“Babe, I’m pregnant.” Four weeks ago, I got the biggest surprise of my life. The pregnancy was unplanned, but over the weeks that followed, my girlfriend and I were so excited about becoming parents. I’ve always wanted to be a dad — I grew up as the 2nd oldest of 8 kids — and having kids of my own has always been a dream of mine.
We started planning a future together — we would move in together, buy a new SUV, and find a place with a huge kitchen and an extra room for a nursery.
If it was a boy, we had a good idea of what we would call him. If it was a girl, we were excited about opening up the baby name book and picking out some of our favorites to compare. We played the guitar and sang to our baby, we fell asleep talking about how tanned and cute our baby would be, and we dreamed about all the fun we would have together.
We saw the beautiful, strong heartbeat at the 8-week mark. I couldn’t wait to tell all my friends I would be a dad. I surprised lots of people I was telling them so early, but I couldn’t contain my excitement.
We went in for the 12-week appointment to see how much our baby had grown. To learn if our baby would be a boy or a girl. The image came on the screen and neither of us needed a doctor to tell us what we already knew. The heartbeat that was so vivid and strong at 8-weeks was no longer there.
It’s been a blur since we found out we lost our baby. There’s such a stigma around miscarriage, even though nearly 1 in 5 pregnancies end that way. I shared the news with family and friends, both for their love and support, but to remove the stigma around talking about miscarriage.
Instead of hiding it from people, I’m telling them the truth. Instead of going to work and pretending everything is ok, I’m telling my manager and co-workers and letting them know I’m taking time off to grieve.
This is my attempt to make sense of things, and to normalize miscarriage and remove the huge stigma around it. It’s hard to talk about, but it’s important that we get to a place where we don’t have to hide the news when a miscarriage happens.
To my girlfriend and our baby up in Heaven, I love you both so very much.
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A version of this post was previously published on PSILoveyou and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Talk to you soon.
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