Angel Babies

I stumbled into an interesting conversation the other day while a group of my colleagues were at lunch and it made me think.
The conversation started out on a lighthearted nature about the sexual freedom a younger sibling seemed to enjoy and then turned into a conversation about miscarriage.  The tone all of a sudden moved from friendly to hushed.  The women lowered their voices and while they were discussing it you could tell they were uncomfortable.  A couple recanted stories of their friends who had suffered through one and you could tell that they hadn’t had the misfortune but felt the dread of the possibility and the pity for their friends.
According to the American Pregnancy Association 10 – 25% of all pregnancies will end in miscarriage.  Most of them occurring between 1 and 13 weeks gestation.  So that means that at its worst 1 in 4 women will most likely suffer a miscarriage.  Its a large statistic but still a condition that women don’t discuss.  We hide our pregnancy from our friends and families until the second trimester or at least week 12 as the chances of miscarriage then drop dramatically. This is a recent concept as most of our mothers/grandmothers ect didn’t hide their pregnancies but as detection methods became more and more refined we knew earlier and earlier that we were in fact pregnant.  Unfortunately it also became more and more apparent that not all of us would stay pregnant. 
I have an angel baby, suffered a miscarriage, lost a pregnancy, however you want to put it; I went through it.  The pregnancy was a bit of a shock, not planned although not prevented.  It took me a couple weeks to really get used to the idea and once I did I learned that the pregnancy was not viable and that there would be no baby.  I was devastated and hurt.  I had always harbored a fear of miscarriage as my mother had lost a child before she had me.  To this day I don’t know the details of her loss, but I didn’t find out until I was older and it struck a cord of fear for me.  So when I misscarried my fears rang true and I felt responsible and sad. 
It took a long time for me to get over it and I still have moments, I would have a two year old right now.  As I write this it is difficult but I feel important.  Because we go through it in silence.  We hide it from others and I don’t know why.  It is instensly private and I don’t think in the midst of it I could really express my feelings to anyone.  But now that its happened and I have made my peace with it.  I think its important to say that it happened to me, it sucked and if I know you and it happens to you, you have a friend you can lean on that understands and will be there for you. 
We need to talk about these things, we need each other to know its ok.  We need to not hide it away in a closet in our homes like we did something wrong.  I don’t know if it stems from a feeling of responsibility or that if we had done something different the pregnancy would have continued.  Chances are it wouldn’t have, we don’t know most times why some pregnancies go to full term while other end abruptly.  We know that there are a lot of potential reasons and we have a lot of theories but chances are if you have been through one you don’t have a clear cut explanation.  It sucks to not have an answer to not know why and to not know how to prevent it once you get pregnant again.  The fear runs deeper if you have actually miscarried and then get pregnant again, but the odds are in your favor that another pregnancy will be ok. 
The conversation at lunch struck a cord with me and made me think of the fact that I was probably the only one in the room that had gone through this.  So I told them and I did so with a hitch in my voice.  But it was good and well worth it and I didn’t feel bad or ashamed, I felt happy to have said that yes I went through this terrible thing.  Yes it happens to people and yes I have a beautiful baby that tells me it is not the end of a sad story but a piece of a happy one.