Catastrophic life events can completely crumble even the strongest foundations and change you. Like really change you as a person. They also have a way of allowing you to build from anew and begin to see your life through a different lens. Amy shares her story and what she wants you to know about pregnancy and infant loss.
Amy- Her name is Emsley Noel. While her heart beat was inside me, I would see her in my dreams. Vibrant red hair just like her big brother Jensen. We wanted her so badly. She was a result of our 5th round of fertility treatments, just a few months after the nightmare, 4 month ordeal of losing her brother just 10 weeks into my pregnancy. I told her daddy by placing the positive pregnancy test in our newly erected Christmas tree and asking him what he thought of how the tree looked. After all we’d been through, he thought it must be some kind of joke. The joy we felt that day, and in the following days, was beautiful.
But the reality is, I’d had 10 miscarriages to my 3 viable pregnancies. And luck was not on my side.
Betas not doubling pointed to a struggling pregnancy. The first ultrasound showed an empty uterus, which prompted the doctor to tell me I miscarried and to stop my meds. Hope whispered at me not to and by the next week there she was, measuring perfectly. But then more ultrasounds which revealed such a beautiful heartbeat and growth, also showed bleeding internally, a subchorionic hemorrhage.
On Thursday there was a sweet heartbeat we got to see and hear. On Monday there was a large bleed, and I knew hope was gone. On a quiet Tuesday in January our little girl’s heart stopped beating. On Wednesday the doctor spoke the words I never get used to hearing no matter how many times I’ve heard them already. “I’m so sorry, but there is no heartbeat.”
2 weeks later and my body would still not let go. It had only been a few months since my last D&C to remove her brother’s body from me, where it had been for 4 months after his heart stopped beating in my dangerous and fatal uterus. My doctor warned against me having another surgery so close after, but I couldn’t wait out another 4 months. I wanted answers. I wanted more testing. I wanted to know why this kept happening and I wasn’t accepting PCOS as the fall back answer anymore.
February 2nd I walked through labor and delivery to reach the surgery center where they would take my daughter from me. February 2nd I walked out of the surgery center, through labor and delivery, with an empty uterus and empty arms.
A few weeks later, the day before her brother’s due date, we got the test results. Completely normal female child. No chance they accidentally tested my genes. No answers.
She should have lived.
Those words would replay in my head for months. Every time they did my heart grew colder, and colder, and colder.
Months marched on. Another early miscarriage. Another failed round of fertility drugs. The numbness grew greater. By April I was no longer able to get out of bed.
In May I asked my husband for a divorce.
In August I had my 28th birthday. The next day I mourned the passing of Emsley’s due date without Emsley in my arms.
In October I finally got another diagnosis. Could it have been the reason she died? Possibly. So could that subchorionic hemorrhage though. I’ll never know. But I have hope for the future now where there was none before.
In January my husband moved out and I began to heal.
As I write this, I’ve passed yet another February. Yet another August. And always, always, she remains in my mind. In my heart. Her and her brothers and possibly sisters from the losses we don’t know the genders of.
My post October 2016 was full of hope. But it was pre-Emsley. Now I want you to know that it’s ok to not be in that place, so full of hope. It’s ok to let the grief rewrite your life, so long as you keep fighting to pick up the pieces again. I want you to know that you are strong, when you feel weak. Really strong. Truly strong. This experience, child loss, it is powerful. It is so powerful. But you overcome it every day. By waking up, by taking care of yourself and your families and your job and responsibilities. Especially when all you want to do is go back in time and somehow change it. Somehow make it not happen.
I want you to know it’s ok to be changed by this. Even when people in your life don’t like the changes in you. It’s ok to be harder, softer, cry more, cry less. It’s ok to find joy and hope in the darkest moments. It’s ok to stare into darkness and respect how bad it is, to just push through and survive it.
Losing Emsley destroyed my life in the most beautiful way. By making me see that I wanted to live. That I wanted to be happy. That I was done being a passenger in my life. And it hasn’t been easy. It’s been painful. To my core.
But I want you to know that I really am happy. Even after so much loss, years of trying to conceive, and so many broken hopes and dreams.
I want you to know you will be happy, too. As long as you keep fighting for it, knowing you truly deserve it.
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