
How to build resilience in the face of grief - my story

Trigger warning: This blog post might trigger some traumatic events regarding death and loss as I go into descriptive detail in order to give full context of the emotions I felt and how I was able to move through them.
December is a hard month for me. A month that should be for celebrating the holidays. But with all the merry and cheer I have to remember the losses that have come about in my life in this month. I decided to write out this blog post as a full descriptive story of both of the losses, how I grieved and how I was able to build the resilience in the face of grief
BABY D
Saturday December 5, 2020
I woke up on this day with such emotions. You see the week prior I knew I was pregnant. I had the “implantation bleeding” around the time I should have gotten my period. I felt more bloated than normal, my boobs were already becoming bigger and hurting and I was tired as fuck! But for that week (as much as I tried to hide my bloated belly at work) I remained neutral in case this was just a period from hell coming on.
Still I knew, which is why I purchased a pregnancy test. I did one on Thursday and it was negative, but found out I did it wrong. I decided to wait until Saturday morning to do the 2nd one so that I didn’t have anything else to do as I knew my mind wouldn’t be able to think
Saturday morning 1st thing, I peed on the stick. Waited the 5 min which felt like forever! Came back and in clear letters it said “PREGNANT”
Holy shit! You see, I was 43 my husband 50 and we were not even trying, actually didn’t even think it was possible. But yet, here the pregnancy test showed it was. We made a pact that we didn’t want children but yet we didn’t stop it from happening either and God had other plans.
I wrestled with whether we should tell our mothers. I made a short list of who I wanted to tell at this very very early stage – 5 weeks to be exact.
The whole weekend, I took it easy – walking on the treadmill and getting flooded with “congratulations” and on an emotional high that this is it!
Went into work on Monday, and felt I had to tell my boss (not sure why) but I wanted to be sure that in case anything happened regarding sickness or anything that he knew why. I told a couple of my friends at work and kept on working.
Tuesday and Wednesday going along and came home Wednesday evening. Feeling a little ick Wednesday evening and thought well here comes the sickness. I remember seeing a drop of blood and didn’t say anything just went straight to Google which was a huge mistake.
Yet, I was still hopeful it was nothing. However, Wednesday as I was sleeping I felt it. The pain in my lower back and abdomen woke me up. That was when it all started. I woke up to go to the bathroom, but didn’t turn on the light as I usually don’t. I wish I would have that time. That would have been the last time I would see Baby D.
Tossed and turned all night and woke up with some light bleeding.
Thursday December 9, 2020
It kept going on Thursday and I called my OBGYN during lunch who I was supposed to have my 1st appt the next Monday. She told me to go to the emergency room to run some tests and here is where I panicked. I knew but did not want to admit this was really happening.
I went back to work and went into my friend’s office and told her I needed to go to the emergency room. I hadn’t told others yet so she said she would take me and we told our boss.
It was a loooooong time at the emergency room, still bleeding but still hopeful because it wasn’t heavy. Took some tests, and ultrasound what seemed like forever as they were moving the wand around trying to find the baby. Finally I was done, but waiting to speak with the doctor.
When I did speak with him, he said that they didn’t see any baby, but it could be that it is really early in the stage. He was concerned about my hormone levels that they should be higher at this point and that they are low. I was to make an appt with my OBGYN to take the levels in the next 3 days to see if they went up or have dropped.
Still hopeful at this point, I did just that.
2 days passed and the bleeding has not stopped. My boobs were not hurting anymore and going down. This was it, I knew at this point it was over.
My appointment at the OBGYN solidified what I was dreading. My hormone levels dropped even more and they were going down.
In 5 days I went from being excited to having it stripped away in literally a heartbeat! An emotional roller coaster that would go on for the rest of the month and there would be no Baby D!
In the days that followed even though I was grieving this loss, there was that hopefulness that it was possible, something I never had thought given our age and all the other times that we were actually trying.
We thought about trying again, especially in the next few months given there were so many cases of rainbow babies happening within 6 months of miscarriages. And even though we started to try, we finally decided that we go back to our pact of not having children and this was God’s plan for us all along.
Today 12/9/2021 A year later
I sometimes think of “what if” and what it would look like, who would I be? Would I be more mature, stronger, less selfish??? But I know that it is not about me, it is about that child in this world. I know motherhood is not in the cards for me, it is not who I am or want to be – and that’s ok!
I am ok!
MY DAD
