A Life Measured in Weeks

Author note: This post talks about a pregnancy loss from several years ago. Please take care in reading.

I lost a pregnancy. I lost my would-be child. I lost a part of myself that will never come back. I blamed myself. I failed at the most basic biological function of my body.

I failed.

I failed.

I failed.

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I’ve inherited many traits from my mother: my eyes and nose, my musical inclination, my stubbornness, my obsessive need to clean my house before going on a trip. But perhaps the strangest inherited trait… my fertility?

My mother was one of six siblings; I am one of four. And while it’s incredibly awkward to think about too deeply, pregnancy came easily for her. It only seemed appropriate that since I take after her in so many ways, I’d take after her in that one too.

I got pregnant with my son, Sam, exactly fifteen days after stopping the pill. An immediate oh shit moment, because my thinking had been, I’ll stop taking it and maybe we’ll get pregnant in six or eight months.

So wrong. But also, so right. Sam was pure perfection from the start (though the postpartum was not—but that’s for another post).

The minute that second line appeared, I developed a quiet confidence in my body. I had friends and family who weren’t as fortunate—who faced brutal, unfair struggles trying to conceive—so I kept that confidence to myself. Then, about two and a half years later, when I got pregnant again—this time very intentionally—I patted myself on the back and started making plans.

I found out I was pregnant the week before Bryan and I were leaving for a week in Ireland. Not ideal timing, I’ll admit. I stuck mostly to water and soda in the pubs, with the occasional hard cider, telling myself it was fine—I was only about five weeks along. I was in Europe, after all. Do as the Europeans do.

I went to my first doctor’s appointment the week after we got home and held my breath, staring at the monitor. After a moment of intergalactic-looking white blobs, suddenly I saw it—the rapid beat of a tiny heart. Wild microscopic movements. A little nugget with an oversized head and two tiny developing arms and feet.

Our child.

Sam’s little brother or sister.

The newest grandchild, cousin, niece, or nephew.

Everything was happening exactly as it should.

I left the OB’s office with ultrasound photos, a January due date, and a head full of plans.

We told only a few people at first—just our parents and siblings—but I am a terrible secret keeper. As the weeks passed, my circle of trust quietly expanded. Then three of my closest girlfriends announced their pregnancies. I never stood a chance. Four friends, all having their second babies within two and a half months of each other? The alignment of our stars felt both shocking and magical.

The week leading up to July 4th, I was rudely struck down with the worst childhood virus an adult can get: strep. My throat was on fire. Every swallow felt like knives. I lay in bed freezing while it was ninety-three degrees outside. Independence Day was spent cursing every explosion and firecracker as I lay weak, delirious, and pissed. I was too busy feeling like death on fire to notice that I was spotting each time I dragged myself to the bathroom.

Forty-eight hours later, the fever broke—but something felt wrong. I called my doctor’s office expecting reassurance. Instead, they asked me to come in right away. I chalked it up to being thirty-five—advanced maternal age (gross)—and having genetic hypertension that had complicated my pregnancy with Sam. I called Bryan at work and told him not to come home. It was probably nothing.

Once again, I lay on the table in the dark ultrasound room. Just weeks earlier I had seen movement and a heartbeat. But looking at that same screen, I saw only stillness. It took an eternity in that moment, my stomach in my throat, for the tech to tell me what my heart already knew.

I’m so sorry.

I was days away from my second trimester.

A chasm opened in my chest. The world blurred. Sound dulled. Everything moved in slow motion.

They put me in an empty exam room while they tried to track down a doctor—mine was on call at the hospital. I sat alone, listening to the normal bustle of a Friday afternoon as staff moved up and down the hall. I sobbed quietly behind the door. Every so often, someone would pop in and apologize.

“It’s a busy day. Do you need anything?”

Yes. I need my baby to be alive. This isn’t right. Check again. Check now.

Can’t find the heartbeat.

I called Bryan. I called my mom. I texted my pregnant best friend because I couldn’t say it out loud again. I asked her to tell our other pregnant friends.

Not your fault.

It took over thirty minutes for a doctor to finally come in.

There was nothing you could have done.

Yes, there was. I shouldn’t have had hard cider in Ireland. I shouldn’t have gone to that loud, hot Taylor Swift concert. I shouldn’t have told so many people. I shouldn’t have been so confident in my body—my goddamn body that failed at its most basic function.

I’m so sorry. Please come back.

At 5:30 the next morning, Bryan drove me to the hospital for a D&C. I chose not to wait for nature to take its course. I couldn’t prolong the inevitable.

In the quiet of the pre-op room, before Bryan came back to sit with me, I spoke to my baby. She felt like my daughter. I told her how sorry I was that I couldn’t protect her. How desperately I wished this moment were different. I told her how wanted she was. She was our child—Sam’s sibling, our parents’ grandchild, a cousin, a niece. We had plans for her. I promised I would never forget that she was with me for those precious weeks.

As the anesthesia wore off, I felt like I was inside a bubble. I wasn’t in physical pain, but I was broken. I slept and cried in cycles while Sam played obliviously with his cousins at my parents’ house.

That night, after Bryan brought him home, Sam stopped playing at his train table, walked over to me, laid his head on my lap, and said, “I lay wif mommy now.” So, we sat on the couch watching Disney Junior, and I held my living, breathing, perfect child with everything I had.

In the weeks and months that followed, I retreated inward. I shrank myself. I lost my appetite. I felt like I was disappearing.

Is this normal?

Get over yourself.

People have endured far worse.

The guilt of losing a pregnancy collided with the guilt of feeling grief at all.

I couldn’t talk to my friends—they were constant reminders that their bodies hadn’t failed them. And who wants to hear about miscarriage when they’re pregnant themselves?

I couldn’t talk to Bryan. He was kind and gentle, but he couldn’t understand the ache. Over time, life resumed its rhythm for him. Time moved forward. I stayed frozen.

The person who reached down and pulled me up – the one who gave me my eyes and nose and my name – was my mother.

She had endured far worse on her own path to motherhood. She lost a pregnancy between my two older siblings. Then, the year before I was born, she delivered a full-term baby boy, Sean, who died one hour after birth from Potter’s Syndrome—a condition that ultrasounds could have detected if they were the standard of care in the early 80s.

She told me how pregnancy loss wasn’t spoken about then. How women were given a brief window to grieve and then told to move on. How her own mother told her, “That’s enough now,” after Sean died. And how generations before simply didn’t acknowledge these losses at all. A “womanly issue” not to be discussed.

My mom gave me space. Through her eyes, I felt seen. And once I opened up to others, I was met with waves of support—permission to grieve out loud instead of inside my own tattered bubble.

For centuries, women have carried these losses silently—putting on makeup, fixing their hair, going about life as if nothing had happened so as not to make others uncomfortable. It was considered the “proper” thing to do.

One in four women will experience pregnancy or infant loss. That’s over 42 million women in the United States alone—millions of us walking around with broken hearts and empty arms. I was the one in four. Four friends pregnant—three destined to be, one not.

Days after my loss, my mom sent me a text message. It reaffirmed how fortunate I am to have a mother who broke the silence and stigma of her own grief and gave me the grace to grieve mine...

Megan, I’ve been thinking about you so much. I know it was really hard going into work yesterday. Meg, you don’t have to pretend everything is okay because it’s not. If people ask what’s wrong, tell them you just lost a baby. You don’t have to go into any more details than you’re comfortable with, but people will understand you being quiet and not yourself. Lauren’s right, women just suck it up when they really deserve some support. I’ve been hesitant to call because I don’t want you to feel like I’m preaching. You and Bryan had a tragic experience. Bryan will deal with it differently simply because he’s a man and is removed from the physical aspect of being pregnant. I think as soon as we realize we’re pregnant we don’t see it as an embryo but as a fully formed baby, so we also experience a lost dream. Please be good to yourself and give yourself permission to grieve. There’s no “time limit”. 35 and 42 years later I still feel a punch in the gut from time to time. I am so sorry you have to go through this. I remember thinking at the time that maybe my losses would ensure none of my daughters would have to suffer from losses, but I guess it doesn’t work like that. Please know that I love you, Bryan, and Sam so much and will do anything I can to help you through this.

We must continue to make space for women to experience loss however they need to. To speak it aloud without worrying about discomfort. To walk openly through grief.

Because she isn’t only mourning a lost baby. She is grieving a lost dream.

Tonight, I tucked my 6-year-old rainbow daughter into bed. One who arrived not as a replacement, not as a healing balm, but as a continuation of my story. Joy did not erase grief, and love did not cancel loss. Both live here together. The child I lost will always matter. She changed me. She made space in my heart I didn’t know existed. And if sharing this gives even one woman permission to say this happened to me too, then her brief life—and my broken silence—meant something.