And Baby Makes 4... Until It Doesn't
My Experience with a "Chemical Pregnancy" Miscarriage
March 2024
When John and I “tried” to get pregnant with Grey, it happened right away, first try. So I wasn’t totally surprised when the same seemed to happen for us as we “tried” for Baby Number Two. Of course, it’s not actually all that simple. I had spent months in preparation, hoping to achieve this very outcome, lecturing John about making healthier choices and doing the same with myself. I started taking prenatal vitamins and lost those last couple of stubborn pounds lingering from carrying Grey. I was running regularly and lifting weights with the intent of being able to stay very strong active throughout pregnancy and bounce back quickly after birth. I tracked my cycles religiously and bought the ovulation tests to give us the best possible chance of getting pregnant right away.
So while luck seemed to have a lot to do with it, I would like to think my obsessive planning did too.
I had it alllll planned out. (Here’s where every friend and family member rolls their eyes and says, “of course she did”.) A winter birth felt like the right time of year to be stuck inside recovering postpartum and nursing every 45 minutes like Grey did for the first month or two. Then by spring we’d by stepping out for stroller walks and tummy time in the sunshine. Summer would see us rocking the Poco Plus baby backpack in the alpine once again.
The day came to pee on the stick and it was... negative...
Well, I was testing 6 days before my missed period as advertised on the box. Maybe it was still a little early. So I tried again a couple of days later… It was a digital test this time instead of the ones with the two lines. So instead of watching a faint line appear and darken, I had to wait the entire 3 minutes while the little clock icon pulsed on the screen. Then…
Positive!
So I dug out the announcement onesie I had hidden from John and shook it out to proudly display with the test. John got to come see. Snap went the picture and we were on the way to becoming a family of four. I told my best friend later that morning. I immediately found a due date tracker and put in my stats. We’d be able to welcome our new addition in time for Christmas!
But I just had a feeling...
After having Grey, it felt like I began hearing more and more miscarriage stories from my friends. I told both John and my best friend as we went into this second round of “trying” that I just felt like the universe was trying to tell me something. Warn me about something. Prepare me for something.
And boy am I grateful!
Because I wasn’t sure about this one, I didn’t tell everyone and their sister in that first week of knowing, like I did for Grey. A couple of days after our positive test, I had John and I sit on the couch and say a few words to “Baby”.
I started spotting the next day.
I knew this could be normal implantation bleeding, so I tried not to freak out. But I knew. Maybe I had jinxed myself with a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe fate had been kind enough to give me a heads up before throwing me a curve ball.
Because it WAS a curve ball!
Sure, I had only actually been pregnant for a couple of weeks. But in my Type A, planner, control-freak mind, that didn’t matter. The fact was, I was PREGNANT! And that meant my life had changed trajectory in a big way.
I had been one person and then I had become another, ADDED another actually.
And probably every woman would feel that way, not just my fellow Type A’s.
So it was real grief that hit a couple of hours later when that spotting became a full flow.
It’s called a “chemical pregnancy” at that stage because the egg became fertilized which is enough for the body to start producing hCG, triggering a positive pregnancy test. But the egg was still traveling down the fallopian tube and hadn’t yet implanted in the uterus, which is when the pregnancy would have lost the “chemical” label in front of it. So my egg hadn’t implanted and was being washed out with a period that was really just a few days later than expected.
But I was mourning more than just "chemicals".
It was a loss of all that COULD have been. That new trajectory I had jumped on suddenly became a dead end. I’ll never know what was behind that “Road Closed” sign.
I'll never know WHO that baby would have been.
Boy or girl? What would that first eye contact have been like right after birth? Would it have miraculously ended up with blond hair like Grey did, even hailing from Asian ancestry? Would Baby have been similar to Grey as a newborn, or totally different? What would have been his/her first word? First trail we hiked together?
And that's the part that can still bring tears to my eyes, despite our happy ending to this story.
I am relieved to be safely in the second trimester of another pregnancy, well on our way to that family of four. And still in my “winter birth” window I had wanted! (Even I am rolling my eyes at myself now.)
I wanted to share this story to pay it forward to any woman who may find herself here on my site in a similar situation.
I am eternally grateful to the 8 or so women who have shared their miscarriage stories with me over the years. Beyond a warning, their experiences helped me be as calm as possible during mine. I knew this was normal. I knew what symptoms to expect. I got to avoid the whole Google rabbit hole of fear and misinformation.
Most importantly, I knew there could be happy endings.
Every woman who had shared a miscarriage story with me has gone on to have successful pregnancies and healthy future babies.
So I hope if you have found yourself here in a moment of fear and confusion, you can be reassured that a Rainbow Baby is probably on your horizon.
I was a bit more of a nervous wreck early in this pregnancy waiting to see what would happen as our “chemical” became a blastocyst became an embryo and finally “qualified” as a fetus. Especially because I was lucky enough in both pregnancies to avoid any nausea or morning sickness or any other major symptom. I know, lots of you out there might hate my guts. But I might have enjoyed a little vomiting if it would have helped me FEEL more ACTUALLY pregnant this time.
Now I am trying to settle in and enjoy what is surely the calm before the storm of being a mother of two.
One thing I am really looking forward to is an upcoming trip with John and Grey to the San Juan Islands for salmon fishing. It was on that very same annual trip 3 years ago that I peed on a stick in the tiny boat bathroom to find out I was pregnant with Grey. After telling John, I reeled up my first salmon and we ate it that night, nourishing my body and my new adventure buddy within. Now I will be in that same place, pregnant again, ready to start a whole new adventure.