we' d planned this vacation for months. we were supposed to have a week with no kids, beautiful house on a cliff in hawaii all to ourselves, our best friends. all of us girls were pregnant. it was going to be the best week.
go figure, did you know hawaii has a hurricane season? we didn't. go figure, the biggest hurricane hawaii has seen in twenty years is supposed to hit land the day we arrive. five hours before our flight is supposed to take off we are scrambling to cancel our flights, air b&b, excursions, figuring out where we're going to go instead because there's so many wildfires nearby we can't even enjoy a staycation at home because you can't go outside.
24+ hours of no sleep and we all made it to san diego. we were all exhausted but it was sunny and we were by a pool so we made the best of it.
three days later, we were by the pool and i went to the bathroom. i had spotted a little on my bathing suit. a little startling, but i remembered spotting with my first, too, so didn't think too much of it and continued with the day. it stopped after a few hours, nothing alarming.
next day, spotting again in the late afternoon. we went to sunset cliffs and watched the views. i was cramping, but still wasn't really bleeding much. by the time we got back, i just had a bad feeling. the cramping was really bad. i told sydelle and went to the bathroom and didn't come out again.
the pain was so bad; i didn't even remember childbirth hurting that much. i called my doctor and they were concerned that without having much bleeding i may be having a tubal pregnancy, so we had to go to some tiny san diego hospital at 10 o'clock at night.
i was practically on the floor in pain when we walked in, so they got me back quickly. not that i didn't have to lay in a hospital bed for three hours, where my bleeding really picked up, with no pain meds because they didn't know if i was still pregnant, before we got to see an ultrasound tech who still wouldn't tell us anything, and another 45 min to see a doctor to "confirm" what the pools of blood in my bed already told us-- there was no more baby.
i'm not one to share to my feelings. i hate to cry, especially in front of people. i like to push them to the back burner and continue with life and break down by myself however many times over the next few months. i cried once in the hospital, pulled it together. we went back to our hotel. everyone else was in bed.
they knew what had happened. i stayed in bed until noon the next day. i told them not to hug me, don't mention what happened, pretend everything is the same. i couldn't facetime my one year old daughter. i was terrified to see her face and remember the little life i had just loss and know i would never see him or her that way. i got through the day and we went to dinner and an escape room that night. i broke down before going in there. why? what does an escape room have to do with losing my baby? who knows.
i would break down several times over the next couple days, couple weeks, couple months. after the almost two months it took me to get a period again. the first month of trying again and not getting pregnant. after thanksgiving, when your husband's grandpa asks when they're going to have another great- grand baby, when people announce their pregnancies for the same month you were supposed to have your baby.
i still cry writing this, over a year later and holding my rainbow baby in my arms. that baby will still never be here, and while i didn't get to know them for very long, they were my baby.
maybe i was naive that nothing bad would happen. i'd had a healthy pregnancy before. this one wasn't planned. we weren't going to start trying for a couple more months. i took the pregnancy test as a joke because my best friend and my husband kept saying i was pregnant. my husband said he had a feeling. a bad feeling from the beginning. how did i not know? after all, they were in me. shouldn't i have known? it was such a different pregnancy from my first but i just thought well, i workout now and i didn't with her. maybe it's a boy so i'm just not as sick. never did there's just no baby actually growing cross my mind. there's so many unknowns with miscarriage. why did this happen? were they a boy or girl? what would they have been like? unfortunately, we'll never know and just have to learn to live without that little life.
to all the babies lost too soon, we think of you everyday.