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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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Timeline of a Miscarriage

Sep 12 Leave a Comment

Dan and I are at Fire + Wine celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary. The daily cocktail is right up my alley: blueberry-infused gin, a splash of grapefruit juice, a squeeze of lemon. I groan when the waiter leaves because I want that drink so badly, but I am secretly giddy to have to refuse. When he comes back I ask him which of the house-made cheeses are pasteurized.

“Everything except the pecorino and manchego,” he says.

I dutifully substitute parmesan on our stuffed gnocchi appetizer.

It turns out I could have eaten the damn pecorino.

***

Before I go to bed that night, I see a slight discoloration on the toilet paper. It’s so faint that I think my eyes are playing tricks on me; perhaps I’m dehydrated and my urine is just a tad too dark. I wipe again and see it unmistakably: pink. My heart skips but it doesn’t sink; I feel concerned but not panicked. I remember the spotting I had with Selah and believe that this is just what my body does. The words my nurse friend reassured me with last time float through my head now: “Spotting is normal in very early pregnancy as the uterus stretches. You don’t need to be concerned about miscarriage unless there is flow and cramping.”

I tell my mom; I tell Dan. They look worried but I assure them I’m not spiraling. “I really believe everything is okay,” I say, and I mean it.

At 7:30 the next morning, I wake up to golden light framing the curtains. I’m surprised and grateful to have slept long and soundly. I almost never sleep past 6:30, let alone when I have a reason to worry.

Dan is still asleep, so I tiptoe out of bed to the bathroom. There is still some spotting but no more than yesterday. I’m disappointed that it hasn’t resolved, but I’m still not panicked.

Selah wakes screaming a few minutes later. I heave her out of bed, wondering if that could make things worse. She sniffles and tearfully tells me that she wants to wear her pretty ballerina dress, so we creep down the stairs together to fetch the dress from the dryer.

Ten minutes later she is wearing the ballerina dress and her ballet shoes. She puts her pineapple pillow in my lap and settles her head onto it, and then she grabs my hand and places it against the still baby-like skin of her cheek.

I am grounded by the reality of Selah: wispy hair splayed across the pillow, fingers in her mouth, ankles crossed in the way she does when she’s totally relaxed. I stroke her hair and kiss her cheek and remember the way I bled with her—the bright purple clots, my certainty that it was the end. Look at what a healthy and vibrant girl she turned out to be, I think. She has strong toddler legs that dance and twirl and leap. My hope is raw but genuine.

Even still, somewhere I’m not ready to acknowledge yet, I have the profound sense that this pregnancy is ending, and also that I will be okay.

***

The next time I go to the bathroom, the spotting is darker and more plentiful. My heart registers this before my mind does, and I realize that my pulse is racing.

I return to the couch and Selah snuggles right in where she was before. Unsure of what else to do, I open my Kindle and begin to read. Immediately the thought assaults me: How can I read when my baby is dying?

I was pregnant for only a week and a half, but I feel like I’ve lived a lifetime with this baby. I pictured the first ultrasound: Dan and I in the dark room, laughing with relief at the wiggly jelly bean on the screen. I saw myself holding him or her in my arms in the hospital, my whole body sweaty, exhausted, consumed, happy. I imagined Selah patting the baby’s head and giving gentle kisses and also shrieking for attention because I have a feeling she’ll be the jealous type.

Now all I can see is the age gap between Selah and another baby growing wider and wider, when it’s already larger than I ever wanted.

It hits me that I’m the first person in Dan’s family to have a miscarriage, and we also waited the longest to have a second baby. I feel like a double failure.

Dan is awake now—I can hear the floorboards creaking under his feet upstairs—and when he comes down, I tell him what’s happening. My mom joins us a few minutes later, and I tell her, too. I’m not ready to admit out loud that I’m having a miscarriage, so I simply describe the color and quantity of the blood—“it’s bright pink and leaves streaks on the toilet paper”—and hope they will draw their own conclusions.

Tears fill my eyes and begin to spill over, burning all the way down my face. The burden of other people’s unasked questions is already heavy; informing them of new developments is tiring. I find myself bristling at the fact that I have to bear both the trauma and the responsibility of telling everyone else about it.

***

I don’t know how much time has passed. I smell pancake batter and hear the sizzle and pop of oil. Selah’s little voice floats out of the kitchen; water is filling up the washing machine.

I remember that a distant writing acquaintance wrote a book about miscarriage. I find it on on Amazon and click “add to cart.”

I make my way to the bathroom again and feel Dan and my mom watching me walk away, waiting for me to emerge with a new report. The door clicks shut but it booms like thunder in my ears.

There is a smear of crimson.

It is undeniable, this fresh, sticky, flowing blood.

It’s not going to stop, I know now. When am I supposed to call it? When do I start sobbing? This whole process has been far more gradual than I expected; it has allowed me to hope for too long.

As an act of surrender, I click “order.”

A few minutes later, I find Dan in our bedroom and tell him it’s over. My voice is quiet and sounds like it’s coming from another room, like it doesn’t belong to me. He pulls me into a bear hug, and I sob against his shoulder, wetting his shirt with tears and snot as Selah dances and twirls around us.

He suggests we go for a walk; we could all use the fresh air. I know he’s right, even though I’m no longer sure how to put one foot in front of the other.

Outside it’s cloudy and drizzling but the sky is bright. Selah begins to sing, “Sunny rain, sunny rain.” She giggles to herself about this paradox: How can it be rainy and sunny at the same time? And me: How can I feel so much gratitude and pain at the same time?

Selah reaches for my hand and I clasp it, making a point not to cling too tightly. In her little singsong voice, she says, “Mommy so happy!”

“How do you know, baby?” I ask.

“Because Mommy loves Selah! So much!”

***

Later that afternoon, as I open my computer to make sense of these notes, my Piano Guys Pandora station starts to play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

My eyes are red and heavy. The tears continue to pool; the blood continues to flow; the ache inside me continues to grow.

I hum along and fill in the words silently:

Somewhere over the rainbow

Skies are blue,

And the dreams that you dare to dream

Really do come true.”

Somehow, I believe it.

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Filed Under: Motherhood, Pregnancy Tagged With: dreams, family, grief, miscarriage, motherhood, pregnancy

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
We’re in the thick of a collective physical, spi We’re in the thick of a collective physical, spiritual, and emotional season of waiting. A nonexhaustive list: Waiting for a vaccine. Waiting for the pandemic to relent. Waiting for test results. Waiting to hug and kiss and hold the hands of our loved ones. Waiting for children. Waiting with children. Waiting on children. Waiting for rescue. Waiting for rest. Waiting for the birth of Christ. Waiting for the birth of a child. Waiting for a new revelation. Waiting for 2021. Waiting for January 20. Waiting for justice. Waiting for movement. Waiting for stillness. Waiting to be seen. Waiting to fade away. Waiting with hope. Waiting with heartache. Waiting with anticipation.

Whatever you are waiting on today, may this prayer be a companion and encouragement to stay the course. You are not alone. We wait with you. 🌈
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