On Love & Loss

I've wanted to write this particular story of love and loss in our lives for a while now, but for so long, it felt like we were trying to protect ourselves from input from others while we continued through a seemingly never-ending valley.  We were also trying to protect our loved ones and those who even just knew us peripherally from the darkness that we had been walking through.  I want to be careful as I write so that you don't think "Oh, she's got it all figured out now.  Everything is better."  I sit here writing to you on Valentine's Day, a day where love in all forms is celebrated, and it felt like maybe it was the right time to talk about how we deeply loved and unexpectedly lost five babies.  Here is my trigger warning if you need one-- this story is still being written, and while I do have a little boy growing in my womb, we don't yet know how this story ends.  And I have promised myself that I will write the true things that we have walked through because they mean something to me.  If pregnancy loss triggers you as it still sometimes does for me, this may not be the read for you. 

If you are reading these first paragraphs and thinking, "I don't really want to read this, this is too personal," may I invite you to ever so gently close out of this screen and carry on with however you wish to celebrate this day of love?  And maybe you don't celebrate it at all, and maybe this day makes you sad or lonely or angry because what is this made up holiday anyways, and why is it so commercialized? I get it.  My husband and I rarely celebrate Valentine's Day-- last year we did only because we were walking through deep grief and I needed some joy.  This year we are "accidentally" celebrating it because my husband booked our theater tickets to see Hamilton on a night that he did not realize was Valentine's Day (I'm secretly giggling about this to myself).  But today, I am choosing to honor our five children who we will only meet on the other side of eternity, the ones who I long for every day, wondering who they would have been and how our lives would have looked different in knowing them, even as I sit in a place of understanding that God is sovereign over my life and their's, and as I accept that His way is better than the desires I have for my own life. 

There are people in my life, some family and some friends, who consider stories like this very "private."  My pastor often mentions how the Christian life is personal but not private, and I deeply believe in this. I learned so much and gained so much wisdom from other women who had walked through pregnancy loss who were willing to invite me into their stories, and so this is part of why I share this.  If you're walking through infertility or pregnancy loss, may you know that there is someone out there willing to step into the grooves of the deep valley you've been walking to listen, to encourage, to weep, to pray with you. 

If you're still with me, thanks for reading and being willing to hear our story as I honor these five littles on a day when I am still deeply loving and longing for that which could not be. 

Scott and I have known that we desired a big family since we first met; as a 16 and 18 year old still navigating our future careers, schoolwork, and all of the things that occupy young minds, a big family was a dream of our's for "someday." We also knew early on that adoption would be part of our story and couldn't wait to build our big family upon getting married.  Yet, wait, we did.  Scott was in dental school when we first got married, and I was working night shift as a nurse who was contemplating going back to school myself. People have children while in grad school all the time, but we felt like life was a little too complicated for us at the time.  We lived 13 hours from our families and felt we needed to have a little more support before growing our family. Our time in Indiana was beautiful and hard, and while we wished we could have stayed there forever, we also knew we wanted to be closer to our families as we desired to grow our's.

So during COVID, we moved to Asheville, NC, which was to be a short stop on the way to a small town closer to Wilmington.  Upon moving, our lives felt like they were in utter chaos.  We had no idea how long we'd live in Asheville, things with the practice Scott was intending to purchase started to not align any longer, and our marriage was strained in ways that maybe had been building for years as we took on whole home renovations and stretched ourselves to the limit.  I was 30 and feeling like if we were going to start trying to have children, now was the time.  Many of my friends were already in the middle of growing their families or maybe even finished. I knew all about biological clocks and was concerned that my eggs were already shriveling up inside of me, but nothing in our lives indicated that we were in a place to welcome children.  I lamented this during 2021, crying out to God over this desire to have a more beautiful marriage and also to become a mother.  I wrote words in my prayer journal telling God that I would surrender my identity as a mother if only He would help Scott and I to find a way to love one another well.  Life in Asheville continued, God redeemed and restored things in our marriage, and we pressed on with planting roots here as we felt called to stay in this place, life already looking so differently than we had hoped.

In 2022, we bought our home on Pepper Avenue, and we dreamed of filling all of this space with laughing children.  It was a "good house to grow into." In late 2022, we decided we were ready for that and began that journey.  A few months went by where I was Googling, wondering if we were doing something wrong, wondering if maybe at 32, my eggs really had just shriveled up and died. "We recommend trying for 12 months and if you are not pregnant by the end of that time, give us a call" my OB/GYN told me at my annual visit. She gave me some tips, and in March 2023, I took a pregnancy test and saw my first double lines.  Actually, I had been taking ovulation tests for a while and with those, you always see two lines, but you are looking for two dark lines to indicate a positive test. I almost missed the first positive pregnancy test because I thought you also needed two dark lines; I actually threw it in the trash can, disappointed, and then went to make my coffee. While it was brewing in our French press, I suddenly had the thought to check the instructions again because I had never seen two lines on a pregnancy test before. Turns out, any second line counts for pregnancy tests. I took two more and got the same results. 

Scott was heading out for a run, and I left one on his side of the vanity in our bathroom with a little note that said, "yay!"When he returned from his run, he saw the test and looked at me as he was calculating in his head; finally he said, "wait, really?" I nodded and smiled, and we hugged for several sweet moments as we relished in this goodness.  I spent the rest of the day beaming, going on a walk with Doc in the sunshine, sitting on my back porch as I called my OB/GYN to make my first appointment, a "viability scan." At that point, I just knew we needed this step to confirm the pregnancy, and I just viewed this as a checkbox. 

Weeks went by, and let me just say that the weeks between a positive pregnancy test and your first ultrasound are somehow the longest days of your life if you are made to wait until 8, 9, 10, 12 weeks.  Thankfully my practice got me in at 8 weeks.  Scott was planning to be out of town that day but we had decided that we would FaceTime him into the appointment to see our baby on the screen instead of waiting even longer for an appointment.  A couple of close friends knew I was pregnant, and they offered to go with me to the ultrasound, one having experienced a loss and sharing that sometimes it helps to have someone there if you receive bad news. Bad news? I was so naive, and I could not fathom bad news.  I was nauseous, bloated, constipated, exhausted, all signs of a healthy pregnancy from what I had read. I also kept taking weekly pregnancy tests until my ultrasound, which in hindsight is totally insane and I now know not to do this for many reasons, one of which is that you can still have positive hCG in your urine even as a pregnancy is failing, and I also later learned that even after "pregnancy contents" were removed from my body through surgery, a pregnancy test could still be positive for weeks. 

In the ultrasound room, I asked the ultrasound technician, Brooke, if I could call my husband for the appointment since he couldn't be there.  "Let's take some measurements first and then we can call him after."  She inserted the probe and I watched a large screen in front of me as she searched for our baby.  It looked different from what I expected-- I saw the sac that I was used to seeing on friends' ultrasounds, but I didn't see a little peanut inside of it.  Maybe she just hadn't zoomed in yet? No sooner was I registering this than she said, "How about you go ahead and call your husband now?"  I knew something must be wrong; she hadn't taken any measurements.  We called and he didn't answer.  Brooke was kind, and told me she'd looked at my ovaries while we waited for him to call back.  He did, and I didn't turn the video on as I was starting to understand that he wasn't going to want to see what I was seeing.  Brooke looked at me and told us both, "I'm so sorry, but there is no baby in your amniotic sac. I know this was not the news you were expecting today. Dr. Kaplon will come talk with you about what this means.  I am so sorry." I was stunned. Why did I feel so pregnant if there was no baby?

I was walked to the next room and received sympathetic looks from the nurses in the hallway; could they already know? Brooke left me and told me Shannon, the nurse, would be in soon, and she asked if I needed tissues. I felt numb, not feeling any emotion at all except shock. Tears were not forming, and I was not registering what all of this really meant at that moment, so I declined tissues.  I had brought a book with me, a Taylor Jenkins Reid book that I now can no longer look at. I let my sister-in-law read it with the hope that I would never see it again, and when she returned it to me I immediately donated it.  Shannon came in and sweetly asked how I was doing, wanting to know details about my last menstrual cycle, when my positive test was, which I later learned was necessary to collect all of the timing details that would be important to determining if this was just an early ultrasound that could have explained why there was no embryo in the sac or if this was a nonviable pregnancy. She left me, again asked if I needed tissues, and told me Dr. Kaplon would be in soon.

She came back in a few minutes later to check on me and to let me know that Dr. Kaplon was finishing with her other patient and would be in soon; I started crying, not even sure why I was crying, but suddenly feeling more alone than I had ever felt.  She hugged me and gave me some tissues before kindly trying to distract me by asking about the book I was reading. I already hated that book and wished I had never brought it. 

Dr. Kaplon came in and started expressing sympathy for the news I had received; she started explaining things to me that I wasn't processing, and I remembered finally to ask if I could call Scott so he could hear. Once on the phone, we both listened to a lot of information that basically indicated that we were either experiencing a molar pregnancy (due to some "white spots" seen on ultrasound) or an anembryonic pregnancy (no baby, but an amniotic sac); she recommended a D&C procedure where they would remove the "pregnancy contents" and biopsy to confirm that this wasn't a molar pregnancy.  Because of my meticulous tracking of my cycles, possible conception dates, etc., we were told that we did not need a second ultrasound as there should have been an embryo in my sac if this were a viable pregnancy. She indicated that my amniotic sac was only measuring 6 weeks and based on all of my data, it should have been measuring close to 9 at that point. I walked to check out, where I stood in line with women with swollen bellies holding ultrasound souvenirs, having received better news than I that day, and I thought to myself "can't they have a separate checkout line for women like me so I don't have to see this?" I noted that no one gave me an ultrasound photo of my empty amniotic sac; maybe that's just not something that they do. 

We scheduled the D&C, and I drove home in tears mourning the loss of something we never had.  I went home to a mostly empty house and got in bed with Doc.  I texted the few friends who knew, all of whom offered to come over, which I declined. I watched Gilmore Girls and cried in my bed as I Googled "anembyonic pregnancies" and "molar pregnancies."  Scott surprised me by driving home early the next morning so that I didn't have to spend the weekend alone. I cried a lot that weekend and laid in bed most of the time, resenting my body for failing me at this thing that should have been so straightforward.  We didn't really want to tell family what was going on but knew we would need help getting me home from my D&C since Scott had limited time off of work; my mom drove up with her dogs and prepared to be my transportation home and to be around for whatever we needed that week.  

The following Tuesday, I went in for my D&C.  I had been instructed to take medications before that would help me relax/sleep throughout the procedure.  I was so scared that I wouldn't wake up, but what actually happened was quite different; I never went to sleep.  I was fully awake for my D&C, aware of the long needle used to numb my cervix, hearing every "suction" sound of my "pregnancy contents" being removed from my body.  I wept throughout the entire thing, holding Scott's hand on one side and Brooke, the ultrasound tech's, on the other.  Everyone hugged me after and told me I did so well.  They took me out a back door marked "staff only" to bring me to my mom's car so that I didn't have to see the glowing pregnant women in the waiting room after.  My mom drove me home, Scott went to work, and it was done; I had never felt so empty. I had invested in a heating pad that would become a constant companion to me through four subsequent miscarriages.  My few friends who knew about our pregnancy and loss shared the news with our small group with our consent, and our table that week became filled with flowers, chocolate, self-care items, books on miscarriage.  I called it our Table of Love.  We still didn't want other family members to know because it still felt so deeply personal to us, this loss that we didn't quite know how to talk about.  One friend came and sat with me in my grief after, and it was so special to me that someone was willing to just be at my table with me as I processed what we had loved and lost so quickly. Results came back to indicate that this was an anembryonic pregnancy, though Dr. Kaplon told me she suspected that the "white tissue" seen on US was probably the embryo that we had miscarried.  This gave me hope-- I didn't make all of this up, there was a baby at some point but we had already lost it early on. 

I followed all of the necessary post-surgical instructions for pelvic precautions, waiting another cycle, and then we were cleared to "try again." Dr. Kaplon was great about sharing statistics with me and encouraged me that many women experience a miscarriage and go on to have normal, healthy pregnancies.  By June, we were pregnant again and scheduling another ultrasound. This time, I did not allow myself to be excited. I was grateful for the pregnancy, but I worried every day that something was wrong.  I was SICK during this pregnancy, waking up at 4AM with nausea and vomiting, and the only thing I found that helped was waking up and eating Cheerios that I kept on my bedside table. The week of my ultrasound, I suddenly felt so much better.  I felt like I just knew that we were going to get bad news at the ultrasound, having lost all of my pregnancy symptoms earlier that week. Scott told me to be positive, but I was having a hard time. I honestly felt like God was preparing me that week to walk through another miscarriage.  I felt like I was grieving before we ever got to the appointment. We had a new rule in place, which is that I wouldn't go to ultrasounds by myself anymore. 

We sat in the ultrasound room with Brooke, who at this point felt like a friend to me.  She inserted the probe as I watched the large screen again, and we saw an amniotic sac with a little peanut inside who wasn't moving.  Brooke was silent as she probed.  After a few moments of no movement, she confirmed what I was thinking in my head. "I'm so sorry Cristina and Scott, but there is no heartbeat." Once again, I went numb.  Actually, I think I may have already been numb as I walked into the room.  I felt like I knew this was the news we would receive.  We were again ushered into another room where Shannon once again greeted us and expressed her sympathy.  "I'm so sorry guys, I know you were hoping for better news today. Dr. Kaplon will be in shortly." A kindness to me is that Dr. Kaplon was assigned to me again, even though she was not my usual GYN.  It comforted me to know what she was going to be caring for us again.  When she came in, she had a sad look on her face and said she was sorry that this was happening.  She gave us options this time that were different from last time-- since there was no suspicion for a molar pregnancy, we could opt for taking medication at home, going through another D&C, or wait to see if my body recognized the pregnancy. I learned that this miscarriage along with my other were called "missed miscarriages" meaning my body did not recognize that the pregnancy had ended and was not doing what it should have been doing to naturally remove the "pregnancy contents" from my body.  We opted for a D&C again because I was working and it felt impossible to plan for my body to do this on its own, and I had heard horror stories of the medication route where women ended up needing a D&C anyways after. 

This time, we went in by ourselves as Scott was able to take time off to take me home.  Again, we met in the procedural suite with Dr. Kaplon, Brooke, and Shannon.  I was once again, fully awake for my D&C.  I shuddered as I saw the needle to numb me again, and I once again wept through the entire procedure, gripping the hands of Scott and Brooke.  When it was over, everyone hugged me again and I was led out the secret staff door once again. I went home to my heating pad and dog and watched Gilmore Girls in bed.  

After this loss, I was pretty devastated. My body had failed me twice.  Dr. Kaplon had assured me still that I could go on to have normal pregnancies, but the statistics shrunk a bit for success with this. I cried often, when passing the baby section at Target, when friends announced pregnancies on social media, when I was going to sleep at night.  I wondered if I was depressed, but I continued to hold onto hope.  I decided to name our two babies that we had lost as part of my process of grieving. The first, I named Poppy, which is what we nicknamed the baby before our ultrasound.  We had read in our pregnancy app one week that baby was the size of a poppy seed, and from that point on we delighted in just referring to it as "the Poppy." Our second baby, I named Emmanuel, meaning God with us, because I truly felt God was with me that week as He prepared me for walking through a second miscarriage. Scott didn't feel inclined to name them, so this honor was left to me and I lovingly named them, feeling that I'd want to someday call them by name when I get to meet them on the other side of eternity. 

Our third pregnancy was the weirdest one. I was heading out for a trip to Thomasville, GA to a Reader Retreat with The Bookshelf and Annie B. Jones, and I took a test before leaving to find out if I was pregnant. It was technically a few days too early, but the test was negative.  I decided to just be cautious and not drink any alcohol that weekend in case, but by Monday I had what I thought was my menstrual cycle. I felt sad that we weren't pregnant this cycle but knew we could try again next month. I was at my brother's rehearsal dinner a week and a half later when I started having cramping and bleeding that I didn't understand. Another menstrual cycle, so soon? I started looking at dates and calculating, started wondering what was happening. I had a beer that night because I thought I wasn't pregnant. The next morning, on the day of my brother's wedding, the cramping and bleeding was worse.  I went with my sister to the bridal suite to get my hair done, all the while wondering what my body was doing. I asked Scott to go get a pregnancy test, as I was starting to wonder if I was actually pregnant but experiencing bleeding from an early miscarriage. Maybe my menstrual cycle the week prior wasn't one at all, but was an early loss? We drove back to our Airbnb and I took two tests, both positive. I wept in the bathroom as my family got ready for the wedding in the rooms surrounding me. I ran into our bedroom and told Scott, and we were both so confused. I called the on-call number for my OB and they expressed sympathy, told me that this was likely an early miscarriage, that my bleeding the week before was probably the beginning of it but my body just "didn't finish," and they gave me all the instructions I already knew about what to monitor for, instructing me to call Monday for more instructions.

I went about my brother's wedding day feeling horribly sad yet trying to be joyful.  I read words from Scripture in front of the entire congregation and tried to press the words deeply into my soul, reminding myself of God's good promises even in these really crappy circumstances. I prayed constantly throughout that day for strength and for God to let me experience joy for my brother and his wife and to not focus on my grief. I danced with Scott and snapped a photo of us that I will keep forever, a photo demonstrating the Lord's goodness in helping me to experience joy in the midst of deep sorrow.  It is the photo at the top of this post. I had to stop dancing at some point because I realized it was making my cramping and bleeding worse, and we went back to our Airbnb where I silently cried myself to sleep that night. 

After getting back to Asheville, it was confirmed that I had experienced an early miscarriage (my negative pregnancy test prior to my trip to GA helped them to diagnose this-- it meant I didn't have "leftover hCG" from my prior pregnancy and D&C).  My body had done what it needed to do and I did not need a procedure, an ultrasound confirmed an empty uterus. I once again miraculously was scheduled with Dr. Kaplon, and she, Brooke, and Shannon all hugged me again before I got the referral to a reproductive endocrinologist. After three losses, it was time for experts. I felt that we had crossed a new threshold, that my miscarriages were no longer "normal" and that I had entered this new realm-- recurrent pregnancy loss, ICD code N96. This baby was named the night of my brother's wedding, Joy, for the joy that the Lord helped me to experience in the midst of my sorrow.

The next few months were a blur; I was referred to one reproductive endocrinologist, which I'll refer to now as an REI, though some know these as "fertility clinics." They couldn't see me for months; a friend of mine worked at another REI clinic in town and lovingly offered to see me as patient as long as we kept our personal friendship separate.  Our first visit was disappointing, and I walked away thinking IVF was our only option. However, miraculously, some bloodwork that they didn't expect to show anything actually showed that I had a rare genetic polymorphism (how my genes are arranged/expressed) that was highly associated with recurrent "spontaneous abortion" or pregnancy loss. The fix was to be daily aspirin and injections of blood thinners once I was pregnant again; I felt such hope. 

We took a break that holiday season from "trying" and tried to enjoy being home with family.  Our first baby's due date, December 6th, came and went.  I spent the day at the Biltmore Estate, relishing in the joyful twinkle lights strung about and caring for myself in the best ways I knew how at the time. By March, I was pregnant again and called the REI clinic. Their process was amazing; they got me in that day for confirmatory labs (no waiting until 8-9 weeks, hooray!), and once my positive hCG was confirmed, I was scheduled for repeat labs two days later to make sure it was trending up. I went in for labs on Friday, feeling so hopeful, and then drove home to the beach for a weekend with Scott and our friends before taking care of my dad for a hip replacement the following week. We had arranged for me to get more labs done in the Wilmington REI clinic which I was grateful for. Upon arriving at the beach, I sat in our living room at the beach house and took the call that ended my joy. Jordan told me that my hCG was dropping, indicating that my pregnancy was ending, and I would likely start bleeding in a few days. I told Scott matter-of-factly, registering this as my fourth miscarriage, a "biochemical pregnancy" meaning we never made it to ultrasound. On Monday while driving my dad to his surgery, I started cramping and bleeding.  I was grateful that he had to stay overnight in the hospital as I was able to spend that night miscarrying our fourth baby without having to take care of anyone else besides my dogs.  I didn't tell many others as this was a week for me to muster up some strength and care for my dad. I cried myself to sleep each night and prayed for the Lord to redeem and restore my womb, which at this point I only knew as a tomb. This baby was named Hope, the thing I was desperately trying to find in the midst of this deep grief. 

Since my body processed this loss on its own, we were cleared to "try again" and were once again pregnant within a few months.  Same story, different baby.  I had confirmatory hCG testing after a positive urine test at home and two days later, hCG was dropping and I was told to expect cramping and bleeding soon. After it came, I was recommended by REI for a series of tests including a saline ultrasound, some more bloodwork, etc. The saline ultrasound indicated scar tissue in my uterus, likely from my prior D&Cs. I was scheduled for an HSG and hysteroscopy in Charlotte and we planned travel for the procedures, with my brother and sister-in-law kindly hosting us for a night so we didn't have to drive home after. The hysterocsopy was deemed a success and follow-up was recommended. This was my first time ever being sedated, and I woke up in a recliner sipping a Coke and eating Pirate's Booty while sleepily telling Scott that I wanted to start marketing "miscarriage kits" for women; my post-sedataion haze had me in a weird mental state. I also apparently asked the CRNA for bakery recommendations and was confused when, more alert and awake, I walked out with a list of bakeries to try locally. The next day, we drove to Wilmington for my nephew's one year old birthday party to celebrate his little life.  A year prior, I had thrown a baby shower for my sister a week after my first D&C. I found all of this to be incredibly hard, this juxtaposition of celebrating new life while grieving the lives I had lost. I named our fifth baby River. 

More follow-up saline ultrasounds later, we learned that I still had scar tissue that needed to be addressed, so I was sent back to Charlotte for another hysteroscopy. Upon going under, they found out quickly that "everything looks good" so my propofol nap was cut short and we were sent back home. We didn't want to bother my brother this time so we got a heating pad to plug into the car and Scott drove me back to Asheville while I rested in the passenger's seat.

There is more to be said about Josiah Scott, baby #6, who became known to us two days before Helene hit Asheville, but this essay is already so long, isn't it? I think maybe we'll save his story for another day.  But what I want to be sure I say is that we loved each baby with a love that was so deep despite how long we carried and knew them for. The ones that I only knew about for a few days were loved as much as the ones who I carried for 8-9 weeks.  And while we have lost those little ones and will never know them Earthside, we know that they are carried in the arms of Jesus and are in much safer and secure arms than my own. 

One day during all of this, I sat in our front living room practicing a prayer exercise that was new to me. I was to imagine Jesus in the room with me as I prayed as part of the exercise. I closed my eyes and saw him sitting on my green couch, usually reserved for Doc but given up for a guest of honor in our home that day.  I realized as I prayed that He was holding three babies in his arms; this was after we had only lost three of our children.  I started weeping as I realized that they were our's, and I also felt such peace knowing He held them.  I felt comforted and reassured that they were safe, that they were loved, and that I would see them again someday, though not here on Earth. 

Through these losses, so many loving friends and family have come alongside us and sat in the valley with us. There are many people who we did not share this with until we announced our sixth pregnancy.  I hope none of those people will feel rejected, abandoned, or left out.  We were protecting our hearts as fiercely as we could, trying to maintain some privacy while also allowing our local community to carry us in prayer.  Today I have such appreciation for everyone who now knows, who has cared for us along the way, who has celebrated with us after. 

If you're finding yourself in a place today of not knowing how to celebrate love, if you're walking through some sort of big loss yourself, maybe you can find a way to celebrate the love that once was and that now lives deep in your memories. Maybe you can find a way to love those who walked through a hard season with you. I don't believe at all that this day is only meant for romantic love.  My love that I celebrate today is the love of a mother for children who she never met but only knew for a short time. And it's for the village people who have surrounded us in times of mourning and times of dancing. And if you're still sitting in a waiting place, a place of longing for something that is not to be yet, know that you aren't alone there, that there is a God of the universe who knows what it is to walk through disappointment and loss.  Know that there are people around you, even if it's just the one person writing this, who are willing to listen and sit in that place with you.  I know the lonely place that it can be, and I also know and believe that we sow in tears we will someday reap in joy.  I am comforted in knowing that there is a God who collects all of our tears in a bottle.  I wonder how many bottles of mine He has stored away on a shelf as He rocks my sweet children in His arms. 

Lots of love to you today, and thanks for staying all the way to the end of this one. I have wanted to write this story for so long.

Love,

C