Katherine Teske ('12) shares her experience with recurrent pregnancy loss and what she’s learned on her journey to physical and emotional healing.
I’m still recovering from the deafening silence that should have been filled by my baby’s heartbeat. It’s been six months since then, but some days it feels just as fresh as that late August morning.
I like to fool myself into thinking that it wouldn’t feel this bad if we hadn’t heard the heartbeat just two weeks before. It had been the ultrasound that couldn’t come soon enough. Proof that my debilitating morning sickness and exhaustion was all for something, for someone (a boy, we later found out). And then, right before our eyes and ears, there was every bit of validation I needed to keep going — to keep tolerating those saltines for another week, to keep adding to our “baby names shortlist” in the notes section of my phone, to keep pinning to my secret Pinterest board of nursery decor ideas.
But then it all came to a screeching halt. A repeat ultrasound to double check measurements that had been a little “off” — surely just a fluke — was met with silence. I was 10.5 weeks along.
Once joyful, the tears that came that day were of a different kind. They flowed out of me without warning, fast and furious — the kind of ugly crying that you see in movies and swear you’re not capable of because you’re “not that kind of crier.” I struggled to coordinate my off-beat symphony of emotions as I laid limp and vulnerable on the ultrasound table. My mind had trouble comprehending the emptiness that my heart instantly grieved.
“I’m so sorry,” whispered the ultrasound technician, as though she had just regretfully let me in on a secret that everyone had known but me. “Your doctor will see you shortly. Here’s some tissue.”
She walked out, I ripped off my soggy, tear-stained face mask, and I sobbed in my husband’s arms. He cried too.
I had experienced what some refer to as a “missed miscarriage,” meaning that without warning, my baby’s heartbeat had stopped prior to my appointment. Yet, I showed no other signs of pregnancy loss. I still had morning sickness that rivaled, if not surpassed, that of my first pregnancy with my then 20-month-old son Nolan, felt faint and was completely exhausted (and not in a mom-of-a-toddler-boy kind of way). How could my body betray us like this?
I had a D&C the next morning. The only way I can describe the experience is one of profound emptiness, best summed up by a foggy memory of being wheeled out of the Labor & Delivery unit with a bag of “postpartum goodies” and no baby to show for it.
According to my OB, my story is not unique. Up to half of all known pregnancies end in miscarriage, potentially more if you consider early losses mistaken for a late period. It’s a daunting number, and certainly one I was entirely unfamiliar with. It’s also a number that hit me as both comforting and minimizing all at once — comforted to know that I would not be alone in this undesirable yet overcrowded club; ashamed to grieve something that my care team had likely grown desensitized to.
He went on to say that women of healthy, childbearing age can expect to have 2-3 losses in their lifetime. To think that I could potentially have to go through this experience again was almost too much to comprehend. But then I did, four months later.
While pregnancy loss is relatively common, recurrent miscarriage is more rare and often grounds to see a specialist. In my case, after some follow-up labs that were inconclusive, I was referred to a reproductive endocrinologist (read: fertility specialist) and told not to get pregnant again until further evaluation.
And here we are.
I wish I had a grand finale to this story — the kind that ends with me telling you we got answers and now I’m pregnant with a healthy baby, but I am still a work in progress. I’m still quietly grieving the loss of two small beings and all the hope and dreams that came with them, while also enduring the pokes and prodding that we hope will lead to a clear path forward.
If you have recently endured pregnancy loss, I am so sorry. While no words can take away your pain, I hope to offer even a small ounce of comfort in our shared experience and would welcome the chance to connect more personally. In the meantime though, here are a few suggestions to promote physical and emotional healing after reflecting upon my own loss journey:
Be Selfish. This is a time to truly put yourself first, however that looks for you. For me, it meant honoring the introverted part of myself that craves time for prayer and reflection, 1:1 connections and writing. It meant saying no to social events that sounded completely overwhelming to me at the time. It meant asking my husband to take our toddler to the park or to swim lessons or to my mom’s place just so I could have the morning to myself. It meant getting the full set of highlights I’d been putting off for months for lack of time and first trimester woes. Despite my best efforts, did I feel guilty? You bet. Was I better for it? Absolutely.
Monitor Your Social Media Mood. Pay close attention to how you feel after a good scroll sesh. Does it leave you feeling happy, uplifted and confident, or any combination of sad, anxious and insecure? It’s okay to admit if you fall in the latter camp. For me personally, I found myself being reminded of “what could have been” with the many pregnancy and birth announcements, targeted Instagram ads that somehow evaded my no-longer-pregnant status, or baby-related content that just hit me the wrong way. I can truthfully say I love pregnancy announcements and feel genuine joy for those growing their families, but it’s not necessarily what I needed while trying to heal — and that’s no fault of my friends. It was my responsibility to tailor my social media use to better support my emotional state.
Embrace Your Emotions. As the statistics would suggest, pregnancy loss is all too common. But just because something is common doesn’t make it easy. Your feelings of sadness, disappointment, heartbreak, devastation — you name it — are completely valid. Let yourself feel whatever you need to feel to process your loss. Talk about it. Share it with those who will support your path towards healing. I remember feeling the need to compare my loss to situations that I considered to be much bigger than mine — to that of war-fueled loss, to sudden or health-related parent loss, child loss, sibling loss, etc. And I realized that while the gravity of all those situations was undoubtedly worthy of grief, so was mine. So is yours.
Connect with Loss Warriors. My first loss occurred right before Pregnancy & Infant Loss Remembrance Day. I never thought that day would touch me on such a deeply personal level, until it did and I found myself moved to share my story in the caption of an Instagram post. The messages I received from unassuming friends, acquaintances, family members and colleagues was mind-blowing. It was yet another reminder that you never really know what someone is going through behind the filtered highlight reel of their social media accounts. Through the moving messages, I connected with a local friend of a friend who had just been in my shoes and offered to meet up for a walk. She was one of the first people I “socialized” with in person after my loss, and while I was apprehensive beforehand, it turned out to be both cathartic and comforting.
I share my story in the spirit of solidarity, because if not for the love and support of my family and friends, I’m sure I’d still be enveloped by the complete and total heartbreak of this experience. Grief is a process that never really ends, but it gets better with time. And for me, it gets better knowing I’m not alone. To anyone enduring their own loss journey, please know you are not alone. And to our tiny angels, until we meet again.