Accepting Your Story for What It Is: A Challenging Journey to Motherhood

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what my journey to motherhood would look like. I always envisioned my life in a series of events, as many people do. I married my high school sweetheart at the beginning of the pandemic, and we eventually wanted to create a family of our own.

In November of 2020, we did just that. Words can’t describe how special it was the first time I told my husband we were expecting.

I immediately had this vision of our baby, all the memories we would make, and the life we would have together. However, that joy and excitement was met with great sorrow when we mourned our first loss a few weeks later. We picked ourselves back up and quickly came to realize what had happened to us wasn’t all that uncommon after all. This didn’t take away any bit of our pain but made me feel the slightest bit less alone.

I was able to conceive again the following February. I, just like many moms who had a miscarriage assumed that if I could just get those two double lines again our story would end differently this time. Once again, I was met with our worst nightmare. Knowing I never wanted to experience such a traumatic loss again, my husband and I sought additional support. It was through this that I ended up being diagnosed with stage 4 endometriosis through an exploratory lap. I had been suspicious of this diagnosis my entire life, but it was still extremely devastating to get.

Nevertheless, after my diagnosis and excision, we decided that we would try one last time naturally before turning to any other intervention.

On my birthday in August of 2021, we found out we were expecting our baby. Week after week, we saw baby grow. The heartbeat was incredibly strong, and seeing their movement and wiggles for the first time was something I will never forget. Everything was finally falling into place. We found out we were having a girl, and we were elated.

It was my last appointment at the clinic, and it was then that time stood still. I still can see the nurse’s face when she turned the screen away from me. Before words even came out of her mouth, I knew what had happened. Everything went fuzzy, and suddenly once again, all of the hope and optimism I had for this life we were finally getting was ripped right from under me.

With every loss, I was losing parts of myself.

I could feel myself turning into a shell of a the person I once was. At the same time, the more I read about loss and joined support groups, the more I became enraged at how little it’s spoken about. It is almost taboo to talk about pregnancy loss. I quickly realized that unless your pregnancy and journey to motherhood looked a certain way, it was best for you not speak about it. I decided then that I wanted to do just that. In my head, if I could comfort just one mom who went through what we did or something similar then sharing my story would be worth it. So many women are suffering in silence, making this already impossible journey that much more difficult. Through sharing my story on my social media, I have connected with so many incredible women and families, and I am so grateful for that.

My husband and I decided we didn’t want to give up and would do anything in our power to become the parents we knew we were meant to be. We started the lengthy process of IVF, and in May of 2022, we had our first transfer. To our surprise, it was a success.

Pregnancy after loss was the biggest challenge of my life.

Months of living in complete and utter fear, isolation, and anxiety. I didn’t even want to speak to close family or friends about my pregnancy because, to me, allowing myself to be excited meant letting myself be susceptible to pain. I don’t think there was ever a point when I accepted my pregnancy and thought, “OK, I’m going to meet this baby.” I was constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop because that was all I had ever known.

On Thanksgiving day, at 30 weeks, I became extremely ill. I was admitted to the hospital, where days later, I went septic. The entire time I was sick, all I could think about was meeting this baby. I didn’t come this far to give up or have anything harm either one of us. The only fight in me I had was to meet this baby.

And a week later, I did just that.