Hi again-

Is it wrong that I am "okay" with what is happening? That is totally true, I cry and apologize to the baby, and hate when people say I look pregnant (I used to love it) - but more often I feel like the worse case scenerio is it will just be the three of us in the family, or I have #2 alittle older than origionally intended. Yes I am disappointed with loosing my baby, but at the same time I am not disappointed with the two options above.

We started a baby book...well a belly journal, and I cannot bring myself to delete the photos - I will not. Even though it is creepy I have thought about asking for the ultrasound photos to put in that book.

I just read a miscarriage story and the woman said she pulled the sack from teh toilet after miscarring so she could hold her baby. She described it in excrutiating detail.

I guess I have accepted ths, but emotionally I am somewhere in the middle. I don't want to forget this pregnancy ever happened, but at the same time I do not feel like I am losing a child, only the idea of having one. I don't feel that desire keep momentos, but I feel guilty or like I might regret it later if I don't. The thought of 'passing' my baby in the toilet adn flushing it away absolutely sickens me ( that is why I wanted the D&C but looks like my body may not wait for my appt) but there is no way in hell I am going to scoop it out and hold it.

I guess I just don't know what I should be feeling, even though there is nothing I should or should not be feeling, I can't help but think everything I am feeling is wrong.

Thank you for listening, I think I really just needed to get that out.

When was your miscarriage? I ask because sometimes we go into shock and it takes awhile to properly grieve. For the first two weeks after my loss I was sad but felt very accepting of it all. But then the full reality of not being pregnant anymore hit me like a ton of bricks and I became severely depressed.

I don't think depression is a healthy form of grieving (though totally normal) so I do hope you can skip that part. It's so hard. We all grieve in our own ways. I never wanted to see my babies though the one I did because as I was wiping myself during the bleeding it came out onto my hand.

I did make a memento for my first baby including an ultrasound photo from when it was still alive. I don't have one for the second because I didn't acknowledge it until a year later. So my only mementos are the positive pregnancy tests I had kept for the sake of his surviving twin.

When I lost my second one I wasn't aware there were twins so I thought the pregnancy was over so I contemplated never trying for a baby again....that it would be just DH and I and we would go on fun adventures not possible with little children. I definitely felt a peace about that decision in the moment.

I guess what I'm trying to say is if you ever feel sad about the baby to let it happen. Go with the flow of your emotions and if you feel like you're recovering quickly then find joy in that. Our lost loved ones would want us to be happy again. So many of us take years to feel happy and normal again. And likewise, I think it's OK to carry a bit of that sadness with you too. It's been over a year for both my losses and I still cry over them from time to time but I do think I've "moved on" as well.

Good thread. I have to say that I thought I would be devastated, since I was quite neurotic with worry when there was a delay in first seeing the heartbeat. I imagined a miscarriage would be tragic, and something tremendously difficult to recover from. It's been a pretty long journey to getting pregnant, and an expensive one. I'm almost 42, no kids, so it feels like the window for a baby is shutting fast.

Surprisingly, though, I feel just fine. Content, even. Obviously, I was very disappointed at the bad news. But it never felt like I lost a baby, only the pregnancy.

I woke up the day after my d&c with all this energy and clarity. I knew I'd been feeling tired the previous two months, but the contrast was stark. I felt like I got myself back. My life seems back to normal. I feel more like I got something back, and less a sense of loss. I also feel tremendous relief that I didn't have a long, drawn out, painful and bloody miscarriage. I've barely even been spotting with the d&c. I had a spontaneous miscarriage once, many years ago, the experiences were like night and day.

Don't get me wrong. I would rather not have miscarried, I would rather be exhausted and pregnant with a healthy cub. But I think it's worthwhile to say that it doesn't have to be tragic, it's not doom and gloom over here for me.

Not to take anything away from anyone who is feeling devastated. Just that a very different reaction is possible.

I thought staring this thread would make me look like the 'evil unemotional person'. So thank you both for being so understanding.

One more question. Did you know it happened before you were told or had any signs? I just had a bad feeling, for weeks and everyone said it was nerves - I convinced myself of that the best I could. But something just wasn't right. So I lied to myself, started really overeating and just weird things like poking my boobs to make sure they still hurt, smelling gross things hoping I would get sick. And not having those 'bad' things happen really concerned me.

I just found out on Thurs that I would likely miscarry and the spotting started yesterday. My biggest fear is that it would start before my D&C next week. They were making me wait to be certain there was no heartbeat, and I agree that was the right thing to do.

Maybe you are right Starry and it just hasn't totally hit me yet I was a total sobbing wreck for about 24 hours, then I just said 'I can't change it, so lets look at this logically.' I do wish we had an alive photo though- and I do regret telling my son, he is 4.

I am happy that you both have moved on. I do not think I could handle seeing the baby, so sorry you had to experience that.

So sorry for your losses. I have to say, I am so excited to get back to feeling like myself and stop feeling preg when I know I am not.

I had a miscarriage at 18 weeks four weeks ago my water just broke at 3 in the morning so I went straight to a&e where I was then taken to maternity, it took over 48hours to go into labour and another 12 hours for my babies to arrive. When I was first told that I would miscarry both babies I was a wreck for half an hour then fear set in as I had never given birth before and to two babies I would never get to have and just like that my grieving stopped for a few days and I felt like I was heartless like I must not have cared about them anyway but now I am finally grieving and that makes me feel better as I really wanted these babies but my mind went into shock and just would not let me accept it had happened and now I do.
Your mind may still not have come to terms with what is happening and it may take a few days to really accept what is going on.
I am sorry for your loss.x

You think you lied to yourself about being everything being okay, but that you really knew it wasn't?

I didn't know. In retrospect, maybe I should have known chances of viability were poorer because we were only able to see (vs hear) the heartbeat. Visibility wasn't good enough for the doc, she wanted to scan yet again in a week. But by then I was so sick of worrying that I sort of chose to be optimistic and wait two weeks before going back. At which point I just knew we were going to see one of those super cute gummy bear scans.

Huh, maybe that is sort of like lying to oneself? Assuming everything's going to be okay? But it was more like I realized worrying wasn't going to help anything, or even mitigate any sense of loss, so why not let myself enjoy being pregnant. Let myself get excited, even.

Physically my symptoms were relatively mild, but they never diminished significantly. I remember I woke up without much breast tenderness one morning and worried, but the soreness came back that afternoon. My spout with mild nausea must actually started after the embryo must have died.

I have wondered if the grief just hasn't hit me yet as well. I have had a couple random fleeting moments of regret, but nothing very painful or lasting.

It's possible, but I do doubt it. So does my OH. I think people are just built differently. I'm not unemotional, I have been intensely emotional at times. I think people probably get emotional about different things, though. I do like to think of myself as typically fairly rational, though.

There's nothing I can do about this, though. It's happened. I can see myself more likely getting upset about never having children, or never having had children, much moreso than the loss of this particular pregnancy. If I never have a baby, that's my doing, for starting so late. This miscarriage- not my fault, nothing I could have done.

Anyway, I really appreciate this thread, because I think it's important to legitimize the non-traumatized reaction to miscarriage. It doesn't seem quite right to wonder if there's something wrong with us for not feeling crushed about our losses. Or be told there's a proper/normal/decent way to grieve. In a way I feel just really fortunate in this, and I don't want to think it's because it just hasn't hit me yet, or in the "right" way.

And I hope it all goes as easy for you as it has for me.

I don't think I had any real warning signs for my miscarriage other than some spotting the two days leading up to it along with a very heavy "everything is about to fall out" feeling in the hours leading up to it. However, two weeks before my DH and I had gotten into a car accident. We weren't injured but we had been going highway speeds so I had gotten a good jolt and my abdomen was in a lot of pain afterwards from the seatbelt. But the doctors told me that the only concern would be if there was bruising which there wasn't. Even after the loss my OB told me that an accident wouldn't likely cause a miscarriage. It's hard not to blame it though. I had seen the baby alive just the day before the accident.

And don't blame yourselves if you naturally respond to tragedy and grief in a quick way and bounce back quickly. I'm the sort who easily becomes depressed so am kind of jealous that some people can respond in that way.

Grief is something you carry with you always but you can be happy and have a full life with all of its joys and excitement. It's OK to feel normal again. Let me tell you, it's so relieving to feel normal again and it took me almost 2 years to get that way. No judgement here.

I'm so sorry for your losses

And don't blame yourselves if you naturally respond to tragedy and grief in a quick way and bounce back quickly. I'm the sort who easily becomes depressed so am kind of jealous that some people can respond in that way.


I get depressed easy too - my entire extended family is on happy pills. I think that is why it is bothering me so much that I am having so little emotuion right now.

But my mom pointed out that when my grandmother died I was the one at the hosp who had the attitude "that sucks, can I go back to work now" and started looking at the business side of things right away. Once I added everything in my check book instead of subtracting and had $6.32 to my name when I realized it, I laughed. But when I driver gives me the finger or I loose $1 in the pop machine or somthing silly it will eat at me for days. I am guilt ridden when I call into work sick and feel better tht afternoon but still stay home. It's like if it is huge an I have no control I can handle it, but if I should have had control I just freak out.

My dr used an accident as an example and said it would have to be extreme to cause miscarriage, but I would see t the same way as you. How could you not link the two in some way?

If and when the greif really hits, I am running straight here. Sadly, despite my extremely supportive friends, family and co-workers, this is the place I feel the least alone with this whole situation.

Thanks to all of you ladies in this thread. Your musings made me smile. I don't think you are heartless at all. We all react to life events differently, and right here, on this message board, we tell everyone that whatever your reaction is, it's the right one. The last thing we need in this is being emotionally regulated and restricted to just one "right" reaction. Cheers to all of you wonderful women!

Oh man, I so get this. I fell around the time my baby stopped growing. Slipped on a puddle and fell on my face. I thought to myself that the embryo was in a sac and probably had plenty of cushioning, but the whole thing was such a shock to my system, that it felt like it could cause cardiac arrest.

Rationally I know it's not likely that the fall caused the miscarriage, but the coincidence in timing bothers me a lot. It's terrible to think I could have caused the miscarriage. Not like I meant to fall, but I was hurrying while carrying a laptop, should have avoided the puddle, etc.


I'll meet you back here. FWIW, I don't think it's sad to find easier companionship with people who are going through similar experiences. I think it actually makes a lot of sense. Don't see why our loved ones are supposed to be everyone we need at every point of our lives.