Coping With Multiple Miscarriages: When You Know How To Let Go, Part 2/3

After coping with multiple miscarriages, this is my raw story, seeing my baby for the first time, how it reshaped my grief, and the slow, sacred process of physical and emotional healing.

A picture of us peeking through the doorway at a woman with her face in her hands, grieving and coping with multiple miscarriages, trying to decide when she should try to let her baby go.

If you missed the first part of this story, start here.

Trigger / Content note: This post contains an open description of miscarriage and loss that some readers may find triggering.

TABLE OF CONTENTS HIDE

1 The Day My Body Let Go

2 You’re Not Supposed To Do This Alone

3 The Moment I Saw My Baby

4 How This Miscarriage Was Different

5 The Depth Of Grief And The Shape Of Healing

6 Holding Hope

7 More On Coping With Multiple Miscarriages

The Day My Body Let Go

After weeks of waiting, I decided to take the medication the midwife recommended to help release the baby.

Everything probably would have been fine, but it wasn’t worth holding on any longer and risking any complications, like infection or hemorage.

Also, because I already knew I would birth death again, I had already started the grieving process and I just wanted to move forward. I chose to take it one Sunday when Zach was home and could help with the girls.

When I was coping with multiple miscarriage, my third was a missed miscarriage and I had to take misoprostol to help it release. Right before I was going to take it, a friend showed up, unannounced. It as just what I didn't know I needed. This drawing is of a woman with her arm around another woman, helping her through her pregnancy loss.

You’re Not Supposed To Do This Alone

That morning a dear friend also gifted me with the medicine of her sound healing. She played singing bowls on my body, gongs at my feet, chimes around my head, and I just felt so relaxed and ready to release that day.

Just as I was about to go upstairs to take the medicine, there was a knock at the door. I left it up to Zach, knowing I hadn’t invited anyone. But, it was another close friend, and Zach called me down.

She didn’t know why she had come, she just felt like she should.

I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was going to do it alone.

But, of course, I needed a friend. She laid with me, sang with me, cried with me, held my hand the whole time the medicine absorbed.

A woman falling into water. The shot is from under the surface, and you can see how she's submerged, long hair flowing over her face, a sheer white shirt. She feels the heaviness of coping with multiple miscarriages but finds some comfort in the water.

The Moment I Saw My Baby

A few hours later my uterus began to cramp, I went about my business until I had to lay down.

Feeling the urge to get up and release something, I sat on my toilet with a colander under the seat – the best way to catch the contents of a miscarriage.

Yet, I immediately felt the urge to go squat in my tub. A little pop, a little gush, and out plopped a tiny baby.

In that unexpected moment, I’m pretty sure I lost my breath, picked up the little thumbnail sized thing which immediately started disintegrating in my hands.

But I could still see its eyes. I could see its fingers and toes. Its ribcage. Its spine had a tail at the tip, and it was my baby.

It was the second baby I lost in five months and so few people knew it.

A photo of looking through a rain streaked pane of glass onto a woman holding her head in her hand, slumped over, looking very sad, against a black background.

How This Miscarriage Was Different

Every miscarriage is devastating, but this one brought a new depth.

I held my sweet baby with so much love and so much sadness. For the first time in all my miscarriages, I saw the child I had carried. It was both a gift and a heartbreak I will never forget and made all of my losses so much more real and more precious.

I wrapped its sweet, still body in paper and decided I would keep it in my freezer until I was ready to bury it and honor all three of them with a special spot in my garden.

But now that I saw what I needed to see, I dreaded what was to come, knowing that everything I grew to support that wee one was still inside of me and still had to come out.

It did, a couple hours later, just when I started worrying and venting to Zach that it was taking too long. The medicine was strong and the process was long. I would never do it that way again if I don’t have to.

It’s still a shock, no matter how many times you go through it. It’s a hard, sad, scary thing and you never wanted it to happen. I had more mental and emotional preparation time for this one, but that didn’t make it any easier. It just stretched the miserable time out farther.

The hormonal crash after this miscarriage was probably worse than ever. The physical recuperation was hard because my body had done so much work to grow this little child. It hadn’t all come out at once, so when another big chunk expelled the next week, my hormones finally started to shift and the slow, painful process of healing began.

A trail through a dark woods with light at the end, representing how a woman feels when she's grieving after a miscarriage and trying to heal and hold hope at the same time.

The Depth Of Grief And The Shape Of Healing

Before this monumentous event, I felt all the feelings of grief, especially denial. Was the scan wrong? I knew it wasn’t, but I wanted so badly for it to be wrong.

The postpartum weeks after my three miscarriages are absolutely the worst experiences of my life. Worse than when my dad died. Worse than any other tragedy I’ve lived through. Unfortnuatly, I’m getting used to it.

I used to wonder how anyone could grow old and lose their parents, their spouse, their friends, and still have a joyful spirit. I think it has something to do with getting used to it, becoming comfortable with loss and grief, figuring out how you personally get through it and knowing that you will.

People have told me to not lessen my pain by saying that other people have it harder than me, losing babies in the second or third trimesters, losing living children, and so many other hardships.

Everybody’s hard is hard. And time really is a healer.

I just feel so thankful for the gifts I have: a wise healthy body, a loving husband, two beautiful daughters, a safe home, enough food, and so much more.

After my first miscarriage or two, I felt so much jealousy towards other pregnant people and parents with new babies. And amid the confusion, frustration, and anger, this time, I really just felt compassion for everyone.

We are all going through hard things. Losing a baby is hard. Parenting is hard. Aging is hard. Losing a parent is hard. You never know what someone is going through.

And yet, there is so much goodness in our lives to offset all of those hardships. I love that people have their children, who bring so much joy into the world.

A photo of sunlight filtering through a window with rain and a sheer curtain over it. There is a bouquet of flowers in the foreground. This represent the grief you feel after losing a baby and the hope you hold, wanting to try again.

Holding Hope

Now, of course, I’m navigating whether or not to get pregnant again. I’m thankful that I’ve always gotten pregnant easily, just when I wanted to. The losses have all been hard, but I’m not worried about big gaps between my kids.

I later found out my progesterone is a bit low and that could have contributed to my last miscarriage. My doctor told me that when the fetus dies around 8 weeks, it is probably because the corpus luteum dies too soon before the placenta takes over the making of the pregnancy hormones.

That was both frustrating and hopeful—frustrating because I wondered if supplementation might have prevented a prolonged, traumatic experience, and hopeful because progesterone support can increase the chance of carrying another full term baby in the future.

For now, I hold both grief and hope—trusting that whatever comes next will be the right thing.

I’ve always considered my children to be my greatest teachers, even those I lost too early.

A photo of a red candle with a flame lit surrounded by lots of little dots of light.

More On Coping With Multiple Miscarriages

If this story speaks to you, you might like to read the other parts of this story:

Through reading each piece of my journey — from what helped me in the earliest days, to the physical process of letting go, to how I’ve learned to care for myself in the long aftermath of loss — I hope you find a bit of comfort and connection wherever you are on your path.