Our “Trying To Conceive” & Miscarriage Journey
*trigger warning. I talk graphically about my miscarriage and what I experienced.*
Let’s start at the beginning…
Steve and I began dating in high school and in the 12 years since we have been through SO much together. He has wanted kids for a while now, but I simply just did not feel ready for that next chapter. Every year that passed I thought that maybe this would be the year my heart would be open to having kids. It took until I was 29 to actually feel like I was 100% ready, and I am SO glad we waited until then! Even when you feel a bit of pressure from everyone around you that “the clock is ticking”, I am here to tell you not to give into that. Do what feels right in your heart and what you feel God is calling you to do.
So, I listened to my heart and continued to wait…Then one day I literally woke up and said, “I think I’m ready. Actually, I KNOW I’m ready”, and we stopped being “safe” that night. Every single one of my friends told me that it took months and months for them to get pregnant, so I was SHOCKED when 2 weeks later, I got a positive pregnancy test. I had missed my period for 4 straight days and thought it was stress. NOPE! I was pregnant!! We were over the moon about it and I had zero cares or worries in the world.
The day I entered my 6th week of being pregnant, my assistant, Mason, and I were on an Atmos Collection photoshoot for Vitality. It was just her and I, and we were happy as clams being goofy and having the best time. I felt absolutely exhausted, but thought it was weird that the day before I had lost all my nausea and my boobs had stopped hurting (two of the first symptoms I had with pregnancy). However, since I had never been pregnant before and had no previous thoughts about something going wrong, I thought nothing of it and continued on with the day as normal. When we got home from the shoot, I went to the bathroom and saw a pool of blood in my Atmos shorts. I was a little worried but not much because, again, I had never been pregnant before and was not aware of the major warning signs of miscarriage. Mason left and Steve was out of town, so I showered up, made myself dinner, and sat down to watch a show. Hours later, the bleeding continued so I alerted Steve, as I was getting a little nervous. At one point in his life Steve was in medical school, and therefore knows a ton about the human body. So, when he told me to call my mom, panic started to creep over me. I asked her if this was normal and she said no and that she was coming over to stay the night with me. On her drive over, I started looking at online forums and after reading all the horror stories, my hopes that I may still be pregnant started to slowly dwindle away, minute by minute. That night I did my best to hold on to a sliver of hope. I thought to myself, this can’t be a miscarriage, this bleeding will pass soon I just know it. But when I woke up the next morning and found that the bleeding had continued overnight, I knew it was over. Steve immediately drove home from the mountains, and when he walked in the door and we looked each other in the eye we just absolutely lost it. So much pain. So much devastation.
After going through that miscarriage, the next month I ended up having a chemical pregnancy (which is ultimately a very early miscarriage where you test positive for a while and then stop testing positive just a few weeks in). Having to let go of control and trust God was a struggle for me because I become very fixated on something when I want it. It took a lot of praying and faith for me to get through.
We wanted to try one last time before calling it quits for a while, so we tried again the month after the chemical pregnancy. One week later, I started to feel symptoms of pregnancy. We traveled to Indiana and I was so sick the entire time, which I felt was odd because it was extremely early to be feeling symptoms. I thought maybe my body was still recovering from the chemical pregnancy. One week after that, about 1.5 weeks after Steve and I started trying again, I started feeling cramps on one side of my uterus. A friend had told me to look out for implantation cramps so I thought, “could it be…? Ok what the heck… I am going to take a test.” I took the tes and saw a VERY faint line, but tried not to get my hopes up. The next day, ANOTHER faint line, and the next! So I immediately went to my doctor to see if I was pregnant. They called the next day and said “I don’t know why you came in but you are confirmed not pregnant”. I was once again devastated and knew I needed a break from our TTC journey. A few days later, I was at dinner with my friend Tyler, feeling SO bloated and just exhausted! I came home and thought, “I know the doc just confirmed I was not pregnant, but I just feel so WEIRD! I am taking another test, screw it”. To my surprise… there was a dark. Bold. Pink. Line. I dropped to the floor bawling because I knew this was the one that was going to stick.
That first trimester, everything worried me. Every single day I was terrified that I would miscarry again! But here we are today, 22 weeks pregnant, baby boy is healthy and we have never been happier. God is so so so good, and I am so happy we never gave up. Steve and I cannot wait to have this baby, and we feel even more blessed having gone through what we have gone through.
Opening up about this online is seriously not fun for me, but when I was going through that loss, I only WISHED there was a glimpse of hope online that I could turn to. I hope this brings someone just that. I hope this can help anyone going through a similar experience to feel less alone knowing this happens to SO many women every day. There is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. Stay strong, and thank you for being here <3
XOXO, TAY
