My Angel Mommy's Story - Part 1 - Pregnancy/Infant Loss Awareness Month

My name is Jessica and I am 29 years old - I will be 30 on October 21. This is the story of my first miscarriage in my own words.

I really thought I'd be at a different place in life than I am at nearly 30. Ever since I was younger (I remember first thinking this at around 5 or 6), I knew I wanted to be a mom and I knew I wanted to be one before I was 30. Most of this stems from the fact that my mom had me, and then my sister, in her late 20s and early 30s. For some reason I thought this was entirely too old to be having babies and it was decided then that I would be one before 30.

Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case exactly. I say exactly because I am a mom (though very few actually recognize this fact). It just happens that my children were too beautiful for Earth and while they grew in my body, they never made it to be held in my arms.

The very first time I found out I was pregnant was December 13, 2008. Honestly, I remember so many details of that night that it's scary. I remember the date because my grandpa passed away December 13, several years before. My period was a few days late and on a whim we stopped by the store on the way home from my parents' house to pick up a pregnancy test. To our surprise, 2 pink lines popped up. Being so excited, we called nearly everyone right away to share our good news.

I called my ob/gyn on Monday and set up an appointment. My doctor doesn't like to see you until you're 8 weeks so I had to wait until January. It seemed like an agonizingly long time to wait. In the meantime, I had started spotting. It was brown blood and when I called the doctor to see if it was normal, she assured me it was. She sent me to have blood work done to help ease my mind. I'm a worrier by nature and always have been. Being pregnant just seemed to make it worse, but I tried my best to push it out of my mind.

Even though my doctor was assuring me the things I was experiencing were normal, my gut was telling me otherwise. I even went so far as to tell two of my co-workers at the time that I was pregnant - I hadn't really wanted to tell anyone but family so early - and told them that I was telling them in case something happened to me at work and I was unable to tell anyone myself, they could tell someone I was pregnant. At the time I worked with adolescents who have Autism and some of the behaviors they had could be quite violent.

I had repeat blood work to monitor things and I learned my numbers weren't quite rising as they should. While they hadn't quite doubled in 48 hours as expected, the nurse who called to give me the results assured me that things could still be ok. They weren't exactly where they should have been, but they weren't too far off either.

We made it through Christmas Day and got a few baby related gifts - a scrapbook layout kit from his mom and some shirts in bigger sizes from his grandma (possibly others but those are what I remember). By then just about everyone in both families knew we were expecting and as far as I could tell most were excited for us.

The next day I went to the bathroom and noticed that the spotting was now bright red and it was more than just spotting. It looked like a slightly lighter than normal period. I called my mom and told her what was going on and she came to take us to the hospital.

Because I was so early, I had to be seen in the emergency room. The triage nurse said that was because at about 6/7 weeks I wasn't far enough along to do anything to save the baby if something like that might be necessary. I don't even remember how long I had to wait to even get back to a room in the emergency room. It felt like forever.

Once I got back to a room, I found out that the one doctor I absolutely dislike was the one in the ER that day. From what I hear he's great with kids, but as an adult, his bedside manner is lacking and to be quite honest he sucks. He ordered the typical blood work and ultrasound.

The blood work showed I still had pregnancy hormones in my system, but they still hadn't doubled as they should have. The ultrasound, according to the doctor, "didn't show any signs of pregnancy." There was nothing in my uterus by the time they did the ultrasound. At some point between when I started bleeding more heavily and when they did the ultrasound I had passed the baby. Looking back, I have a pretty good idea when that was - and honestly I haven't told anyone that until now.

I was sent home and told to rest and make an appointment with my doctor as soon as possible, which I did. At the appointment the doctor confirmed the miscarriage and we went home to "untell" everyone. I think this was probably when I first realized that people really don't know how to act/react when someone loses a child at any stage of the child's life. We got every response from "You're young, you can try again," to "It happened for a reason." Both of those are probably some of the worst things you can say to someone who has just found out they lost their baby.