The following content may contain affiliate links. When you click and shop the links, we receive a commission.

Blogger Eva Amurri shares her feelings about pregnancy after miscarriage
Photo by Anel Dzafic

If miscarriage is seldom talked about, the feelings associated with pregnancy afterward a loss are even more seldom talked about.

I retrieve at that place's a misconception that once a woman conceives after a miscarriage, that somehow her miscarriage is erased – that the feelings of loss are replaced past feelings of joy for this new baby, and that everything moves forward as information technology should be.  In my own experience, this couldn't be further from the truth.

When I experienced my ain devastating miscarriage at nearly ten weeks significant in 2015, one of the deepest scars it left with me was fear.  Every bit I grieved the loss of my child, and what could have been, I was too paralyzed by a fear that I would never over again have a healthy kid.  My miscarriage was so sudden, so unexpected.  I had been into my md's part for a perfect, normal ultrasound just the mean solar day before.  I saw our baby moving and growing normally: its artillery and legs, its perfect heartbeat, its size right on track.  And then, our babe passed away inside me what must have been only a few hours subsequently.  The entire experience was traumatizing from the moment I knew my child was no longer living, all the style through the D&C, and the recovery catamenia which reminds yous every moment that your body is eliminating a pregnancy.  Some women's breasts fifty-fifty leak the milk they had been developing for their child in these days afterward.

I had always been a trusting person – able to believe that all would exist OK  even in the most stressful or unfortunate of circumstances, but now that felt idiotically naive.  I understood for the get-go fourth dimension not merely how delicate life is, but how our hopes, dreams, and expectations are even more frail.  I realized at that moment, and in the thousands of moments afterward, that there is absolutely nothing special about my own hopes and dreams – that they are and always have been as delicate and vulnerable as the side by side person'south.

Gone was the illusion of "Kood Luck" or "Fate" or "Meant To Be."  I entered a catamenia of my life at that time where I felt the most vulnerable, and unsure of well-nigh of the things I believed and hoped to exist true:

That I would become to choose how many children I would have, that my children would abound up rubber and healthy, and that my family would ever be OK in the terminate.

Blogger Eva Amurri shares her feelings about pregnancy after miscarriage
Photograph by Kyle Martino

I'm sure these are common feelings felt past any grieving person.  In that location are people who have lost children of all ages, even more than than one, and I can't imagine their heartbreak and depth of loss.  I remember this is ane of the to the lowest degree understood things well-nigh loss of whatever kind:

That information technology seeps into every corner of a person's life, that it changes them, and that their life after their loss is a different life than before.

I felt extremely misunderstood afterward my miscarriage, especially by people I knew that hadn't experienced a pregnancy loss themselves.  I think they hoped that time would heal, that after a menstruation of grieving I would be all better and that it was best to expect it out.  I got a lot of "reminders" that I would "accept some other infant", that "it just wasn't meant to be", or reassurances that I would "eventually" have the family that I wanted.

What I wanted to tell these people was that I didn't want "some other" babe.  I wasn't interested in their "meant to be."

I was interested in the baby that Ihad; the one that I loved and was waiting for.  THAT Ane is the 1 that I wanted, and that one is the i that I volition never have.

To a higher place all, I was sure that every pregnancy I ever had again would end upwardly this way – that it would seem perfectly fine and so one day the infant would be dead with no caption.  I was sure that I would never once more birth a healthy child, concur them to my breast and bear upon their tiny fingers and toes.

For a while, I wouldn't even hash out trying to get pregnant again.  I felt resentful at the idea that we would simply move on from the experience, "buy a new puppy",  so to speak.  I wanted to figure out my feelings, to rage and sob and concord my daughter without trembling.  I was so adamant that trying again wasn't the correct matter to do, until I looked inside myself and realized that my rejection of growing our family unit further was beingness fed and nourished past my fear.

I was so deeply afraid of the possible result of further loss that I was fightingeven the idea of opening my heart once more.

As anyone who has been through heartbreak knows, making yourself vulnerable later on you've been securely hurt is one of the hardest things to do.  I was sick of living in fear, of having so many negative thoughts about my future, and having that fear touch the way I was living my life.  Later a lot of discussion with my hubby, we both decided that the joy that another child would bring our family outweighed the challenges of another heartbreak.  Nosotros decided to go into another pregnancy endeavour with our hearts open up and to promise always for the best.

Blogger Eva Amurri shares her feelings about pregnancy after miscarriage
Photograph by Kyle Martino

Even with these intentions, information technology was terrifying when I learned I was meaning again.  I felt so many things.  I was afraid of loss, of form, but I also felt fiercely protective, and in a higher place all;

a homesickness and longing for the infant that our family would never get to encounter.

I didn't feel like celebrating.  I barely spoke of it.  Kyle and I talked around it, near.  I was 2 weeks late before I even summoned enough courage to take a pregnancy examination.  I was reluctant to know my due date.  I pushed off my ultrasounds, certain that each one would bring more devastating news.  Each time I would begin to dream or think about this baby, I would bustle it from my mind.  I threw myself into work, or into tasks and adventures with my girl.  I didn't think of the plant nursery, of the baby's face, or of our pregnancy announcement equally I had so ofttimes with my last pregnancy.  This ambivalence began to creep into all the areas of my life.

We had a couple of heady bits of news that I saw only the bad in – every victory at work was chop-chop dimmed by my estimations of what could go wrong.  My reply to everything was: "Well, we'll see how it goes.  I'll get excited when it's really happening".

In my mind, I was waiting for the second trimester – the "safe fourth dimension" where I could finally be happy and relieved.  And so, I got an email from aHappily Eva After reader that really inverse my outlook:

She wrote and thanked me for speaking out nearly my miscarriage, and shared her own devastating losses with me – ii of which had happened well into her second trimester.  I realized all of a sudden that pregnancy, like life, is never guaranteed.  There is no condom zone, there is just promise or fright.

What proficient was I doing myself to ignore and dismiss this pregnancy merely considering of some arbitrary timeline?  I wanted to fall in love with this child but every bit I had the two times before.  I missed that feeling of hopeful joy, and I know my husband and daughter missed information technology besides.

At that moment, I decided to beloved once again – completely.

I had a little conversation with my tiny babe deep inside me, and apologized for all the time I had lost.  We shared the news with friends and colleagues, I bought a teeny pair of newborn pants and kept them on my desk then I could experience them and concord them.  We explained to our daughter that there was a babe in Mama's belly.  When we eventually shared the news of our pregnancy with the globe, my eye was bursting with happiness and gratitude – both for the child nosotros were expecting and for the personal growth I've pushed myself towards in the wake of our loss.

My second child, Major, with his proud large sister Marlowe in 2017.
Photo by Courtney Ann Photography

I, of course, fought the fear of loss every 24-hour interval…until we welcomed our son Major in October 2016. Even during my 3rd pregnancy in 2019,  I still had moments of panic and wariness that my worst fear could once again come up truthful, long later the 4-calendar month marker.  I allowed myself those moments, and tried to exhale through them.  When I was scared, I would speak to my third child, some other boy: I would encourage him to stay with us, and tell him how much we are longing to concur him and to welcome him into our family.

Every bit one of my favorite lines by poet Rumi estimates:

"There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground."

-Rumi

Update:

Writing this blog post virtually four years ago was extremely cathartic for me, but also scary in and then many ways. The feelings I was exploring within myself felt so complicated, and reverse to each other – and I carried them about every day with and then much loneliness.  At the time, there weren't many people talking virtually the ups and downs of miscarriage…and the long term effects that the devastation of miscarriage can take on subsequent pregnancies.  I'm so glad that at that place is more of an openness now surrounding miscarriage and the feelings associated with it, but we still have and then far to come up in terms of opening this infinite to less stigma.  I'm so grateful for the family that I accept today, and I want to extend my deepest, open up-hearted dearest and condolences to whatever family unit or person going through a miscarriage or pregnancy loss today.  And the same for the individuals braving the landscape of pregnancy after loss. I hope you can find a lilliputian comfort in these words.