Our Second Little One Gone Too Soon | Mama Monday | 614 Mom

Courtney Traves runs The Traves Life, a lifestyle blog focusing on parenting and sharing inspiration with her readers.  She lives in Dublin, OH with her husband, daughter, and sweet husky, Jules.  

You know that feeling when you see those two lines. When everything in your world has changed in two minutes. I was giving my husband another child, my daughter a sibling, my parents another grandbaby.

Best. Feeling. In. the. World.

Overwhelmed with joy and excitement, the happiness of bringing another bundle of joy into the world.

When I found out I was pregnant with my first, my husband wanted to shout to the world we were having a baby, but for me I wanted to go to the doctors, make sure baby was healthy and everything was good before telling anyone. This time was so different, we both wanted to shout to the world! First-time pregnancy I was worried about miscarrying, false positive and this time none of that even crossed my mind. It took everything I had not to send the positive pregnancy test picture to our family and friends.

But I knew we wanted to share the news in a cute way, so we kept quiet, made our doctors appointment and in the meantime bought a shirt for our daughter to wear “I’m going to be a Big Sister” for her to wear to our family dinner. We could not wait for it to be delivered and have her show it off.

Then everything changed.

I woke up feeling off, that feeling when you know something is wrong, with cramping and horrible back pain coupled with a few more symptoms I knew were not a good sign.

I called the doctor to explain what was going on and I was scheduled for blood work that day to check my hormone levels and 48 hours after to get rechecked. The blood test is basically to confirm a progressing pregnancy, with the hormone levels doubling every two or three days in early pregnancy.

Those days felt like the longest I had ever gone through. The first call came the next morning, and my fears were coming true, my levels were already low but they wanted me to come in again the following day to be rechecked because it might not mean anything. But I knew deep down that it wasn’t good, I was having all the symptoms of a miscarriage and now coupled with the fact of low HCG levels.

When that second call came, the levels had dropped even more, and they were confirming my worse nightmare, I was having a miscarriage. I was devastated. The days following were filled with so many tears and so much pain. We were beyond sad, beyond hurt and beyond shocked. I would have never imagined after going through a healthy pregnancy with my daughter that I would miscarry with my second pregnancy.

All I could think about were the what ifs and whys, thoughts of guilt, shame, and failure, took over my mind. What did I do wrong that caused me to lose my baby? What if I ate better, or didn’t have that extra glass of wine before finding out, or maybe carrying my daughter was too much for me? I cannot explain the mental and physical pain that I was going through. 

We shared the loss with our family and close friends and will always be grateful to them for showing us so much love and support through it all. Our family and friends have been an amazing support system, between checking in on us and offering to babysit so we can have some time to ourselves.

Within those short few weeks of carrying our sweet little one our future had changed in an amazing way, we knew we would have another fall baby, due in November, we were already figuring out the babies room, already discussing boy and girl names, so many aspects of our lives were going to be changing and just like that its not.

Those pregnancy tests sat on our counter for awhile, neither of us wanting to throw them away, knowing that somehow throwing them away makes it even more real that we lost our baby. One day I finally asked my husband if he could throw them away because I wasn’t strong enough yet but needed to start healing without seeing the tests daily. There was a silent acknowledge between us of pain, love and closure.

This is something very difficult to get out in spoken words but something I want to share because I don’t want this to be a huge secret; I want to remember the precious baby I was blessed to carry for a short amount of time. Miscarriage is often grieved in the silence and in the shadows, it’s too hard to bear the news to everyone and in the moment too private to express how deep the pain of the loss really is. I want it known that there was a little one so loved, time spent dreaming of our future together, and losing our sweet little one for reasons I might never understand.

I would love to be announcing to all our family and friends that we would be welcoming another baby Traves this coming fall, and be planning on a little boy or little girl joining our family. But while we pray to be blessed with another baby we will be enjoying our little family of three and all the hugs and cuddles we can get from our daughter.

Motherhood is such a beautiful gift and I wish I could guarantee you that if you have gone through or are going through a miscarriage now you will get pregnant again and have your own sweet little one to hold tight.

I am trying to let go of my worry and stress about getting pregnant again and having a healthy pregnancy again. I trust that there are plans for everyone, and I pray having another baby is in our plan. I can tell you that life does move on, that the joy of finding out your pregnant and the pain of loss will be there but its okay that life continues.

It’s okay if you are at the point where you realize life has moved on or is moving on, the pain was real, the loss was real, but it’s okay to continue living your life. I know that can seem hard and difficult, I know I still struggle with it, but I find peace in trusting there is a plan.

I will never be able to answer the whys but acknowledging the pain and our loss in a way gives me peace. Our little one was carried for only a moment but will be loved for a lifetime. We went through an emotional rollercoaster and with so much pain mentally and physically but we remain hopeful.

Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. 1 Corinthians 13:7 NLT

xoxo, The Traves