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editor’s note: i started writing this blog in 2018, excited to share the news of our very wanted pregnancy…(that pregnancy did not result in a baby and this blog remained in my drafts. now in 2023, i’m ready to talk about the losses)

let me set the scene: my dad had just died, my boyfriend and i had broken up, and i learned that the last time we were intimate (while we were still together, for the record) resulted in a pregnancy.

as an unwed mother, somehow my loss mattered less. somehow the fact that it was my best friend at my side instead of the baby’s father, it became a “blessing” that the baby had no heartbeat.

it took me years to come to terms with my miscarriage, and i think the silence was part of the problem.

it was only after i commiserated with another woman for the first time when a friend miscarried, that i began to feel like i was finally processing my emotions instead of just shoving them down to wherever you shove feelings you’re avoiding.

if it weren’t so typical to keep quiet about a pregnancy until after the risk of losing it has passed (but really, isn’t there always a risk? not just in the first 12 weeks), maybe my first miscarriage, in particular, wouldn’t have been such an exquisitely painful introduction to how statistically common pregnancy loss is.

at the time, i literally knew no one who’d had a miscarriage — none that they’d ever talked about, anyway.

i’m encouraged by the openness i’ve been seeing about pregnancy loss lately. i hope the stigma is disappearing. it’s okay that some women prefer to keep their miscarriages private — but it’s a problem when they feel like they have to.

my husband and i struggled to conceive and turned to IVF, hoping that would be the answer to our problems. we were elated to find that our first embryo transfer worked and seeing the baby’s heartbeat at 6 weeks, and then again at 8 weeks gave me a false sense of confidence.

by the time we went to my OB’s office at the end of the first trimester, we learned the embryo had stopped growing and there was no heartbeat. my doctor teared up telling me the news as i sat in shock. i was devastated.

i had already picked a name.

i thought we were in the clear.

i would never get this naïveté back.

the days following this were dark. i unfriended everyone on social media who had the audacity to post about their pregnancies. i still get a pang when i see these announcements, if i’m being honest. it’s why i never posted anything about my own pregnancy. there isn’t a single pregnant photo of me that exists on the internet (your loss, really. i was adorable). i couldn’t wrap my head around causing another woman that same pain.

for months i cried about how my body kept failing me. cancer. infertility. miscarriages.

my husband wanted to fix it. he couldn’t.

i was so broken, i couldn’t even write about it. it was too raw. too painful.

the low point was a visit to the grocery store when a man outside requested a donation for children who needed meals…i burst into tears at the cruelty of this. i was grieving not one, but two pregnant losses and desperate to have a child of my own. i think i scared that stranger and my husband that night.

when i made up my mind to stop trying with my own eggs (after 4 retrievals – 2 completely unsuccessful ones, i was done) i had friends say things like “you can’t give up, you need to have YOUR baby.” that hurt. my child is very much my baby. perhaps the path was less conventional than hers, but he is very much mine.

on this note, let’s not give women struggling with infertility unsolicited advice.

nobody told me to “just relax” when i had cancer as if that would be the cure, so why is this different? anyway, i digress.

in the end, we did get our happy ending – thanks to a lovely egg donor, for whom i will remain forever grateful. the road was long and frustrating and unfair and full of tears.

“hell was the journey, but it brought me heaven.”

there were times when i wasn’t sure it would happen for us. i spent so much time in despair and was lucky to have friends who held hope for me when i couldn’t. thankfully, hope is always the last friend to leave.

and i almost always get what i want.