How to Move on from Pregnancy Loss
“Chemical pregnancy.” Those words weighed heavy on me. My worst nightmare come true. I was scared to take the phone call because I feared the worst possible outcome. And there it was. My pregnancy was no longer viable. A chemical pregnancy is just medical speak for early miscarriage. But hearing those sanitized words didn’t hide the fact that I had miscarried. The truth is that if you’re not doing an embryo transfer like I was, if you’re actually getting pregnant the natural way, you’d probably never even know you were pregnant and had a chemical pregnancy. But I knew. I took meds for two months leading up to this. I took a blood test, then another blood test to check my pregnancy hormones. I carried the weight of the truth that I was briefly pregnant.
“The doctor says to stop all medications.” Those instructions stung hard. You’d think I could at least be happy about that. No more injections, not more knots in my butt, no more suppositories, patches, pills. The nasty side effects would finally go away. I would no longer wake up nauseous or with a raging headache or muscle aches. But I didn’t want it to end. The moment you stop taking the medication it’s over. The embryo that so briefly lived inside you is now gone.
All I could think to myself was “this is so unfair.” This wasn’t supposed to happen. We tried with my own eggs multiple times and it never worked. So we moved on to donor embryos. These were good embryos. Genetically tested, highly graded, at one of the best clinics in the country. I traveled to Colorado for these embryos. They were supposed to work. I know there’s never a guarantee, but I felt I’d had enough loss already. Surely the world wouldn’t be so cruel to make me go through all this for another loss. This was supposed to the one that would work.
I’ve been through this before and it never gets easier. This is not the first time I’ve had the phone call that my pregnancy hormones were disturbingly low. I’ve prepared for the bad news before. I was prepared again this time. But no matter how much you’re expecting it, it always hits you like a ton of bricks.
And here I was, the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, crying loud and uncontrollably on the couch while my husband held me. I didn’t want to let go of him. I just wanted to hold on as if he’d be able to make it go away. Outside people were gearing up for the holiday weekend, preparing for barbecues and pool parties. And here I was, just wailing on the couch, unable to process what I just heard.
How do I go on? This is the hardest part of miscarriage. We have to just go on. No time off to grieve, no friends and family sending us flowers and food, no official ceremony to say goodbye. Just a phone call and with a “so sorry” at the end.
The sad truth is that there’s no easy way out of the grief. You don’t get out of grief, you get through it. Last night, just one day after the bad news came, I got back to being a standup. It felt weird to be telling jokes while underneath I was falling apart, but it also felt good. I could still make people laugh. Some of my friends reached out to comfort me, and I was reminded that people love and support me and will catch me when I fall. Life isn’t over after a loss.