arms were not good enough. Having misplaced love and anger and not knowing what to do with either. Trying to be normal for everyone else.

READ ALSO: When a Tattoo Heals Your Heart 

Celebrating my husband’s 37nd birthday, 2 days after my D&E, because I refused to let my pain make things weird. Celebrating my Godson’s communion that same weekend after sending a text to everyone not to bring up the miscarriage to me. The next weekend, going out for our 13th wedding anniversary and celebrating Mother’s Day. The next weekend, attending my 4-year-olds preschool graduation, my 6-year-old’s violin concert and a few days later throwing a party for my 5-year-old with all of our friends and family; the same party where we were going to announce our pregnancy. That Thanksgiving, the due date of what might have been, and someone asking me, “don’t you miss the pitter patter of little feet running around the house?” as my nephew played and I had to run to my room to not break down in front of a house full of people. Between all of these brave faces I was putting on for everyone else, I was crumpled up in a ball sobbing in my bed. I stayed in my room alone as much as I could. I felt like I was dying. Secretly, maybe I hoped that I was.

I’d pushed all of these feeling down. I’m scrappy and I’m good at being stoic even when I just want to give myself over to my grief. Some parts of Return to Zero felt like watching it all happen to someone else but all the same things were being said and I could relate to the hurt, the pain and the fear. My heart cracked wide open for the first time in years and all that pain resurfaced. It flooded my heart and every thought. That’s why I’m writing this post. I know that there are so many women who have lost a pregnancy, a baby or a child and it all really is the same to a mother; we’ve lost the possibility of what could have been and that changes you in ways you never expected. We are irrevocably and molecularly changed from the person we were up until the moment we experienced that loss.

READ ALSO: Some Things Change You Forever

I’m damaged. I’ll never be who I was before the words, “I can’t find a heartbeat” were whispered to me in a poorly lit, sterile room on the second floor of the women’s health center by a kind woman who didn’t know what else to say as I stared back at her begging her to change her mind and take it all back. You are not alone. We might all process it differently and it might look different from the outside but on the inside, we are gutted and speechless and feeling more helpless than we’ve ever felt before.

As much as Return to Zero broke my heart, I found comfort in the fact that someone wrote an honest screenplay that so accurately portrays the realness of loss; the humanity of it all. The primal part of loss that no “I’m sorry for your loss” can ever salve. Losing a child is losing yourself in the world, becoming completely unrecognizable, and being sentenced to a lifetime of living. It’s cruel. You will survive and you will never forget. Tiny time bombs of grief will unexpectantly go off for the rest of your life and you will find yourself a broken mess at the most inopportune times but this is your heart reminding your mind not to forget. This is you living. This is you loving your baby forever and there is something beautiful in that pain; something comforting.

How do you process loss?

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New Mom Monday, Pregnancy, unexpected pregnancy, the truth about an unexpected pregnancy at 39

A few years ago, I wrote a post called, Unexpected Pregnancy at 40, What Would You Do? and it was about my friend who was pregnant. What I didn’t disclose in the post was that I too was pregnant. I had my own unexpected pregnancy at 39 and had no idea what I would do and I couldn’t talk about it on the blog. I was waiting until the following month to tell my family and friends at my daughters’ 5th birthday party. Unfortunately, I lost the baby before I got the chance.

Over the years, many people have contacted me asking for advice or wondering what I would have done. What I did. This is the first time I am writing about this part of our third pregnancy and having an unexpected pregnancy at 39. I think mostly because I felt so guilty.

I realized I was pregnant at my oldest daughter’s 7th birthday party, March 10, 2012. It was the strangest thing, I was holding my newborn nephew and something in me knew. I just knew I was pregnant. I was sure of it.

READ ALSO:  Unexpected Pregnancy at 40, What would you do?

The next day, when I dropped the girls off at school, I went directly to the Walgreens and took the test in the bathroom there. In fact, I took 3. We were living with my in-laws who had teased us at their relief that our family wasn’t growing. I was really nervous to find out that I was pregnant during such a time of upheaval in our lives. Even though we had previously planned on a third child. We hadn’t planned it now. Not like this.

When I found out that I was pregnant, I was shocked. I stared at the pregnancy test in disbelief and I may have vomited if we’re being honest. I didn’t even know how to react. If the circumstances had been different, we would have been ecstatic. But living in a room at your in-laws with two small children, trying to sell a house in another city, with no privacy and nothing of your own, made the thought of all of it daunting. We didn’t know what we were going to do.

A million questions and scenarios went through my mind.  What if something was wrong? I was 39 years old. How would my in-laws react? Financially, we were strapped. Could we afford this baby? If something was wrong, how could we pay for it? Could we burden our children with that? Did we want to start over? Could we? Would our in-laws ask us to leave?

READ ALSO: Unsolicited Co-parenting

Would I have to go back to living in our house in South Bend without my husband (back to commuter marriage life)? Could we afford a third child? Were we too old to do this? Maybe this was too much. But could I even consider the other option? I pondered all the options from the time I found out I was pregnant until I saw the doctor. I was.so.stressed.out.

The doctor wouldn’t see me until I was 8 weeks pregnant. We saw the baby’s heartbeat. We left the doctor’s office, overwhelmed and scared shitless about what the future would bring. We knew there would be obstacles and opposition but we were excited. It was the third baby we had always wanted, just not at the time we had planned. We drove home smiling and discussing names for boys and girls. Declan or Luchedio for a little boy and Graziella for a baby girl. We were hopeful and we were in this together. So no matter what the world threw at us, we had each other; the 5 of us. But for now, it was just for the Big Guy and me.

Those first 11 weeks were like an out-of-body experience. I was hiding the biggest secret of my life from everyone I knew and loved, including you, my readers. On top of being overwhelmed and scared, I felt like a complete fraud talking about every inane thing under the sun except for the only thing I wanted to write about…my pregnancy!

READ ALSO: Things No One Tells You about Pregnancy

The Big Guy and I fully passed the consideration of what to do and were full-on in the embrace, the fact that we are going to be parents to 3 while living in our in-laws’ house, decided to surprise everyone at Gabi’s 5th birthday party that May. I would have been 15 weeks and 3 days at her birthday party.

We planned on giving her a t-shirt that said “Big Sister.” We were so excited to do this for her. Gabs had been begging to be a big sister since she was 3-years-old. Due to the commuter situation (the Big Guy working and living in another state), since she was 2, the opportunity had just not been there before. We had wanted it but neither of us wanted me to be pregnant while we weren’t living under the same roof full time. We have always been 100% parenting partners. Surprising her with the news on her birthday was going to be perfect.

We imagined how excited our family and friends would be. We’d have support, even if it was a little cramped at my in-laws. We were excited. Like I said, in the beginning, we were terrified and it took a lot of soul searching (and hearing a heartbeat) to get us on board with a solid yes. I was so excited to get to be the mommy to 3 children. But then…

On Monday, April 31st, after a weekend of slight spotting when I wiped, after dropping Gabs off at preschool, I stopped in the parking lot of the Dunkin doughnuts near her school and I called my Ob/GYN’s office. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t worried. This happened with every one of my pregnancies. It was going to be nothing. I was being silly. But, like my mother always says, better to be safe than sorry. So, I called and they had me come right in for an ultrasound. I wasn’t worried.at.all.

There was no heartbeat. There on the screen, my perfect baby. No.heartbeat. I never wanted this baby more. A room filled with deafening silence as I tried to understand what I was seeing. I was alone. The tech wouldn’t tell me anything, only that she needed to take me to see my doctor. I didn’t bring my husband because I didn’t think there was anything to worry about.

READ ALSO: Some Things Change You Forever

She took me down the back stairs to avoid the main lobby. My world was collapsing. I felt like a mad, hysterically silent hostage in my own body. I couldn’t make a sound for fear that I would start crying and never stop. I couldn’t blink for fear that all my pain and loss would escape from my eyes and drown all those perfectly round bellies surrounding me. I couldn’t make eye contact for fear I might die. All I could do was sit in silence to contain the floodgates.

Then, all I could do was cry.

So what’s it like being pregnant at 39? It’s terrifying and it’s beautiful and it’s scary and amazing. But only you can decide what to do about this pregnancy. There is no wrong answer. You must do what is best for you and your family. Not what society or your friends or family expects you to do. A baby is forever. Being a parent is forever. I still consider myself the mom of 3 children and I think about that baby every single day but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong if you decide that you can’t or don’t want to have a baby at 39 or 40 or ever.

READ ALSO: How to Survive the Loss of a Pregnancy

You know YOU better than anyone. Do what will make you happy. Do what you can handle. And don’t let anyone else stress you out or bully you into a decision because that will be a disservice to you and your baby. If you’re not all in, that’s ok. No one is judging you. You are the one who has to live with whatever you decide; baby or no baby, it’s a lifetime commitment.

I didn’t get what I wanted in the end but I felt guilty for many years for the fact that I even considered there was a decision to be made. I felt like God was punishing me for stopping, however briefly, to consider there was an option other than having the baby. I’ve since realized that I wasn’t punished for having free thought. I don’t know why it happened. I never will. I know there was nothing wrong with my baby. I know that I wanted that baby as much as I’d ever wanted the other two. Mostly, I know that the choice to have that baby was the right thing for us even if the universe had other plans.

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Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, Miscarriage, loss, grief, the truth about motherhood, stillborn, infant loss, pregnancy loss, angel baby

International Pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day is a day of reflection for many parents. Sadly, there are so many parents who have lost infants and suffered a miscarriage that the frequency with which it happens is staggering.

Never heard of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day? That’s ok. I wish no one was having miscarriages or losing infants. It’s a day of remembrance for parents who have suffered miscarriages, delivered stillborn babies, sudden infant death syndrome victims and other causes of child loss.

“National observance of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month … offers us the opportunity to increase our understanding of the great tragedy involved in the deaths of unborn and newborn babies. It also enables us to consider how, as individuals and communities, we can meet the needs of bereaved parents and family members and work to prevent causes of these problems,” Ronald Reagan.

Before we lost our baby, I never knew there was a Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month. I had no idea knew that 1 in 4 pregnancies ended in miscarriage.

But once I miscarried, everyone I knew had a story. It’s something that happens to a lot of us that none of us talk about. It made me sad to know that all of these women were walking around the world with their hearts broken in a way that brings a pain and anguish that only losing a pregnancy or a child can bring.

The grief is one that you cannot get passed. Time can make it easier to survive, but you never get over losing a baby.

According to United States estimates, roughly 15 to 20 percent of all American pregnancies end in miscarriage in early pregnancy. Miscarriage is defined as the loss of a fetus before the 20th week of pregnancy.

More than 80 percent of these losses happen before 12 weeks. Mine happened during week 10.

READ ALSO: All I Can Do is Cry

I don’t talk about my miscarriage very often anymore. It’s like reopening a gaping wound in my heart to remember too vividly. But it remains, right beneath the surface, like a ghost haunting me. Today, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day,  I want to talk about it.

My pregnancy was unexpected. It wasn’t planned. We were living with my in-laws, waiting for our house to sell in another state. The Big Guy and I had been living apart for 2 years because of the Big Guy’s job. It just wasn’t doable anymore.

The Big Guy and I wanted another child. We’d planned on another child, after Gabi. When Gabi was almost 2, the economy was terrible and the Big Guy had to work out of state. We only saw each other on weekends. We had to shelve the idea of baby #3.

2 years later, living in a bedroom at my in-laws’ house, we were pregnant. Feeling every bit of the scrutiny and judgment one feels when, as an adult, living in someone else’s house with little kids. There were stepping on toes and disagreements on child rearing. It was a lot of good intentions gone awry. Mostly it was a lot of biting of tongues and hurt feelings.

I found out that I was pregnant at quite possibly the worst timing ever. Especially since there was such a lack of boundaries that things like, “ I hope you guys don’t get pregnant. We can’t fit anyone else in this house,” were tossed around, half teasingly and half-truth.

There we were holding this secret. We were excited about the secret baby of ours. More than anything, I was thrilled to be able to give our Gabi the one thing she was asking for, a baby brother or sister. I could stomach all the rude comments just to know that on her birthday, I was going to surprise her with the one thing she wanted most.

READ ALSO: Mommy, I want another baby

It was hard walking around a house, where it had openly been said that another child would be an even bigger imposition than we already were. It was hard keeping it hidden with extreme morning sickness and trying to appear as normal as possible when keeping the biggest secret I have ever had; the most amazing secret.

A few weeks before my big planned reveal at Gabi’s 5th birthday party, I began to spot. It was week 10 and 4 days. I had spotted with both previous pregnancies. I wasn’t worried but I called the doctor anyway, just to be sure. Then, it happened. My secret miracle was lost.  I had a miscarriage, all the world receded to the background and all I could feel was the loss.

It felt like I had been betrayed. I felt guilt for being scared when I first found out that I was pregnant; shame that I had let their words weigh on my heart. It felt like somehow, I was responsible. Did I allow it to happen? Like maybe if I would have spoken up at the time and told them I was pregnant and demanded they accept it, maybe my baby would still be alive. But that was all lies that my broken mind told my shattered heart to survive; to make sense out of one of the most tragic moments of my life.

What was going to be a pregnancy announcement turned into a miscarriage announcement. I felt compelled to let everyone know that my baby was here. He existed. He was loved, even though he was now gone. It was, thus far, the worst moment of my life. I was wounded irreparably and I have never completely healed.

My baby would be turning 6 this November 24th. I have friends who have children who are 5 and 6, who I completely forgot that were pregnant at the same time as I was because the year of 2012 is a complete blur of sadness and grief to me. All that I can vividly remember is the excruciating pain I endured. The millions of tears that I shed. Little voices, hugging me tight and offering me love and acceptance while I mourned the loss of their baby brother/sister.

1 in 4 women experience this kind of loss and the mind-breaking grief that so often accompanies it. It’s unimaginable and unfathomable the pain the human heart is capable of experiencing until you do. Then nothing else seems quite as relevant.

So many mothers and fathers walking around the planet surviving the pain and loss of their children. Let today, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, remind you to be kind to each other, every day because you never know what someone is going through. It could be the worst day of their life or the anniversary of their loss. You just never know.

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, Miscarriage, loss, grief, the truth about motherhood, stillborn, infant loss, pregnancy loss, angel baby

READ ALSO: When a Tattoo Heals Your Heart

Somedays I feel strong and like I’ve made major leaps to move on through my grief and loss and other days, I feel like my heart is held together by a stick of chewing gum and a prayer. I am surrounded by what might have been all around me. It hurts because my miscarriage robbed me of that. Still, I try to take joy in the little time I did have; the all-consuming love that I had for my third baby and that has to be enough for now.

Do you know anyone who has suffered a loss?

Please remember to keep them in your thoughts and treat them with extra kindness today, October 15, on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day and on all days.

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tattoo, memorial tattoo, inked, Crimson Knight Tattoo, Jose Cruz, miscarriage, loss tattoo

Today is November 24th and for the first time, in a long time, I don’t feel lost. For me, it’s an annual day of retrospection; of looking back at what could have been, what might have been and, honestly, what should have been. While many of you are coming out of your tryptophan coma this morning or maybe sleeping off the remnants of yesterday’s all night Black Friday power shopping, I’ll be marking time but I won’t be sad. Not today.

Today, I pause to remember. In the past that could have meant many different things. Some years, it involved pills or booze to numb the pain and a day in bed. Some years, it meant Netflix and sobbing or a welcomed distraction. Some years, I hardly remember at all. Some years, it felt like the anniversary of the end of the world. But none of it ever seemed real because, though my heart shattered from the pain of the reality my mind was never quite able to digest the loss of what my eyes never got to see, what my arms never got to hold and what my lips never got to kiss.

I never got to touch his cheek. Kiss his warm gooey forehead. I never got to smell his head or feel his heartbeat beating next to mine. I never got to feel him wiggle in my arms. I never even got to see his eyes fixed upon me suspended beyond all space and time like only a newborn child can do to his mother. I got nothing. I was cheated in the worst possible way.

I felt failure. I felt like I had a very vivid bad dream. The worst dream ever. The dream in which every possibility of happiness was on the horizon and just as quickly snatched away. I felt empty and sad and mad and angry. I wanted to punch the world and sob and be held and left alone, all at the same time. But I never had closure. I know now that I never will. There is no closure for this situation. It’s an open-ended question of what might have been.

Worse, I had nothing. In many ways, it feels like he only existed to me, like some cruel imaginary friend, a figment of my imagination conjured up just to break me down. It felt like to everyone else…everyone…he was nothing more than a glob of cells and he was gone before most knew he even existed. No harm, no foul. But there was. I was harmed. I was egregiously fouled. He was real, as real as my other 2 children are to me.

You know how I spent that first November 24, 2012? It was Thanksgiving, I hosted 40 people. It had been 6 months since my miscarriage. I had to go on living. But on that day, my heart was raw. I was vulnerable and my sanity was being held together by a stick of bubble gum and a tic tac. It wasn’t going to hold.

I just kept telling myself, you just have to make it through dinner. Then it happened. My 1-year-old nephew was running around my house when my someone (I’m not naming names because it was a total accidental foot in mouth moment) looked directly at me (on November 24, 2012), and said, “Don’t you miss the sound of little feet running around your house?” I was dumbstruck. I couldn’t speak, for if I did, all the tears that I’d been holding back for the past 6 months every time someone said something stupid, or I ran into a pregnant friend, or baby Center send me an alert would surely come pouring out and drown me dead right there on the spot.

I knew I needed something, more than fragility as a souvenir of my third child. I needed a way to move through this grief without losing my mind. I decided that I a permanent mark on my body that reflected the permanent mark on my soul. I didn’t want closure. I wanted something more but, at the time, I wasn’t even sure what that was.

After 5 years, I knew what I wanted and I knew I had to have it before November 24th (what should have been a birthday). I was compulsive in my pursuit. My brother, Jose Cruz, an established tattoo artist obliged my desperately grasping heart last Friday. I needed this like I need air to survive.

tattoo, memorial tattoo, inked, Crimson Knight Tattoo, Jose Cruz, miscarriage, loss tattoo

What was this life-altering body modification? It is a story, wrapped in a metaphor and held by my heart. They say a picture is worth a thousand words.

Explanation; the big bird is the Big Guy, the next bird is me, the third bird is our Gabs and the fourth bird on the branch of our family tree is our oldest, Bella. We are all looking in the direction of the tiny baby bird, that we never got to hold, as he flies away.

tattoo, memorial tattoo, inked, Crimson Knight Tattoo, Jose Cruz, miscarriage, loss tattoo

I wanted it all done in black silhouettes because sometimes our family feels like a shadow of its former self. We are not broken, but we are not whole without our baby bird. We remember. I remember every single day.

The baby bird is flying up towards a small heart within a heart. This is in reference to a line from my favorite E.E. Cummings poem I carry your heart with me; I carry it in my heart. It’s on my left arm so that they are always close to my heart.

tattoo, memorial tattoo, inked, Crimson Knight Tattoo, Jose Cruz, miscarriage, loss tattoo

[i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart]

BY E. E. CUMMINGS

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

Maybe you think this makes me sad. It doesn’t. In fact, it makes me immensely happy. I think it’s because for the first time ever, I can look down and see my entire family; all three of my children; my three little birds.

Maybe this makes me sound crazy? I honestly, don’t even care because it makes me feel whole again.

Through this tattoo, the baby who never lived outside of me lives on forever on my wrist surrounded by the family who loves and misses him. He was here. He is here, in my heart, forever and for always. I told my story without saying a word and maybe no one understands it but me, but that’s more than enough. The baby I lost was not a secret. I want the world to know he was here.

More importantly, I finally have something tangible, proof that I am the mother of three and not just two; even if it is only a tattoo of a portrait of silhouette birds.

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Netflix, Stefani Germanotta, Joanna, Lady Gaga, Gaga, Five Foot Two, Loss, Grief, miscarriage

Take my hand, stay Joanne
Heaven’s not ready for you
Every part of my aching heart
Needs you more than the angels do

 

Earlier this month, my Aunt died and suddenly, I was consumed with people and things that I had pushed down into the deepest recesses of my heart. I was stunned and shocked and it brought up all of these feelings of loss for me; from the life-changing loss of my own pregnancy to the close losses of my Uncle Ramon, my Uncle Narciso and then that took me down a rabbit hole of what ifs…what happens when my parents die. How will I survive? You survive by going on, putting one foot in front of the other and smiling when you feel like dying and wearing big sunglasses so no one sees the constant tears in your eyes.

I watched my uncle and his sons willing with everything inside of them to stay upright when all they wanted to do was collapse into that all too familiar, to me, fetal position on the floor. It’s been 5 years but I remember that feeling of utter hopelessness and unrecoverable loss that leaves you discombobulated and broken beyond repair like it was yesterday. All I could do was love them and try to be there to lean on.

Loss and grief are a bizarre thing. They can take any form they want at any time. I always refer to them as emotional time bombs but make no mistake, they can be absolutely nuclear on impact. One minute you are laughing at something funny you are remembering about the person you lost, then maybe you are smiling remembering their smile or the way they held your hand, then the next you are so angry that you want to punch the entire world in the throat and still in another you are overcome with sadness and emptiness realizing you will never hear them speak your name ever again and sometimes, that is too much to stay standing.

It’s bad enough when you are the one it’s happening to but it is so much worse, for me anyway, to helplessly watch as someone I love goes through it. All I want to do is make it better for them but I know from experience that the only way to truly get through it is to feel every single one of those feelings. It’s nature’s way of severing the tether in a slow, gradual way. Our minds can’t handle pure pain all at once. I remember feeling like I would surely break and yet, I survived. I am definitely scarred by each loss, some more than others, but they leave their mark.

 

If you could I know that you’d stay
We both know things don’t work that way
I promised I wouldn’t say goodbye
So I grin and my voice gets thin

Girl, where do you think you’re goin’?
Where do you think you’re goin’?
Goin’, girl?
Girl, where do you think you’re goin’?
Where do you think you’re goin’?
Goin’, girl?

 

I don’t normally find that any two losses are the same, not equal even to ourselves and they all manifest differently. Grieving is something so very personal. There is no right or wrong way to do it. We all just try to survive from one day to the next. The thing is it doesn’t just affect us. It has ripples and it changes everyone it touches.

Recently, I watched a documentary on Netflix, Gaga: Five foot Two and I felt a connection to her song, Joanne. I think by seeing the documentary and learning more about her life and the meaning behind the song, I could relate to her vulnerability in a way I never have before. I saw the woman, Stefani Germanotta, and not the icon Lady Gaga and honestly, I found her so endearing in her vulnerability.

Netflix, Stefani Germanotta, Joanna, Lady Gaga, Gaga, Five Foot Two, Loss, Grief, miscarriage

 

You know we tend to put up fences and build walls around ourselves to protect us from public scrutiny. I don’t just mean celebrities like Lady Gaga but each and every one of us. It’s human nature to preserve our most vulnerable parts. Mine’s always been more of a see-thru chain link that you can see what’s going on but still, I protect myself. That’s one of the reasons that I don’t do a lot of videos. You’ve read about my howling in pain and grief at the loss of my pregnancy but you never actually saw it because there’s a vulnerability even I can’t go to about some things.

Anyways, this documentary has me full of admiration for what Stefani Germanotta does and who she is in spite of however much pain she is suffering. She uses it to fuel her art. She is no one’s victim. She is honest, raw, funny and completely in love with her family and her fans. She’s a fierce and mighty woman and in her movie you see the sacrifices she makes for her art. She is a bootstrapper. This is something we share in common.

I have a theory that everybody in the world chooses to either be a victim and wallow in their circumstances or pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become stronger because of the hard parts. There is no such thing as try, we have to choose one or the other and do it. I refuse to lay down and give up; that’s not me. I don’t even know how to do that. I tried once. It didn’t take.

Netflix, Stefani Germanotta, Joanna, Lady Gaga, Gaga, Five Foot Two, Loss, Grief, miscarriage

 

I’ve been listening to Joanne almost constantly since seeing the documentary and it has become an anthem for strength for me. It’s about letting go, even when you don’t want to. It’s about the sadness and beauty in having had the chance to love someone, maybe even someone you never got the chance to properly meet, and the pain and vulnerability of maneuvering through those most painful moments in your life.

It’s about embracing that vulnerability, relinquishing control and giving yourself over to the acceptance of the pain of the loss. Swimming in the letting go, letting it wash over you like warm waves in the sunshine is the only way to become one with it. It’s the only way to survive it and it is beautiful and ugly and amazing and horrible all at the same time.

 

Honestly, I know where you’re goin’
And baby, you’re just movin’ on
And I after love you even if I can’t
See you anymore can’t wait to see you soar

Girl, where do you think you’re goin’?
Where do you think you’re goin’
Goin’, girl?
Girl, where do you think you’re goin’?
Where do you think you’re goin’
Goin’, girl?

 

Have you seen the Netflix documentary Gaga; Five Foot Two and if not, please do and tell me what you think in the comments.

Disclosure: I am a Netflix StreamTeam member but the above post about my new found admiration for Lady Gaga and my connection with the documentary Gaga: Five Feet Two and the album Joanne are all my own.

 

 

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