Grief is a Thief: How ‘When’ Becomes ‘If’

I’ve never written anything like this before. I’m not into journaling, and writing anything down in the fog of my grief was not helpful to me. But just now I am sitting here on a plane and listening to a very excited, very newly pregnant woman, use the term ‘when.’

Now you may be thinking that this is all perfectly normal. Yes… Yes it is normal. But my heart stopped beating just for a second in pain. Pain for all my missed ‘whens’.

After three years of unexplained infertility (including the dreaded Covid 2020 year), my husband and I, newly settled in the USA, finally had our first IVF appointment. We were excited to begin. Our doctor was very honest with us and shared the statistics that our 39 year old selves had to digest. But we remained hopeful.

I felt the dreaded ‘period style’ drip

Now, you wouldn’t believe it, but that very month we became pregnant naturally. Wow, we thought. That’s it! We were just stressed! We excitedly started planning for ‘when’ our baby arrived, even buying our first house together. We’d planned the nursery for ‘when’ the baby arrived, had discussed names for ‘when’ he or she was here. We’d sailed through the HCG testing and our first two early scans, at 6 and then 8.5 weeks. Everything looked great, the chance of miscarriage was down to below 3% and so we started sharing with our friends and family. Everyone was so truly excited for us, having known how desperately we wanted a baby.

And then, one sunny morning, at 11.5 weeks pregnant, while I was soaking up the spring sun and waiting for contractors at our new house, I felt the dreaded ‘period style’ drip. Rushing into the bathroom, I stared in horror at the brown stains in my underwear. I immediately called my OB’s office and they calmly told me it was probably nothing to be concerned about but to come in the next day for a scan to check. Now, this was at 2:30pm. How on earth could I last for 21 hours? The panic inside me rose and my husband made the executive decision to go to the ER. One painful four hour wait, a torturous and silent internal scan and an, ‘I’m so very sorry,’ later, our world came crashing down around us. “You’ve had a missed miscarriage. We estimate the fetus died at around 9 weeks.”

And that was it. We were sent on our way with a big pack of thick sanitary towels. No leaflets to explain our options. No explanation of what might happen next. No support line to contact. Just a, “Call your OB in the morning and they’ll see you to talk about the next steps.”

And then two days later, it was all over. My baby was gone

The next 24 hours were (and still are) a fog to me. I remember at one point screaming at my husband to, “Get it out of me. It’s dead. Get it out of me.” Flashes of his panicked phone calls to the OB’s office where he begged them to see me earlier and to make sure I didn’t have to encounter any pregnant women or new babies when I visited. Crying and keening for my baby when I had to, indeed, wait in the hallway to schedule my D&C and see pregnant women checking out of their appointments. Desperately trying to ignore their sympathetic looks as they rubbed their perfect bumps.

And then two days later, it was all over. My baby was gone. And I felt the most dead and numb inside I’ve ever felt. If I was to give those days a color, it would be black. Just black. Black and blank. Lonely. Empty.

A few days passed like this before a beautiful friend reached out to me and suggested that I take a look at an Instagram account she had heard about. “It’s called TWGGE, The Worst Girl Gang Ever. It might help you know; to know that you aren’t alone.” As I tentatively scanned their posts, my tears were a river. Here were women that got it.

Signing into that first online meeting, actually laughing as Bex and Laura acknowledged how the whole situation was ‘so f*cking sh*t,’ felt like being wrapped in a big fluffy blanket and being told that everything would eventually be okay.

Throughout the next few months, that online community of strong, resilient women kept me afloat. Finding crumbs of joy in my days became my mantra. I healed. I started exercising again. My body felt better. I stopped feeling like I was a failure. Eventually I felt strong enough to visit the IVF clinic again.

Now, our IVF story is a topic for another essay on another day; a deep dive into the endless needles, the drugs, the scans with my buddy Wanda, and waiting (oh, so much waiting!) But six months, and two retrieval cycles later, we had done it! We had three frozen perfect PGT-A tested little embabies. We were ready. Or so we thought.

At that point I recognised that my ‘ifs’ would never again be ‘whens’.

After losing a baby, I’m not sure you can ever be ready to jump into an IVF transfer. I realize now that ignorance was bliss. I had no idea of the terror I would feel during that 9 day wait. Then the intense fear of those first phone calls about the HCG levels (of which mine, of course, didn’t follow a normal rise) and struggling with the wait to 6 weeks to confirm the pregnancy was actually there. This time we only told our closest friends and family. In my head, I just thought if I could get to 12 weeks, then I’d feel more confident. Seeing blood in my underwear again at 6.5 weeks had me throwing up and convinced that it was all over (baby was fine – no one had told me about the higher likelihood of early bleeds in an IVF pregnancy).

At the 12 week scan I suddenly realised that nothing was ever going to make me feel confident in this pregnancy. At that point I recognised that my ‘ifs’ would never again be ‘whens’. While everyone around me was saying ‘when the baby is here,’ in my head it would always be ‘IF the baby makes it earth-side.’

Another huge knock-back at the 20 week scan, where we discovered our daughter had a velamentous cord insertion and possible vasa-previa, had my mental health spiralling. Being told that my baby was likely to be born at 34 weeks with a NICU stay was like sandpaper on my soul. Why? We kept asking ourselves. Why us? How is this fair?

But somehow we did make it though. Our little miracle fought like a trooper to make it earth side. Nuggets of joy happened; the first kick. The hilarious 4D scan, where she was hiding and I had to dance her into a good position! The 30 week scan where we found out the vasa Previa had resolved and we could go full term. We tried to celebrate these little wins, but at no point in my mind did the ‘if’ become a ‘when’.

At 38 weeks and 3 days, our beautiful daughter was born via c-section. ‘When’ she was finally placed on my chest, I took the first deep breath I had taken in nearly 9 months. The relief that she was in my arms and I could see her little chest rising and falling was overwhelming.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, can prepare you for the experience of pregnancy after loss. It is a wild rollercoaster where you spend every spare second checking your underwear, analyzing each symptom, googling long into the night, and, in my case, praying to every god, angel and fairy out there for the health of my unborn child.

So as I sat there on the plane, coincidentally a few days before my second IVF transfer, listening to this excited mother to be, I made a promise to myself. IF I am lucky enough to have a second miracle pregnancy, I will make a conscious choice to use the word WHEN.