This is not the kind of post I wanted to have as my first 2019 post. It really wasn’t. I was planning to write a hopeful post, a positive post, I had already written it to be honest, it was the post for our rainbow baby that I wrote as soon as we heard the heartbeat, but I will never get the chance to press publish to it. So, no, this is certainly not the kind of post I wanted to have as my first post in 2019.

I had another miscarriage. The second one in three months. Two days before Christmas. Well the D&C was 2 days before Christmas at 9 weeks pregnant. The baby’s heartbeat stopped from 7 weeks although there was a strong heartbeat at 6 weeks 2 days. The baby was dead for 2 weeks and I had not realized it. Again. The first time was dead for 2-3 days before the doctor’s appointment. But again, no bleeding, no pain, just pregnancy symptoms as usual although now that I am looking back the last 3-4 before the D&C, they were milder than they used to be but I might be wrong. So, a second missed miscarriage; that’s how it is called when you only figure it out at doctor’s appointment because there are no symptoms of miscarriage.

Deep down I knew it, but I did not want to believe it because I was thinking that all women that are pregnant after a miscarriage must be scared as hell and thinking of the worst-case scenario so that was what I was feeling. Surely there is no way I would have another miscarriage. God would not allow it. I had such an easy, perfect pregnancy with my son. And there are so many women that have one miscarriage, 1 in 4 actually, but not many of them have a second one. So, the baby is ok and I am just scared. That is what I was telling myself to calm me down. And I could have been right. But I was not.

During that 9-week appointment I knew it. I wasn’t looking at the monitor. I was looking at my doctor’s eyes. She did not have to say anything. I just saw it in her eyes. “It happened again… right?” I asked her. “It happened again…” she replied. My uterus was fine, there were no placenta issues, just no heartbeat and she could tell by the baby’s size that it stopped at 7 weeks. She could also tell that I had no indications that I would miscarry naturally anytime soon. And because this time the baby was so tiny, she could not tell if there were any visible abnormalities as the first time. So, we decided to have another D&C but this time to take it for biopsy. I was numb. Until I left her office.

My husband was not at the doctors with me because it was a late night appointment and he stayed home with our son. The first time it happened, I called him from her office crying. This time, I couldn’t tell him from the phone that it had happened again. I just couldn’t. I called my mom from the car and then my sister. I needed my mom to take care of my son the next day and my sister to be with me at the hospital because my husband would have to take the baby for biopsy himself, drive it to the lab from Limassol to Nicosia because it was 2 days before Christmas and the normal courier services were not available. And I was crying.

The next days are a blur. We cancelled all our Christmas plans. Physically, I couldn’t do it. Emotionally, we couldn’t do it. I was still grieving for the first baby and now we lost another one. I was not expecting to get pregnant so soon (after all it took us 9 months to get pregnant the second time around) so as soon as we got the green light from my doctor to try, we started trying. And we got pregnant. And we lost it again. All within the last three months of 2018. Why did it happen again?

It is confusing. It is heart-breaking. My mind tries to find answers to something that might never be answered. I have a million questions. I make a million scenarios in my head “what if I had done that differently”, “or that” “or maybe the other thing”. There are so many tests I want to take (Google is the worst!) but I don’t think I have enough blood to take all of them. We expect the biopsy results end of January but what will they mean? If there was an abnormality with the baby, was it due to bad luck or is there something wrong with my eggs? Or maybe my husband’s and my genes are incompatible? But if the baby was fine, then what caused its heart to stop?

So many “ifs” my brain hurts. Even my “whens” turned into “ifs”. “…when we give a sibling to our son” has been replaced with “…if we manage to give a sibling to our son”.

A fellow mama told me that I am going down a deep hole and I need to come back up. I agree with her. Everyday I’m going down that deep hole but everyday I’m coming back up. Some days I need help to come back up but every day I’m coming back up. I know I need time to heal. I need time to grieve my babies. I need to feel all these things I’m feeling. I even allowed myself to question my faith for a bit and be mad at God. I am not mad anymore and that is how I know I will eventually stop going down the deep hole.

The irony in all this is my last 2018 post. It was all about beating the Christmas blues. Well my Christmas holidays were not blue; they were pitch black. But I kept my promise to myself of going back and reading that post as many times as possible to remind myself of my blessings, so I did have some brighter moments too.

I wish I could end this post on a positive, hopeful note. But I am not there yet. I lost two babies. I am their mother and I am grieving. I know I will be alright eventually. I just need a bit more time.

To whoever is reading this and is going through similar things: You are not alone. It will be alright in the end.

Yours truly

Anthi Savva Radis

You can find more about Anthi here