I Am 1 In 4: Breaking The Silence On Pregnancy Loss

There's a question that haunts me, more than a dozen years later. Was it a boy or a girl?

In a time where gender reveal parties are all the rage and finding cute ways to announce pregnancies fills Pinterest boards, it's the top question everyone asks when you're pregnant: Is it a boy or a girl?

And I don't know the answer. Were the babies I lost boys? Girls? I'll never know. But I mourn them, just the same.

October gets a lot of attention. Pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness. Blue shirts for bullying prevention. It's Down Syndrome Awareness Month, too. For millions of women, however, October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. Women like me. And chances are, women you know.

Infant loss — to stillbirth, to sudden infant death syndrome, and to other causes — is heartbreaking. People comfort those who have lost a baby who was born, who the parents could hold and bury. People respond to the intense grief of that kind of tragedy.

Pregnancy loss, however, particularly miscarriages before 12 weeks, tends to fly under the radar, for a host of reasons.

For years, miscarriages have been met with silence. People didn't reveal pregnancies early because miscarriages before the 12th week are so common. But as technology and medicine have advanced, and as pregnancy has become increasingly romanticized, with advertising showing glowing moms and smiling dads, it's been easy for people to be blissfully unaware of the fragilities of nature.

We also don't talk about it because we are so terribly uncomfortable as a society with talking about grief in general. It's hard enough to comfort a friend or a family member who's suffered the loss of someone we all knew. A parent. A grandparent. Even a pet.

Miscarriages are more difficult to wrap your head around. How can a being you've never met leave you so heartbroken in such a short time? (Simple: It's the promise they represent.)

Before I experienced miscarriage, it was something I'd heard about but hadn't paid much mind to. After all, I'd had no issues with my first pregnancy. My daughter arrived healthy and — except for being a complete breech — without any complications. I was 30 at the time she was born. Four years later, when we tried to expand our family, everything changed.

In four years, I lost five pregnancies, all at 8 to 9 weeks. The memories are vivid. The shock of the first miscarriage, hearing the doctor say, "The pregnancy is no longer viable," when the fluttering beginnings of my baby's heart, which I'd seen on an ultrasound two days earlier, was gone.

"This happens sometimes," the doctor said as I laid in the emergency room on Easter, after I found myself bleeding with the second pregnancy.

Lying in my bed in pain, cramping, crying, with the third pregnancy that I'd told no one about, because why tell anyone until I got past 9 weeks, when I might miscarry again?

Sitting in the doctor's office, begging for intensive treatment when I discovered I was pregnant the fourth time. The sensation just four weeks later of the hormones shutting down, almost like someone flipped a light switch, and resolving to start testing as soon as possible.

Hours of doctors' appointments and testing and reviews of my entire health history, searching for answers to what was going wrong.

Giving myself injections and taking extra hormones every day to try to maintain my fifth pregnancy, and listening to the fluttering heartbeat with a rented fetal Doppler to try to try to calm my anxiety.

The chill of the ultrasound gel on my stomach, the feel of the wand sliding across my belly and watching the screen as the technician searched for the baby during my final pregnancy.

The look on her face, and the wave of heartbreak when I realized the heartbeat was gone. Sitting in the darkened room, tears rolling down my cheeks again, the voice of the ultrasound tech. "I'm sorry," she said.

The doctor trying to comfort me in the recovery room a few days later, the tears running into my ears and my hair as I waited for the anesthesia to wear off after the medical procedure I had to have because that last miscarriage hadn't passed from my body on its own.

Well-meaning friends and family told me to move on, put it behind me. "Stop putting yourself through this." The implication that the miscarriage had somehow "spared" me because there may have been a genetic issue.

No one knew what to say. I needed to talk, but didn't know how to express it or who I could turn to who'd understand the grief. The silence was isolating and soul-rending. I felt alone in ways I've never felt, even when I lived alone, 3,000 miles from my friends and family.

It took time and therapy for me to get a handle on how to talk about it, and how to understand that it was OK that not everyone understood. Frankly, it's not a pain I'd wish on anyone.

I've learned that talking about it helped me find perspective, and know that I was not alone. Social media was a huge help in that regard, because I learned just how many people had been through miscarriages.

I also learned how strong we all are. Because you do go on. Life demands it. I try to find the silver lining. There have been other challenges along the way, and if I'd had another child (or more, I'd wanted three children), it would have altered what I was able to do, and likely would have changed much of my life.

You never forget. But you understand it better. As medicine has advanced, I read information that shines a potential light — information I file away for the future. And you understand other people better. You see the guarded look in someone's eyes when they apologize for doting on their only child. You see the flinches that come from a pain held deep.

You learn that sharing your story helps others see they can survive. You're changed. Grief always changes us. But you survive.

There are still reminders. There's the inch-thick medical file in my office, detailing the failures of my body. There's the ultrasound photo, the light spot showing the baby's heartbeat. There's the heparin needles under my sink, still sitting there 13 years later, because I could never figure out what to do with them.

And, of course, the unanswered question: Were my babies boys? Were they girls? I'll never know.

I will always remember my five angel babies. They were wanted. They were loved. They are missed. And any woman who's lost a baby knows that feeling all too well.

If that woman is you, know that you don't have to suffer in silence. Know that there are others who are willing to listen and give you all the Kleenex you need.

Know that you are not alone.

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