I have been hesitant to write about this for awhile now. Mother’s Day is one of those days I dread because I am reminded of what I went through and lost. Again this year when I made my calls to all the moms I love I couldn’t help but feeling sad and alone when they would ask me or tell me “When will you get pregnant?” or “Hopefully you’ll be next!” They don’t say it with bad intentions, and I know that they mean well. However, it hurts me a lot. I don’t think people really understand how they can hurt others with their words. 

 

Growing up there is this cycle of you go to school, go to college, get a job, get married and then have a family. This has been ingrained into me since I was very little. Coming from a Mexican household people always perceive you to be overflowing with fertility. Or because you’re a woman you should be able to get pregnant as soon as you start trying. 

 

This is a stigma that needs to stop. Why do we pressure ourselves to become pregnant and to have multiple babies? As women we should be more open and accepting of one another. We need to embrace that being a woman doesn’t just mean being able to bear children. We are capable of more than just that. 

 

I still remember the day I went to the doctors office to confirm my pregnancy. I was so confident because the strip test was positive. I had felt that I was pregnant for a few weeks so this doctor’s visit was going to confirm what I already knew and I was excited.

 

When the doctor told me that it was positive I was so happy. I was glad to know that what I had felt in my soul was true. I was pregnant.

 

A year before I was still not sure if I wanted to get pregnant at 25. I wanted to still be able to go out and party with my friends. But I loved hanging out with my cousins’ children and playing with them. My friends and family would say “You’ll be a great mom!” So when 2018 started I felt confident enough to say, “I’m ready.”

 

I wanted to start my own family and become a mommy. I knew deep down that I was ready to share the world with a new being. I wanted to create someone and teach it and help it grow.

 

We didn’t start trying until September and after a few months it happened. We got pregnant.

 

It’s crazy how your body tells you that you’re pregnant. It’s just a feeling you have that’s hard to explain. I felt it and even though the first strip test I took said “negative,” I knew it was wrong.

 

I waited a few days and I took another one and like I had already known, I was indeed pregnant.

 

I took the second strip pregnancy test on December 8th, 2018. I was ecstatic to have this small microscopic being begin to grow inside me. I wanted to tell EVERYONE because I was overwhelmed with joy!

 

Within the first few weeks of knowing I was pregnant I downloaded a bunch of apps that show you how the baby grows in your belly and started reading articles on pregnancy. I was over the moon that something I had longed for  was finally happening.

 

I kept thinking about how my soon-to-be baby would be able to hangout and play with it’s cousins! They would be able to grow together and be best friends. We would be able to have play dates and do mommy and baby things. I would be able to chime in during mommy conversations!

 

I was ready!

 

I wanted to tell my mom and my sister first before anyone else. Since it was so close to Christmas I decided to make them a Christmas present with a onesie inside to share the news with them. I had my husband, Isaac, record them opening the gifts after dinner one night. I hadn’t brought myself to watch that video again until today.

 

Even before they opened the gifts my mom said, “Is this the news?” and my sister said,”I’m so excited!” Just writing those words right now has me in tears. It’s so hard to know and watch how happy they were to become a Grandma and Aunt. 

 

I remember when I started to feel pains. My best friend and I had just finished a promo and went out for dinner. I started to feel light headed and sick. I felt a sharp pain in my abdomen. It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt (and I get heavy cramps from my period, think that but 100x worse).

 

My husband came to pick me up because I couldn’t drive. He asked if we should go to the ER and I said “no, I’ll be okay, let’s wait it out.”

 

Little did I know that this was one of the first signs of slowly losing my pregnancy.

 

The next day I started to spot. 

 

One of my relatives told me that she had similar symptoms when she was pregnant and that it just made her pregnancy “high risk”. This made me be a bit more positive because I thought to myself “hmmm, this might be something that my family goes through and she had her baby so I must be fine.”

 

My next doctor’s appointment was the following week and I was counting down the days. I was confident that I was okay and that everything would be alright.

 

My husband came with me to the appointment. I remember walking into the doctor’s office and seeing all the pregnant moms and the moms with their kids. It made me feel a bit sick. I felt like I was in a bubble. 

 

When it was time to do my first ultrasound I told my husband that I could go alone. To be honest, I don’t know why I didn’t ask him to come with me. Maybe I was hoping that him not being in the room would somehow make things change and have a positive outcome.

 

The nurse walked me into the room and she told me to undress and get into the robe. “The doctor will be right in,” she said.

 

She walked out and it was just me all alone in this cold room. The few minutes I waited felt never ending. I just wanted to get through with this and leave the doctor’s office.

 

When the doctor came in he greeted me very nicely and asked me about what I was experiencing. I told him everything. From the pains to the bleeding to my relative telling me she had similar symptoms.

 

He finally said, “okay, let’s see what we can find.”

 

He put the jelly on my abdomen area and began the ultrasound. I watched his facial expression change and he looked over at me and said, “I don’t see anything yet but your blood work from before showed that you are pregnant. Let’s run more blood work to check the hormone levels today to see what it says.”  

 

Looking at that screen and seeing nothing was heartbreaking. My body was showing all the symptoms of being pregnant but there was nothing there. I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.

 

After he left I dressed myself and walked to the waiting room. My husband was sitting there and I sat next to him.

 

He asked, “is everything okay?” I replied, “I don’t know.” My whole body felt numb. I felt like I had tunnel vision and that I was just hovering over myself while someone else was controlling my movements as I walked into the tech’s office to get my blood drawn.

 

When I got into the car and sat in the front seat I started to cry. I remember my husband consoling me.

 

All I wanted to do was to wake up and for this to be a horrible dream.

 

I received the results from my blood test a few days later and my hormone levels were still high marking that I was still 6 weeks pregnant. My confidence came back because this confirmed that I was still pregnant.

 

The holidays were about to start and my doctor said that since their office was going to be closed during that time he would be available through his cell phone. I was very appreciative since I had never heard of a doctor doing this.

 

During the next week I was still spotting and still watching what I ate and drank. I still had symptoms of being pregnant. I was always super tired by 5pm, my boobs hurt, the hormones were making me irritable. You know, the normal stuff. 

 

Christmas Eve came and we went over to my relatives house per tradition to celebrate. We had a great time celebrating with our family and friends. I remember thinking, “Next year I will be coming here with a baby in my arms.”

 

At midnight, we have this tradition where the youngest of the group places the baby Jesus in the manger. That year I remember singing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus and watching the little girls place it. In my head I told myself with a smile on my face, “I’ll have the youngest next year, and I’ll be helping them put the baby in the manger.” 

 

Shortly after we sang, we left and went home. What a great way to end Christmas Eve.

 

The next morning when I woke up and went to the bathroom I noticed that I had bled a bit more than I previously had been. I thought there might be something off but didn’t think much of it.

 

That Christmas morning we went to visit my grandma. We had breakfast, opened presents and went home. During the time we were at my grandma’s house the bleeding had gotten worse.

 

I started to have symptoms like if I was on my period. When we got home I got in bed and called my doctor. He told me that I should not do any heavy lifting and that I should remain in bed. He wasn’t sure if it was a miscarriage or an embryonic pregnancy since I was having sharp pains. Those two words made my ears ring. 

 

I felt sick. I wanted to cry but at the time my cousin and her boyfriend were staying with us, and I didn’t want to raise any concerns with them. Thinking back, I didn’t want to have to explain myself to anyone because all I wanted was to be alone. I sat in bed the rest of Christmas Day watching all the Christmas episodes of The Office. 

 

The next few days the doctor let me know that I would have to take more blood tests to monitor my hormone levels. I made an appointment and the following day I went.

 

I think getting bloodwork done was the worst part about being “pregnant.” Especially at that moment since I knew that I had lost the baby.

 

I had to get pricked multiple times to check my hormone levels before the year ended. I hated it because it felt like a constant reminder of what I had lost. I felt numb and embarrassed.

 

I remember the night before New Years Eve my doctor called saying that he wanted to make sure I wasn’t bleeding internally. He urged me to go to the ER.  

 

When we arrived I explained to the nurses and doctors what my personal doctor had told me, and that we had done blood work a day ago. They didn’t listen and they had us waiting for HOURS! I felt so helpless. 

 

After hours of waiting a nurse came in saying, “we need to take another blood sample.” When he left I wanted to cry. I didn’t want to get pricked yet again to confirm the inevitable..

 

Previous nurses had hurt me during the blood tests so I wanted nothing to do with them anymore. My arms hurt and all I wanted was to go home.

 

After the blood work a specialist came to do a final ultrasound. When she walked in she didn’t really say much. She did what the doctor had done in the previous ultrasound but  instead of telling me what she was seeing she just took notes on her computer. I wanted to ask her what she was seeing but she seemed like she didn’t want to talk. When I was laying there I somehow wished that she would say “There it is! You’re okay!” 

 

Once she was done she packed up her equipment and left without a word.

 

Another hour went by and the doctor finally came in with the results. She told us what I already knew and longed not to hear.

 

“You miscarried.”

 

I felt numb and didn’t really have any more emotions left. Even paying for the visit felt automatic. I didn’t even realize that I still had to pay close to 4K. For all of this because I didn’t meet my “deductible.”

 

We got in the car and all I wanted was chicken nuggets from McDonalds. My comfort food. I ordered a large coke and large French fry with my nuggets. I dunked them into the honey mustard. And that was that. 

 

I would be lying if I told you I was fine after that. I wasn’t.

 

I felt broken and ashamed. As a Mexican-American woman you were brought up to think that you were supposed to be fertile and have many, many children.

 

This really fucked with my head. It still does.

 

When I got home I started to notice that I hated seeing other people happy on social media with their “new pregnancy” posts or “baby birth” posts. I would quickly “mute” or “unfollow” those people.

 

I hated every single one of them. The thing that I longed for was gone but they were happy. It wasn’t fair.

 

When happy couples invited us to their baby showers in the following months I would tell Isaac to decline and to send them a present. I didn’t want to go. Why did I want to go to something that reminded me of what I had lost? I didn’t care for anyone’s happiness. 

 

I didn’t tell many people what happened at the time. Only my mom, sister and my cousin knew.

 

I still went to work during the week at the warehouse and weekends doing promos. Masking my anger and sadness with a fake smile to show my “happiness” to the world.

 

I went to see a therapist. I wish I could say it truly made me feel better, but it didn’t. She just made me feel worse about myself by saying that other people had it worse than me. I remember her telling me that her mother had a stillbirth and that I should be grateful that that didn’t happen to me. She kept telling me “just wait in a few months you’ll be pregnant again!”

 

That was definitely not what I wanted to hear.

 

Having your body go through a miscarriage is not a walk in the park. It’s like having your period x100. You have all of this stuff coming out of you that you don’t even want to see and you just have to keep reminding yourself that you’re okay. Even if you know that deep down in your mind you don’t feel that way.

 

I remember one day at work I was still bleeding. I had to run to the bathroom because I felt like I was going to stain myself.

 

When I got to the bathroom I pulled down my pants and what I saw I will never forget.

 

I knew at that moment that that was the last of it. It had come out of me and I wanted to cry. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to show my co-workers what I was going through.

 

When I went home that day I cried and I felt alone. 

 

As time has gone by I have told more and more people about my miscarriage, but it still feels wrong. I think I feel this way because I hate people feeling pity for me or telling me “maybe it wasn’t meant to be.” I think the worst one was, “Did you even want it?” Do you think I want to hear that when I’m pouring my heart out about something traumatic that happened to me? No. 

 

I don’t think many people understand how hurtful they can be when they tell people those things. There are people that told me that they have friends that immediately got pregnant after their miscarriage, and that was hurtful too because even though I wanted to try immidiately after I was scared. 

 

Many people say that stress can also cause you to not get pregnant, or that you need to be your healthiest to get pregnant, or that you need to do and eat certain things to get pregnant. Everytime I heard any of that I wanted to tear my ears off. 

 

Why do you have to have a certain routine to magically conceive a child? Especially when there are women everyday getting pregnant without even trying. Everyone is not the same.

 

I think that is the hardest part people do not understand. Just because Sally got pregnant without even trying doesn’t mean Jenna is going to have the same outcome. The sad part is that the majority of people saying these kinds of things are women. We are not identical to each other. We need to be more sensitive and aware of other women’s feelings when it comes to conceiving. I think if women were more open about their pregnancy journey, then women like me wouldn’t feel ashamed of who they are.

 

It’s been almost 2 years since my miscarriage happened, and I still get depressed from time to time thinking that I won’t ever get pregnant again. There have been times where I think that I’m pregnant, and I feel all the symptoms I felt before. Then I get super excited, but when I take a test, BOOM, negative. 

 

This past superbowl we went to Tahoe with some friends and I was 4 days late. I knew it, it finally was happening again. I was feeling antsy because I wanted to know if I was pregnant. I had even told my friends during that trip that I thought I might be pregnant so that’s why I wasn’t drinking. The day we were leaving to come back home, my period came. I was heartbroken. I wanted to cry but our friends were with us during the car ride to the airport and we waited for our flights together too. Again, I had to act like I was okay. 

 

I know that there are many women just like me that have gone through miscarriages and even multiple, but there is such a stigma behind it that needs to be broken. People need to be more sensitive to the fact that there are women everywhere struggling to conceive. I think that people need to be more educated and know that they are pretty common. If more people came out and talked about them, more women, like me, wouldn’t feel alone. 

 

For those of you who have gone through a miscarriage or are having trouble conceiving, know that you are not alone. Know that you are loved, and if you need someone to talk to, I am here for you. 

 

Don’t let anyone make you feel less than what you are. It’s okay to be selfish and to take yourself out of situations that make you feel uncomfortable because of what you are going through. You are an amazing human being and I pray that one day you will be a mama whether it be by conceiving naturally, through IVF, or by adopting. 

 

I’m still not pregnant, but I am hopeful that one day I will be.