Waiting to Miscarry: It Sucks to Be a Little Bit Pregnant

To quote one of my favorite infertility (and now pregnancy and parenting—yay!) bloggers, Julie, “It turns out you can be a little bit pregnant.”

Despite the bleeding and cramping that signaled my miscarriage two weeks ago, I have not “passed” the pregnancy yet. I’m nauseated, hormonal, and exhausted, and I’m still gaining weight—all for no good reason. During last week’s ultrasound, there was just an empty sac stuck in my uterus, where a 6-week-old growing embryo should have been.

The same thing happened with my second miscarriage. Although the baby had already died at eight-and-a-half weeks, I grew sicker and sicker, stopping everywhere to puke. I took that as a good sign, subscribing to the popular wisdom that “a sick pregnancy is a healthy pregnancy.” But it turns out that for me, this isn’t true. For me, a sick pregnancy is…any pregnancy. Even one that has stopped developing.

So the bleak December day after we learned at 10 weeks that our developing baby had died, I was scheduled for what they call a D&C with Evac. Which is just a nice way of saying abortion (the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ diagram and explanation of the procedure is here ).

It’s kind of alarming, the terminology associated with pregnancy loss. It’s all some kind of abortion—you can have a threatened abortion, a spontaneous abortion, a partial abortion, or in my case, with these pregnancies that continue despite the lack of a living embryonic occupant, a missed abortion.

I don’t care where you come down on the abortion argument; it’s a strong, loaded word. It sounds like I missed my appointment at Planned Parenthood, rather than the reality, which is that my uterus just hasn’t gotten the memo yet. It’s still growing a placenta and preparing for a baby. I don’t really blame it. Denial is the first stage of grief. But I’m ready to move past it.

Next page: I’ve been here before