The day I had a miscarriage…

I was never going to be the girl that had a miscarriage. I had too much faith for that.

I went through five painful years of infertility, a major myomectomy that required removing 1 giant fibroid the size of a grapefruit and 20+ other smaller fibroids and reconstruction of my uterus before we ever saw a positive pregnancy test.

I had dreams about my boys many many moons before this all came to be.

I knew their names and their hair and eye color. I knew they would look so much alike that at one point I was sure we would have twins.

It wasn’t hard to get pregnant the second time. My double blessing came almost immediately.

Two c-sections now on top of the myomectomy. I was told after that second c-section that there wasn’t much uterus left and I probably wouldn’t be able to have anymore kids.

(One day they are going to have to stop telling me that. 😂 Don’t they understand that I’m a giant walking miracle that defies all odds because GOD has His hand on me and a plan for me?! 🤷🏼‍♀️)

So then we got pregnant again. This was my girl. I knew it. I could see her in my dreams giggling with her brothers and she had the most beautiful brown hair. We named her Adelaide Joy.

We had just come off the hardest year of our lives yet, and things were just starting to get good. My business was launching, I was coming out of the depression I had been in. I was starting to enjoy my life again. I was so ready for this little beauty to join us.

We went to Vermont as a family to take part in my mom’s wedding. We got pedicures. I was so nervous to get a pedicure because of all the chemicals. I had been away from toxic chemicals for almost 2 years at this point and was afraid of what kind of heightened dosage that would mean for me and the baby. But everybody gets them while pregnant, right? So I joined the fun.

Having the pregnancy glow early on. I was so happy. 🙂

We hiked and had a blast. It was such an amazing family trip! We got back and not even two days later I had just finished an appointment…ironically having the baby added onto our medical stuff. I went to the bathroom and every fear I have ever had during my pregnancies came true. I was bleeding.

This pregnancy wasn’t cupcakes and rainbows. I was dealing with a TON of anger. Rage. So much rage. I had barely any pregnancy symptoms. No morning sickness. No tender breasts. I was tired but not like I had been before. I chalked it up to being a third pregnancy…and an “easy baby.”

So when I saw the blood…I knew. But I refused to accept it. I had too much faith for that. We are the miracle family. I saw her in my dreams. There was no way this was her end.

After getting my kids to my mother-in-law and allowing my father-in-law to drive me to the ER, my hubby met me there and we saw on the ultrasound that she was there. And the doctor said, “We don’t really know what’s going on. You could be having a miscarriage, but you might not be. We just have to give it some time.

I was so mad. And crying. And for the first time I opened myself wide open and got onto Facebook Live on my personal profile to reach as many of our friends and family as possible to ask them to pray with us. I ugly cried through the whole thing, but knew I needed that support. We hadn’t even announced the pregnancy yet. Dashed hopes of pregnancy announcement ideas were running through my head as we finished the video. This was not happening. I am not the girl that has a miscarriage. This is not my story.

Except it was. And after a trip to my OB the next day and then being sent to another ER, in a little corner room of the ER without a lick of privacy other than some thin curtains…a very grieved doctor came to tell me (alone…Aaron was still on his way from work) that I had in fact lost the baby.

I sat there in absolute shock…my head spinning. “Yesterday there was something there, today there is not.”

The ache that overcame my whole being is like none I have ever experienced.

She was gone.

And then I almost threw up because I realized I still had to tell my husband. Me. I had to deliver the blow that would crush him.

He came around the corner and I shared the news and it was the worst moment in the history of our entire marriage.

So many medical professionals tried to make it better.

“I had one too.”

“It’s okay. You got pregnant before and had kids before, you can just have another one!”

As if that just made losing our baby…our little girl…any better at all. Being told we could just replace her.

As if all the pieces and parts of her that were forming together in my womb…as if the light she already had and the spirit that was breathed into her by God Himself at conception didn’t mean a thing.

As if she was just a bunch of tissue being expelled from my body because it’s “natural.”

Hell. No.

The grief I felt from her loss was as if she had lived an entire life with us already, even if she had only been with us for about 8 weeks.

But here’s the part nobody prepared me for.

I still had to go through the miscarriage.

They don’t just tell you that you had one and you bleed a little bit and then it’s over. Ohhhhh no.

Your body begins to shed EVERYTHING that was preparing for birth. Everything.

The trauma of this experience was enough to completely devastate me.

Yes, it felt like a period, however it was full of tissue. Pieces of placenta. So. Much. Stuff. It got to a point where I would dread having to go to the bathroom because I didn’t know what I was going to find when I wiped.

I couldn’t go anywhere because the thought of leaving pieces of her everywhere was enough to send me into another dimension of grief.

Thankfully another woman was brave and documented her journey on her blog. This poor woman had a number of miscarriages…multiples…like I want to say in the teen digits. So at one point she started documenting. Graphic images that might make you queasy, but are LIFE-GIVING when you are trying to get through a miscarriage and have no idea what’s happening.

It’s because of her that I found the baby…the fetus tissue. I would never have known. But because of her, I was able to recognize what I was holding and save her to properly bury. (Versus, you know, flushing her down the toilet. 😩)

I’m not sorry if this is too much for you, by the way. Because nobody talks about this and somebody needs to. We are so desensitized to miscarriage in this culture because “It happens to everyone.” But no, it doesn’t. And when it’s your very first and you’re scared out of your mind, you need to be able to Google a miscarriage and figure out how to get through it. I mean, ideally you would know someone that went through one because they were brave enough to talk about it…because talking about this stuff brings us all together like we are supposed to be. But I digress.

Here’s the morbid part: she sat in a jar in my freezer wrapped in toilet paper until I could figure out what to do with her.

I was terrified I was breaking a law with human remains in my freezer, but when I talked to the doctor’s office, nobody knew. They said I could have her tested. Aka tested and then thrown in the trash. Nope!

So I Googled. In the state of Florida the baby has to be x amount of months to get a death certificate. We hadn’t made it there so I knew that meant they didn’t view it as a human even so I definitely wasn’t breaking any laws.

The full miscarriage process took about a week or so, but it took months before my body went back to “normal.” My doctor told me that to the body, it’s still like I had been pregnant and delivered a baby at the end. I was still tired. I still had to heal. It’s not an overnight process like they tell you in the movies.

We finally decided to bury her where we got married. Our special place. Just me and him. My in-laws watched the kids and we went alone to a secluded place. We buried her and placed a rose from my rose bush at home on her tiny little grave. It was the most perfect way to say goodbye to our princess.

I spiraled downward for many months following. I didn’t think it was possible to continue living after all the grief I had encountered the previous 2 years.

I didn’t want to die, I just didn’t want to live.

I had lost 4 family members in a 6 month span, one to drug overdose, 2 to cancer, and one to mostly old age. And now I had lost a child. The pain was too much to bear and I completely disconnected from my life.

I don’t recommend this, but the way. I recommend pushing through the pain to ask for help because I missed out on a lot over the last year. And there’s nothing worse than being alive but not really living.

Now, just a few days shy of a year later, I miss her but I am not crushed by her absence anymore. I finally made peace with God, after being so very angry at Him. I blamed Him for taking everyone and everything I loved and in all of it He remained faithful to me.

And now that I’ve finally come out the other side of all of this, I can see how it will all be used for good. I can see how my story will help someone else go “Me too!” and suddenly not feel so alone in this big world.

I can see how she will always be here with us. And grieving her loss will never go away, but it will continue to get easier.

I’m a big essential oil user, and I would be doing them a disservice if I didn’t mention what an instrumental part of my healing they have been.

During the miscarriage I used the following Young Living oils to support my body:

* PanAway to help the cramping and muscle aches.

*Gentle Baby, Frankincense and Lavender to help me sleep and keep me calm.

*Peace & Calming to help me ride the grief waves and stay calm.

*Ningxia Red supplement to help support my body with nutrients as it essentially gave birth, even if it wasn’t to a live human. (She is the only baby I “birthed” naturally. The others I’ve had via c-section.)

*Tangerine to assist specifically with my emotions and grief.

Post-Miscarriage:

*All the oils above plus Joy oil. I hated this oil to start because I was majorly fighting against living, but I put a roller fitment on it and rolled it onto my heart every single day (sometimes multiple times) for 3-4 months.

*I saw a grief counselor and processed allllllllllll the grief. Still am, actually.

*I put my kids in daycare full time and gave myself the space to grieve and heal and breathe. And I took on a semi-full time job on top of my business so that I could get out of the house more and be out in the land of the living, so to speak.

*I stopped pretending that everything was okay and started caring that it wasn’t okay. I started believing I could get through this. I started believing there would be an end to all this pain.

It was a process and none of this happened overnight.

Of course there’s always more growth to be had, but these were all huge tools to help me heal.

If you’ve been through a miscarriage or are right in the middle of one right now, here’s what I need to say to you:

I love you.

You’re not alone.

You’re going to get through this. You will live again.

Just because “everyone has had one” doesn’t make it normal for YOU. Grieve this as if it has never happened to anyone ever before. Because it hasn’t. And if this is your second or third or more, it’s still never happened to you. Grieve it.

Breathe. When you don’t know what to do and the grief feels like it’s going to completely crush you, breathe. Deeeeeeep Deeeeeeep breaths. Get some fresh air. If you can’t deal with people right now, just step outside your door and breathe.

Grace upon grace upon grace. Rest. Cry. Eat the dang chocolate.

Ask for help. Even if you don’t know what to ask for, just talk to someone you trust. Process verbally until your body helps you uncover what you need.

Ask for meals. I’m serious. When you’re in the middle of a miscarriage there’s almost nothing worse than having to think about food. Have the courage to ask someone you trust to help with meals for a few days. They can do it themselves or just coordinate a website for it. I wish I would have done this. But I did have my in laws to help during this time and that was such a blessing to me and my family!

Wear comfortable clothes. Give yourself permission not to have to go anywhere.

Give yourself permission to feel everything. Stuffing emotions and pain just makes it manifest somewhere else in your body and makes you sick later. So feel it right now and don’t let it get worse.

Remember, I love you. You will get through this. You are not alone. Even if you don’t believe it, Jesus is with you holding you through this.

And no, He didn’t cause it. God allowed it, but I don’t believe He causes it.

And no, it wasn’t the pedicure or anything I (you) have done. We can’t ever know this side of Heaven the whats or whys. So make peace with not knowing or you’ll run yourself ragged.

You will be okay. You will. ♥️

Love,

Nikki