It’s taken me almost two years to be able to write about this. I had to get expressed permission from my husband to feel comfortable sharing this with anyone, because this affected him just as much as me, and even to this day we can’t really talk about it without getting a little weepy.
I feel like it’s a testament to how strong our marriage is; how strong our relationship is, from the moment we met. When issues like this come up, many relationships or marriages fall apart. Ours became stronger, if that was even possible, and I feel like I can share it now, if only to perhaps reach out to someone else who had to deal with this as well.
Now, Josh and I didn’t really tell anyone besides the people we trusted most, what was going on. My mom, my sister and a couple of our friends. It was a delicate issue, so it was difficult to talk about while it was going on, and just after.
In the beginning of May, 2010, I started showing early symptoms of pregnancy. Extreme fatigue, light cramping, missed period, moody. My boobs got huge, I became sensitive to every smell, I was so irritable, and constantly nauseous.
Both Josh and I were terrified to even believe that I was pregnant. There’s literally a 0.03% chance that I could get pregnant at all, and having been with a woman for almost 10 years and not even a pregnancy scare, Josh was pretty sure he couldn’t have kids either.
And yet, here we were. It was the most beautiful miracle, though we were just starting our lives together, and we had no where to even put a baby. We had just started talking about getting married and having a life together. I hadn’t even officially moved in yet, but we were so ready to take this step.
After having children from people that you never really loved, the idea of having a child with the one person you love more than anything… it’s a feeling that can’t be described in words. We laid around and talked about baby names. We came up with a few, Jordan (for boy or girl) Nicholas for a boy, Ruth (Ruthie) for a girl.
I laid in bed, reminiscing on how miserable I was during all of my pregnancies, and Josh spent that time telling me he would fulfill every craving and rub my ever-swelling feet. He talked to my belly and we made plans where a crib would go.
None of this lasted very long. I started to get really sick. Really, really sick. I literally couldn’t keep anything down. I was having sharp pain all the time. I was so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and all I could do was sleep.
Deep down I knew something was wrong. I had been waiting on a doctor’s appointment, but just to have all of the information, I took a pregnancy test and it came out negative. I was so confused, but not really let down. I’d been pregnant more than once before, and with my middle daughter I tested negative for some time before the stick could pick up the hormones.
Nevertheless, something was wrong. I dropped weight, and Josh told me I absolutely had to see the doctor. Now. So I called and made an appointment. The whole way there we talked each other up. How it was probably nothing, how things would be fine, how it was probably a fluke.
We discussed what we’d do if it wasn’t a baby, how we were sure we’d like to have one so if that was the case, we could try again. If I was pregnant, it was definitely meant to be.
You know, I’ve had to get bad news from my doctor a few times, so I’ve become a sort of expert at reading his face. The blood work showed traces of pregnancy hormones, but there wasn’t much, and he knew something was wrong.
The ultrasound confirmed it. I had been pregnant. The embryo had attached itself so high, near the fallopian tubes, and was nonviable. There was nothing left in there anymore. I had to take a shot of this drug-cocktail, it was pretty much chemo, to destroy any of the tissue left up there. Otherwise any number of things could happen that would further endanger my health.
I think we were both very numb after the news. Josh told me about a co-worker making an insensitive comment about the issue, and to this day he hasn’t spoken to her, and they had actually been friends prior. I don’t think I really faced it until about 48 hours later when I started bleeding and expelling anything that was up there.
I think I cried for a week straight. Maybe it was less, but it felt like a lot longer. I raged. I was so angry. I couldn’t understand why our baby, the baby of two people who were literally, universally destined to be together, couldn’t survive.
Josh let me rage on and he mourned in quiet agony. At night we comforted each other, and we eventually came to accept it wasn’t meant to be. I still cry a little when I think about it. Even now, I’m trying to keep it together since my husband and son are playing a game on the computer directly next to me.
We’re okay now. We want to foster someday soon, and that might lead to adoption. We haven’t had any near misses since then, so I think that was our last hurrah as far as conception goes. Now I think maybe it was just the universe trying to tell us that we were strong before, but together we are invincible. Nothing can tear us apart.
When I first started showing signs of pregnancy, Josh came to me and said, “You’re pregnant.”
I laughed. “You’re crazy. You know that’s impossible.”
“Wanna make a bet?” he asked.
“Five bucks,” I wagered.
We shook on it and he rubbed my belly. “Maybe. Maybe Graff.”
“Maybe Baby Graff,” I laughed. “If we have a baby you know that’s going to stick as their nickname forever, right?”
“It’s an awesome nickname,” he said and he kissed me.
A few weeks after everything had passed, we took out a five dollar bill and wrote the baby’s name on the back. Maybe Graff. It’s sitting in a frame on my nightstand as a forever reminder of what the baby would have been to us, and what the baby is to us now.