Our Precious Baby “Olive”
Today I am choosing to celebrate life. I am celebrating the brief life of our precious Thorpling #2.
On December 1st I woke up and took a pregnancy test. I had two positive tests that morning and was shocked & thrilled. Zach and I had talked about putting off adding to our family until the new year and with that, I not so secretly feared that it would take us just as long as it took us to conceive Evie (3 years).
We had kept it to ourselves for over 3 weeks and I wanted to shout it from the rooftops!
Although my due date was set at the beginning of Aug. I was already rearranging Evie’s nursery for the arrival of a new sibling, taking inventory of everything that we still have after Evie and everything that we would need with the arrival of our second Thorpling.
New Year’s Eve came and I was in the nursery with Evie playing with her toys and reading every book she owns at least twice. It was a peaceful afternoon with the warm sun beaming into her room. Since my lower back was already showing symptoms of being pregnant this mama couldn’t sit on the floor comfortably so I sat down in her chair while reading to her.
Within a few minutes of sitting down, I had the sensation that I knew was not normal.
I rushed to the bathroom and immediately knew something was not right. I called my student midwife (I still had not gone into care with my midwife due to still being early so I called the only contact I had at that point) and explained what was going on. She informed me that it sounded like I was having a miscarriage.
The word I had dreaded these past 9 weeks and 3 days.... miscarriage.
I brought in the New Year of 2018 by driving to the birth center so I could get the rhogam shot and due to the holiday weekend, I went back home to wait for this horrible tragedy out until I could get an appointment for an ultrasound to either confirm or rebut what was happening.
We cried we wept, we sobbed, we prayed, we praised, we read scriptures, and tried as best as we could to distract from our situation.
After 5 long days, we finally had answers... I was no longer carrying our Thorpling #2, our “Baby Olive” (since that’s about the size our babe grew to be).
I refuse to let fertility issues define me. I refuse to believe that there is anything wrong with my body. My body was designed beautifully by my Creator to conceive, carry, and birth beautiful babies. These past few weeks have been some of the hardest I’ve had in my life, but I am thankful.
Thankful for those two pink lines and the word “pregnant” that popped up on the two tests I took. Thankful for the brief amount of time that we had with the glimpse of looking into our near future of a newborn in our home again and with Evie being a big sister to her sibling so close in age. I am thankful for the peace that passes all understanding and in some weird way, I’m thankful for the time that Zach and I had waiting for results. I feel it gave us time to process, grieve, have hope, pray, and ultimately grow together.
I am sharing this today because today would have been the first day of my second trimester. The day that it would have been socially acceptable to share our pregnancy with people due to the lower rate of miscarriage. If we had waited to tell our close family and friends we would have spent the past 3 weeks mourning and grieving alone. Since then we have been surrounded with so much love, support, and most importantly prayer.
I am sharing this today in hopes that people realize that this, unfortunately, happens more than you think. I am sharing to again remind people if you know or encounter a woman, man, couple with or without children (secondary infertility is common) think before you talk about what goes on in their bedroom or in some instances a doctor's office. For the couple that is trying to conceive, or was not able to carry their baby physically in their arms, thoughts, and feelings of inadequacy, guilt, being broken and or undeserving is sometimes daily occurrences.
I am sharing to hopefully allow other families that are going through this to work past society’s stigma of not talking about it because it might be uncomfortable. Most importantly I’m sharing this to let other women know that they are not alone in this process.
It breaks my heart because no one wants to talk about it openly and because of that many suffer silently and feel like they are the only ones going through this. It's obviously a private and intimate topic and to be completely honest it's nobody's business outside of the couple and whoever they have trusted as a support system for them. That said, keeping it to ourselves just keeps that stigma and it can be very relieving to know that you're not carrying this seemingly dark secret- it almost makes it more bearable.