A Tale from the Dark Side - Miscarriage Part 3

Continuing on from Parts 1 & 2 wherein I experienced several miscarriages, one healthy pregnancy resulting in the birth of our beautiful boy Ender and finally passing the 3 month mark on a second baby boy. If you missed them, please read Part 1 and Part 2. Thank you.

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Almost 10 months ago, at over 4 months pregnant with our little boy (who we had already decided to name Ash) we went in for a big ultrasound and were lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time watching our little guy try to suck his thumb, kick his legs and generally jump around like a little bean. My husband and I went home giddy and immediately shared our scan of his precious little feet with our friends and parents.

A week later I started to bleed and cramp. I don't feel it is necessary to get into the technical medical details here but within 3 days we knew we would lose our unborn son. Unable to naturally complete the process on my own I was quickly scheduled for surgery. I remember calling my parents, sobbing. My poor father just sat on the end of the phone, trying to understand what was wrong with me, worried that something had happened to Ender or Rich. I couldn't even speak, feeling completely torn from the inside out. Finally I managed to suck in enough breath to tell him that my baby was gone. That little Ash would never be with us. To his credit, my father managed to get me calm enough to speak and then passed the phone to my mother who helped to talk me down until my husband, who was rushing home from work, made it through the door.

There is no pain, none, like losing a baby, even unborn. The medical staff and counselors at Kaiser handled us with kid gloves and offered us no end of help both physically and mentally. But to have the necessary question put to you, before the surgery, of 'Will you be having a funeral and do you need our help with arrangements?' is like having a boulder dropped on you. This was no early miscarriage, this was the death of our son.

We chose to grieve Ash's passing privately, in our own way. Even though we never got to hold him, we will never ever forget him. When I try to imagine what parents of children who pass away either by disease or accident or worse must go through, my mind breaks. I simply cannot even force myself to imagine it. After our own experience it just isn't something that I have the will to envision.

On the day of surgery my husband, who had been desperately trying to take on the role of caretaker, holding us together, laid his hand on my belly and said goodbye a few minutes before I was wheeled into the OR. When I came out we huddled together, got in the car and drove home where I would get a days rest before joining my parents and my brother and his family in Anaheim.

My parents were taking our whole family on a trip to Disneyland, you see. It had been planned for months. My surgery was on the day we were to have left San Fran for Anaheim. We very much considered cancelling but in the end we decided, having been granted my doctor's permission to travel, to fly down and be with my family during the difficult time. While I was not up to snuff physically, it was a godsend to be with them over the next week.

Time has gone on, we've patched up the wounds and have carried on with our lives. But there are still reminders. Like when his due date passed. Or when we see other beautiful, vibrant babies who were born around the same time. To this day I cry in the night. Not all the time, just every now and then. I think of the trees, the sunlight and the breeze and I know that Ash is somewhere out there in the universe and that he knows he is loved.

Our children are our blessings. I know several other women who have not even had the good fortune to get pregnant at all and my heart breaks for them. Some of us miscarry, some of us are infertile or go through the long painful process of invitro. Some of us will adopt and others will use a surrogate. Some of us will be faced with impossible decisions. Some of us will decide to keep trying and others will move on. None of us are perfect and we do what we can.

As for my husband and I - we are trying one more time. We have the strength to give it another shot. I don't know what is going to happen but I know that I will not be alone. If another baby is not meant to be, we are content and secure in our knowledge that our friends, our family and most importantly our son Ender are enough, they are all that we need.

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Thus ends my tale from the dark side. Thanks to Project 365 I was able to resolve to get this story published and carry on with the rest of my personal goal which is to post a snippet each day relating to our journey of trying to have a second baby this year. While this three part series has been painful and raw for me to write, further posts will be aimed at the lighter side of trying to conceive and, with enough luck, build a baby. Wish us luck :)


I would like to extend a special thank you to my husband for supporting me through this process and allowing me to share what was obviously a very personal experience for both of us. It has affected him as well as me to relive our loss - he is truly my hero.

A Tale from the Dark Side - Miscarriage Part 2

Following along with my post from yesterday regarding our early attempts at having a child, I am powering through our story. I know that if I don't, I will never finish it. If you didn't see yesterday's post you can find it by clicking here.


Our son Ender was born in the summer - August 2008. The moment we first saw him was the moment we fell in love, completely and utterly, as a family. It's different than the love between two adults in a marriage - it makes the world shift. Priorities immediately change, your life is so different - yet there is nothing that you would go back to. It's perfect and selfless and brilliant.

We soon fell into the sleep deprived, zombie-like state of all new parents. Especially first-timers. We were handling the human equivalent of nitroglycerin - everything had to be perfect and it was scary as heck. For the love of god do not drop that thing!

The following spring we decided to embark on a new adventure, packing up our little family and moving south, across the border, down to California. Starting a new life is exciting but it is also obviously a huge undertaking, especially with a little one. The thought of having a second child never even crossed our minds until that winter (2009).

It was not a decision we made lightly. We had two things working against us. For one thing, at almost 38 years old I wasn't getting any younger. I've been told by many good, highly respected doctors that '40' is not the barrier it used to be and is actually kind of an arbitrary number, but I'm not 25 any more if you know what I mean. Secondly, we had no idea what we would be in for regarding miscarriages because let's face it, I'm prone to them somehow. Maybe that is or isn't 'medically possible' but dammit you could have fooled me!

I'd been having (TMI coming up!) really painful, long, heavy cycles so I went in to my OB/GYN here in San Fran for a checkup. Turned out I had a large fibroid or polyp. That isn't always a deal breaker for getting pregnant, but mine happened to live in about the worst possible spot that it could, taking up prime baby-baking real estate.

Another damned choice to make: attempt to conceive and have the lump removed later or have it removed first, improving our chances of a healthy pregnancy. We elected to have it removed first because the surgery could be scheduled so quickly. I went in to have what turned out to be a huge polyp removed in March of 2010. Everything went very well and three months later we had the go-ahead to start trying to conceive.

Guess what? Another three months later I conceived and then in my usual fashion, experienced a fourth miscarriage. Surprise!

Then the strangest thing occurred. I had a shorter, earlier than normal menstruation the next month only to find out a week later that we had indeed conceived again, immediately after the fourth miscarriage. I had an ultrasound right away to rule out a tubal pregnancy and it turned out I was pregnant with a cute little sac in a nice spot, growing away as well as could be and we were given a due date of July 31, 2011.

We were cautiously happy - nothing is harder than waiting for that 12 week mark to come and go. But it did, we were ecstatic and I felt great. Other than not gaining quite enough weight, everything was going very well. I even had lots of preggy company - two of the moms from Ender's daycare were also pregnant and due around the same time. There is nothing better than being in good company while expecting. At about four months in my belly popped and I started to really feel pregnant, even having to bust out my old preggy pants.

Ender and I at the park.
4 month baby belly.

We found out that we were going to have another perfect little boy. At our ultrasound he was bouncy and reactive and had the most precious feet and hands. We already had a name picked out - he would be called Ash. He felt serene and beautiful - he reminded me of home when my brother and I had been young kids, playing in our back yard with all the ash trees, dappled in sunshine, leaves whispering in the breeze. Looking up and seeing the sunshine and blue sky peeking through. It's hard to describe it here - but that's what he felt like to me.

A couple weeks later, at four and a half months pregnant we found out that we were losing him.

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The third installment will be posted tomorrow. Thank you for reading and for all the words of caring and encouragement and just plain love yesterday. You have no idea how much it's helped me to keep writing this story. 

A Tale from the Dark Side - Miscarriage

I've had this post written for a while. It's been sitting in draft while I've procrastinated about continuing on. If I don't post it now and force myself to write through the rest of our experience involving trying to conceive a second child which ended in a nearly crushing blow in the spring of 2011 I will never finish. Don't grammar police me, if I don't publish it now I will re-write it until my fingers fall off. So here is part 1. 

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Here's how it's been lately.

I'm in the shower and as I work in my conditioner, strands of hair surround my fingers like tentacles, clinging to both of my hands as I pull them away from my head. So many, in fact, that I have to work them off of under the spray of water, pushing them down and off my fingertips by rubbing them against my stomach. They are stuck to my shoulders, my back, and forming a web over the drain.

This has been happening for a few weeks now. I've been trying to avoid thinking about it. What's the big deal? I guess normally it wouldn't be on my mind so much but lately every freakin' time I pass a mirror I see hairs on my shirt, they are stuck in my brush, they are in my bed and on my pillow when I go to sleep.

Seeing them everywhere reminds me of the thing about how you will lose more hair than usual following a stressful event in your life. They say it will happen anywhere from one month to a year later, depending on who you believe. I know what happened to me, to us - my husband and I - 8 months ago and if anything could cause this sudden round of shedding... Well, that was it.

In March of this year I lost a pregnancy. Having a miscarriage is not in itself as horrible for me as it may be for someone else. It's physically painful, disappointing and sad, but I've had my share of them. But in March - that was different.

Let me start at the beginning.

My husband and I got married in July 2006. Shortly after we started trying to have a baby and over the Christmas holidays that year I started to feel nauseous. In fact, I spent an entire 2 hour ferry ride huddled in our car on the vehicle deck of the boat because I was too sick to move. It actually didn't occur to me that I might be pregnant until we got home that evening.

I went into the bathroom and took an early pregnancy test (EPT). I still remember sitting in the bathroom, waiting for the stick to say 'pregnant' or 'not pregnant', nervous as hell. When it came up 'pregnant' I felt all the blood drain from my face, I actually almost feinted I think. My first thought was 'Oh shit!' even though this is what we wanted, had been trying for months to achieve! White as a ghost I walked into the living room and told my husband. Scared as all get out, but happier than anything, we giggled and hugged and let the news sink in.

Five days later I miscarried. On New Years Eve. I had only been about 6 weeks along.

It was devastating to us - we'd tried and tried and it was such a quick transition from excited and scared to sad and confused. The doctor explained how these things are very common and that we should just go right ahead and try again as soon as we felt ready.

So we did. And we got pregnant again. And in early April that year I miscarried again, this time at about 7 weeks. The doctor offered us the option to go and get genetic testing done. We chose not to since we aren't a high-risk couple and we didn't really want the stress of it all. We thought we would be better off just taking it as it went for another try.

It was a good idea in theory. Unfortunately, my hormones were so completely out of whack and the stress of the situation put me in a pretty shitty state emotionally and mentally. I was high-functioning but a goddamned nightmare to my husband and where my personal relationship with him was concerned. We almost ended in divorce. Thankfully we saw a marriage counselor who advised me to seek help from my medical doctor in the form of medication. It worked. About 5 weeks later I was back to normal and appalled at what I had put my husband through.

A few months later and back on track we started to try to conceive again. In October I got pregnant  (ironically exactly 1 year after my first pregnancy) but this time everything went very well other than developing gestational diabetes and in August 2008 our beautiful, amazing baby boy was born.

To be continued. 


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This post is the first in my Project 365 series wherein (after this initial few posts of back-history) I will post a few short words on the daily bullshit involved in trying to conceive and what happens after that. Only it will be funnier. And probably kind of stupid, in a good smart way. You know what I mean.