It has been
just over three months since we lost our sweet baby Peyton. This has by far
been the longest and the hardest three months of my life. All the hopes and
dreams we had for our sweet baby are gone and as the days go by I don’t have a
growing belly.
Today marks my 27th birthday which should be exciting
and fun, but instead it is so hard to not think that today was suppose to mark
exactly 20 weeks of pregnancy. When I first noticed that my birthday marked our
20th week I was hopeful that our ultrasound would fall on today.
What a sweet gift it would be to see my baby!
However,
instead of seeing my baby growing inside me, I sit here with a hole in my heart
and belly that is childless. I know I have two wonderful children, but they
cannot replace or fill the hole that Peyton left. Every time I look at my two kids I wonder
about whether Peyton was a girl or boy, and what Peyton looks like. It also
breaks my heart that Tricia has to wait longer to have another sibling.
Whenever she sees a baby she gets so excited and has to point out the baby to
me. She is also such a great helper and I know she will be so much more helpful
than when Justus was born (they are 16 months apart!).
Someone
recently asked me if I received a lot of help after my miscarriage. The answer
is yes and no. I say yes because my parents and my in laws helped out
tremendously with household things and taking care of the kids. I say no
because it seemed like help from people outside the family was not there. We
had one family who was there for us, but other than that it was a lot of “So
sorry for your loss.” It is not that I don’t appreciate the prayers but to me a
miscarriage is not treated like any other loss.
If someone loses a child after they are born
people send meals and figure out some way to help the family with household
things, but with a miscarriage it feels like they say sorry and feel bad for a
minute, but then their life gets busy and they forget that we have lost a
child. It is like they feel they did their duty saying they are sorry, but don’t
realize how paralyzing the loss is for the couple, especially for the mom. Then
there are people who remember but don’t want to mention it. It is okay to ask
about a child miscarried because for us that child lived and we remember that
child every day. Yes, it may bring up painful memories, but those memories are
never going away. We are never going to forget about our baby so you won’t be
reminding us all over again. We are reminded every day because our bellies are
not getting big, and for some of us, the miscarriage process took either weeks
or months to be done.
Some of us
had already figured out the time frame for when certain things would happen.
For instance, we were going to tell both sides of our family over Easter
weekend since we would have had an ultrasound by then and would have been
around 10 weeks. We were going to tell the world the beginning of May, and today
we would have had an ultrasound. Then come November 12th I will
probably be a wreak since that was our due date.
Besides
losing my child the other hard part is seeing week after week people post that
they are pregnant. While it is exciting that they are having a healthy baby, it
is hard for me to be excited when I should be pregnant too. I wish I was joking
but seriously every week someone I know is posting that they are pregnant, and
I get one step closer to completely deleted all my social media sites. It
seriously hurts me that bad. It is also hard seeing people with big families,
because that is what Chris and I want so badly and it seems so far away.
Another
thing that has hurt has been certain comments. I knew ahead of time that people
try to say the right things but they end up being hurtful. The only comments I
have had that have really hurt have been the comments about people losing one
of their twin babies. I realize that yes they too have lost a baby, BUT losing
a twin was my only hope to have a healthy pregnancy. When I was at the ER I was
told that the only reason my numbers would drop and I would have a healthy baby
would be if I was pregnant with twins and I was losing one. So all weekend long
I prayed that I was pregnant with twins and just losing one. Unfortunately, I
was pregnant with only one baby and lost that one baby. My body had to go
through the whole miscarriage process and in the end I don’t get a baby in my
arms. I have to start all over with trying to get pregnant to have more children,
whereas, those who lost the twin were able to carry on with the same pregnancy
but instead had one baby instead of two. I realize that they did lose a child
and how it must have been hard, but please don’t compare your miscarriage to
mine because they are not the same.
We all
respond differently to grief so even those who have miscarried may not know
exactly how I feel. I stayed in the anger stage of grief for a very long time.
It wasn’t that I was angry at anyone or anything, I was just simply angry. I
thought it would be therapeutic to break a whole bunch of dishes, but then I
would have to clean it all up so I decided to not do that.
One other
thing that has hurt since losing Peyton has been the comments and questions
regarding whether or not I am pregnant again. I have a feeling people ask me
this because they are hoping it happens, but the question hurts. I wish I was
pregnant again, but that is not the case. I am hopeful that someday it will
happen, but for now I just take each day as it comes. Some days are good,
others are bad. So please stop asking and making comments about me being
pregnant again because it truly hurts.
I know God
has an amazing plan for my family and that someday we will have more kiddos,
but for now we are enjoying our two wonderful kids.
