Loss into Love: What Miscarriage Can Feel Like

A guest post by FertileHeart Mom, Nina L.

Before you read Nina’s words, I want to add this:

Some months after writing this reflection, Nina did go on to conceive her baby girl spontaneously. I share that not as a guarantee, but because I know how quickly the heart can brace itself against stories of loss.

And yet sometimes, in the most honest expressions of grief, we find the medicine we need.

Nina writes:

How do I describe my grief? How do I grieve someone no one else knew? To grieve my child — my children — whom I never got to meet? And yet, I knew my children from my three miscarriages.

My first was going to be the first grandchild for my husband’s mom — the one who would be watched by all ten of us at every family event. The one who would smile and clap, and we would all gaze in wonder.

My second child had a rougher start. From the very beginning, we knew there wasn’t a great chance, and we worried about an ectopic pregnancy. But we still had hope. This one would be different. This one would defy the odds. This would be our “miracle” baby — the baby whose story we would tell over and over: how no one thought you would survive, but you did.

My third — my third — was the hardest. This was my baby. I ovulated and conceived on my own, without doctors’ intervention. I knew I had ovulated. I knew I was pregnant.

I would go to sleep thinking, I am a mother, with visions of this baby in my mind, curled up with his head in my neck.

Whatever I was doing, I would think: baby’s first hike, baby’s first public speaking event. But no one else knows these memories. I can’t sit with friends and reminisce about the time my baby made me so tired I had to sleep on the couch at work before I could walk home. Or the time I was sitting on the floor and my dog laid his head on my lap and looked at me as if he understood I was carrying his new playmate.

There is no memorial service where my friends can show up and tell me how they love me and my child — where I could not only feel their love, but see it.

The miscarriage of my children is a miscarriage of hope and joy and the future. And it is hard to believe that my next pregnancy will be different, but I do. I know it has to be, because my three children were so different. And my fourth will still bring hope and joy and an amazing list of firsts.

And with each pregnancy, I am different.

I grow and change and believe more deeply that I can be the mother I want to be. That I can have a happy baby and a happy marriage. I have become more patient than I ever thought I could be. I am less worried about who this child becomes and what they will do, and more focused on enjoying them simply for being.

I am learning about myself — my hopes and fears and dreams — and how they shape who I am.

My husband and I talk more openly now about what parenthood means to us. And during my grieving process, he has shown me how loving and caring he can be.

My three miscarriages have made us a family. They made me a mother.

(Five months after Nina joined our Fertile Heart community, she conceived her baby girl spontaneously. A couple of years later, she gave birth to her son, also conceived spontaneously. She speaks about her Fertile Heart Journey here.

How about you friends? Have you ever experienced a loss that feels impossible to speak about? A loss you’ve turned or are turning into love? Into a life-force. A source of strength?