Four Years, Four Losses: A Personal Reflection

This one's not about jewelry, it's just about me.

I don't usually share things like this. But I've always processed big feelings by writing them down, so here it is…

 

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Four years. Four losses. Three surgeries, two miscarriages, two failed embryo transfers, and thousands of dollars later, this story doesn't have a happy ending. Not the one I thought I was writing, anyway.

The first time I got pregnant was on our honeymoon. We'd barely started trying. It felt like I was living inside a fairy tale, you get married, you get pregnant, that's just how it goes. It was the beginning of something wonderful, all hope and excitement.

(What I thought was going to be my pre-bump photo, June 2022)

Then came months of not knowing, of a medical system that couldn't get me seen in time. I spent those 3 months imagining who this little one was going to be, boy or girl, so chill and excited in a way I never got to feel again. We lost the baby. Something in me changed after that. Every pregnancy after it came with fear built in, right up until now four years later, the stage where you start to think it’s never going to happen, where you’re exhausted and heart broken from trying. No one talks about this stage.

You hear the happy endings, the ones where after trying so long, it finally sticks, and someone gets their rainbow baby. I don't have my rainbow baby (I have a rainbow puppy who I love with my entire heart and soul). I don't have any embryos left, and at 41, another round of IVF means exhausting our odds and our resources for a chance that keeps shrinking. I don't know if this is giving up too soon or not soon enough. I just know that I've been trying to make it work, hard, for four years, and I don't think I have it in me to do it again. There are no additional tests to do, no reasons why. Babies are truly miracles. 

(My rainbow puppy, Rylie Grace, July 2022.)

It’s exhausting being reminded of everyone else's bundles of joy, of a joy that's simply not available to me. I will never tell my birth story. I will never tuck a child into bed or get slow morning snuggles. I will never see the unique combination of my husband and me in human form. It sneaks up on me in the smallest moments, an ultrasound scene on TV, a pregnancy announcement scrolling by, and there it is again. It's not that I can't be happy for other people who have it. I can and I genuinely am. But I'm still allowed to grieve what I don't.

(My second pregnancy during this photoshoot, July 2023).

I hate focusing on what I don’t have. It’s not my nature. They say grief is love with nowhere to go. I have so much love that I will never get to give to a child of my own. There will always be something missing, four babies lost, and I'll always wonder what their names would have been. What kind of mom I would have been, what stories and lessons I would have passed on.

 (I've been poked and prodded more times than I can count. IVF 2025)

I feel like I’m giving up on one version of the greatest love I could ever know, and it feels like a thousand knives in my heart. My heart will always long for my children. No one talks about this pain, and it makes it a lonely one to carry.

I don't know how this story ends yet. There are other paths still ahead of us that we haven't fully closed the door on, but right now I just need to grieve this one before I can think about what's next. Closing one door doesn't mean the house goes dark, there's still so much life ahead, so much love still to give, in ways I haven't discovered yet. I will be an amazing Auntie and God Mom. This isn't the ending I imagined, but it's still my story, and I'm still writing it. 

I hope that by sharing it, it can help another woman who's at this same stage, or if you know someone going through what I'm going through, that you can see them a little more clearly and be there for them.