october is pregnancy & infant loss remembrance month. they say 1 in 4 women experience this loss. honestly, i think it is a lot more than that. i went through my closest friends & did the math.
- my mama & sisters 2 of 4 of us have experienced loss.
- my childhood friends 4 of 5 of us have experienced loss.
- my college/adult friends 4 of 5 of us have experienced loss.
these are just the women i am the very closest with & who been pregnant. that is A LOT of loss.
then there are the women who i have become close with through talking about my losses. some of these women were friends in high school or were in a class with me at BYU, some of them had previously just been acquaintances & a few of them are friends of my sisters. most of them i hadn't talked to for years. but they have now become my confidants, my go-to's during that time of month. we cheer each other on. we have each other's backs. we are bound together through empathy & these relationships are beautiful.
as most of you know, i recently had an ectopic pregnancy to add to pregnancy loss list. this one has thrown me a little because it physically altered my body (loss of my left fallopian tube) & i was not sure how that would affect our ability to get pregnant. when i asked my doctor here in arkansas if it would make it harder to get pregnant, he simply reassured me that i would be back in his office within a few months because i would be pregnant.
well. i am not. this
is the longest we have had to try, which if you do that math & count the months since my ectopic, it isn't that long. BUT, hear me out. this is the longest we have had to try by a few months, which feels like forever. & getting pregnant was never our hard part. our hard part is staying pregnant. so, it now appears that both might be hard which is extremely discouraging/makes me an emotional beast the week of my period (just ask anyone who talked to me at church last sunday (insert eyeroll emoji)).
as i have mentioned before, this time around is different because i am genuinely happy when i see others pregnant. i am so grateful for that. but it doesn't mean that my heart doesn't hurt when i see a "we're pregnant" post or a mama snuggling a newborn. i so badly want that.
i will close this post with a picture i shared earlier this month on instagram:
October is pregnancy & infant loss awareness month. Spreading awareness is something I have become passionate about, not just because it is all around us yet no one ever talks about it, but also because it helps heal me & bonds me to others who have experienced loss.
Two days after Mother’s Day and two days before Gus turned one, I lost another baby along with my left tube. I thought miscarriages were my trials and this ectopic hit me out of nowhere, so out of nowhere that I never really mourned. I just kept on living. This is the only picture I have from that day - just minutes before they took me into surgery.
I recently realized that I should be almost 7 months pregnant. Oh how I wish I had a cute little baby bump. It took 3 months, but I have finally mourned my loss.
Over the 5 1/2 years of our marriage, I have been pregnant 6 times. I am sure many look at us, our two beautiful children, and think we have a perfect life. And we do. I am so blessed. And as much as I adore and absolutely LOVE Rooney and Guster, I have four angel babies that my heart longs to hold.
Never assume. Never judge. We don’t know what people are going through. So make sure you love first.
