I had just found out I was pregnant with my second child when the bleeding started. I passed it off as normal spotting that happens in nearly half of normal pregnancies, but it just kept coming. Every two or three days I would soak another pad and I gave up hope of even meeting this precious baby of mine.
I tried to keep going with life as usual, and caring for my toddler helped, but the cramps were often painful and wouldn’t stop reminding me of the loss I was experiencing.
To add to the pain, the bleeding continued to be intermittent for three weeks, some days I felt great and the pregnancy test would read positive and I hoped the threat had passed, until the next day when the cramps and bleeding would start all over again.
It got to be so ridiculous that I knew in my head there was no way a baby could survive the bleeding, and to prevent infection and begin healing my heart I came close to finishing the miscarriage with herbs.
Yet there was something holding me back. What if my baby was still alive? I didn’t want to be responsible for ending his/her life if s/he was hanging on that hard, so I wanted and hoped and cried and waited some more. When the bleeding finally did stop, I expected the bleeding would return, but after a few days I listened with my Doppler and there it was, the sound of steady blood flow through my placenta. My baby was alive! A couple weeks later I heard her heartbeat for the first time, and no more threat of miscarriage remained.
Some would say this was a threatened miscarriage, but after doing research in my midwifery textbooks, I realized this was most likely the loss of my daughter’s twin. Three weeks of not knowing whether my baby was alive or dead, and it turns out she lost (what I believe) was her little brother.
Because I never had an ultrasound or blood test for my hCG level, I can’t prove to anyone that I really was pregnant with twins, but when I combined my experience with all the strangers comments about my having twins (I gave up counting after around 20), my vision of twins became more real. I have very little doubt that my threatened miscarriage was really a miscarriage of my vanishing twin.
Surprising, it has been almost four years and I think this is the first time I’ve really written about it. Awareness of the loss of unborn babies and infants has always held a special place in my heart, and this experience brought home to me the heartache parents go through, and the support they deserve.
This blog has mainly provided information for parents planning to give birth to healthy babies, but I want to devote the next few posts to parents who have to say goodbye to their bundles of joy before they really get to know them. I’m sure this will be a sensitive topic for many, but one that needs to be talked about so that those who have not experienced early loss can learn to stand behind those who have, and those who have can be encouraged to open themselves up to healing.
If you are interested in sharing your early loss story here, please email me, Naomi, at kilbrethfamily@yahoo.com.
May we never forget our little ones who have passed on.
[...] few weeks ago I shared the story of my lost twin, and promised that I would be sharing some resources for those who had suffered a loss as well. [...]