Silent Ultrasound
Part One: That Yellow Sweater
“Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
In your book were written, every one of them,The days that were formed for me,
When as of yet there were none of them.”
— Psalm 139:16
I’ve been spotting off and on the last couple of days. This happened in the first trimester of my first pregnancy, so I’m not worried. When it lasts more than one day, I tell Levi. Levi encourages me to tell my mom. My mom encourages me to tell my midwife. My midwife encourages me to go to the hospital to get checked out — better safe than sorry. I wish I didn’t tell anybody.
It’s October 17th, and it’s 26 degrees outside. This weather is unheard of. I sit in the waiting room at the hospital, complaining to Levi that I’m wasting the last beautiful day of the year — a long, cold, dark winter is just around the corner.
A nurse leads me to this dimly lit, cold, quiet corner of the hospital. I babble on about how I’m not worried at all. I want to double-check that everything is okay with the baby. I’m not really bleeding very much. I tell her that I’m 9 weeks along and I’ve been very nauseous lately — she tells me this is a good sign.
When I’m getting the ultrasound, I stare at the ceiling; there is no screen for me to look at like at the clinics I’ve been going to get updates on the baby. This is where the mood shifts for me. She silently moves the wand around inside of me. I sit there in silence except for the loud whir of dry air being recirculated throughout the hospital.
I tell myself the baby is fine. My baby is fine. There is no point in getting worked up. This wouldn’t happen to me. This can’t happen to me. I focus on what I’m going to make for dinner. I wonder if I’ll have time to take Hugh for a walk when we get home.
The ultrasound tech tells me to “clean myself up” in the bathroom and that a porter will be down with a wheelchair to take me back to the early pregnancy unit.
Her silence and now her words cause my certainty to waver. Things don’t seem okay. But I refuse to let my mind wander to worst-case scenarios. I resolve to maintain hope. Ultrasound techs are always cryptic, careful not to share anything until a doctor has reviewed the results. I catch Levi’s eyes studying me. I can tell he’s worried, he doesn’t know what to say at this moment, and he’s not sure what I need.
We wait and wait and wait. Where are they? Can’t they see that the waiting is torture? I can’t keep sitting here with my mind wandering from the worst-case scenario to what I should make for supper and back and forth. I’m trying not to worry, but it’s also impossible not to.
Finally, we are taken to the unit (no wheelchair, my hopes temporarily restored). The porter tries to make small talk in the elevator, asking if I almost peed myself because I had a pelvic ultrasound — it was an emergency ultrasound, I tell her, I didn’t have time to drink water and prepare. She doesn’t respond, doesn’t know what to say.
We are taken to a small blue room with a bed, two chairs, and pamphlets. Lots of pamphlets. And again, we wait. For some reason, I feel hopeful again. The nurse who takes my blood tells me not to worry. Ultrasound techs are always silent and stoic. She cracks jokes and seems positive. I cling to hope that she knows something I don’t, that I don’t need to worry.
But she’s wrong.
Another nurse comes in and says there’s no easy way to say it, but it’s not good news. There was no heartbeat on the ultrasound. The baby died at around seven weeks, and my body was just showing signs of miscarriage now — it’s called a missed miscarriage.
It’s hard to describe the physical pain that comes with news like that. The tears start pouring into my mask, my vision is blurry, and I can’t hear anything she’s saying as she continues to speak. I think she realizes this and leaves to give us time to ‘process.’
I don’t know how long she leaves us, but it feels way too long and also not long enough.
She returns with pamphlets about my choices for “completing the miscarriage,” grief counselors, support groups, options for collecting the remains, ceremonies, what to expect in the days and weeks that follow, and how to prepare for a future pregnancy. In these pamphlets, my baby is no longer referred to as my baby but “the products of conception.” Again she leaves us to process and wait for the results of my blood test. Since I have a negative blood type, I have to wait for the results and then get a rhogam shot.
We sit there for over 2 hours.
I sit and stare down at the large yellow sweater I decided to wear today. Why did I have to wear yellow? I should be in all black. There’s too much colour in this blue room with this yellow sweater — I need darkness.
It is the worst 2 hours of my life. I sit there weeping in the cold room, cursing my negative blood type. All I want is to curl up in bed to let the full force of my sorrow take over under the security of my covers. I want to scoop up the child I do have and feel his soft cheeks against my own. I need to get out of this blue room with the walls closing in — where I feel like I have to stay half-composed as nurses scurry in and out to give me updates and more pamphlets.
I sit there wondering how I am going to tell people. Why did I tell anyone in the first place? The truth that I won’t be bringing my baby home in May sinks in. I can hardly look at Levi. I can’t even look at my phone. Everything stops. I feel frozen in grief and overwhelmed.
When we are finally able to leave the hospital, I feel the weight of it all suffocate me. I walked into that hospital hopeful and walked out devastated. I walked in carrying a baby inside of me and walked out with all that remained of the products of conception. I walked in anticipating my next ultrasound, the second trimester, the gender reveal, and walked out anxiously awaiting the blood and pain to come with the completion of this miscarriage.
I carried him and knew him for 9 weeks.
It was long enough to stop wearing jeans.
It was long enough to start shopping for double strollers.
It was long enough to picture the colour of his eyes.
It was long enough to daydream about the first moment I would hold him on my chest.
It was long enough to have hopes and dreams for his future.
It was long enough to picture Abe as a big brother.
It was long enough to have a photo announcement of the pregnancy ready to post.
9 weeks was long enough to fall in love.
When I get home from the hospital, I take off my yellow sweater and throw it away. It saw too much pain for me to keep it. It would be too painful to ever put it on again.
Part Two: Betrayed By My Body
“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
And the light about me be night,’
Even the darkness is not dark to you;
The night is bright as the day,
For darkness is as light with you.”
— Psalm 139:11–12
This wasn’t supposed to happen to me.
The truth of it keeps hitting me fresh over and over. It’s the darkest, heaviest realization. I’ll never get to meet that baby that I already had hopes and dreams for. I don’t understand why his life was cut so tragically short. Whatever hopes and dreams I had for the next seven months and beyond are different now.
For the past few weeks, I kept having to remind myself that I was pregnant. I was having a baby. Now I keep having to remind myself that he’s gone. We lost the baby. He’s not coming home with us in May.
I’m devastated. I’m heartbroken. I don’t know how you go back to normal life after this. I’m still waiting for my body to catch up and realize the baby is gone and miscarry it. It’s a horrible waiting game. I’m so angry. I’m so hurt. It’s not fair.
I feel like my body has betrayed me. I’ve been carrying around a dead baby for weeks, unknowingly. I felt nauseous and pregnant and tired. My body softened. My clothes don’t fit. And for what? A baby that I’ll never know. I’ll never hear his voice, or see his eyes, or watch him grow into his personality. He never had a name. I’m not even certain he was a he.
Pregnancy is this terrifying experience where you just have to trust your body. Trust that you have everything your baby needs. Trust that your body knows how to carry, nourish, and birth new life. You have to trust that even though you have no idea what to expect, your body will pull through for you — even when you don’t, your body knows what it's doing.
Except sometimes, your body doesn’t pull through for you in the way you hope it will.
I feel betrayed by my body for failing to do that. I feel fear creeping in. Fear that this will happen again, and again and that my body will fail me. I don’t ever want to feel this again.
I don’t understand why life would end before it began. Why would God let that happen? Why was I pregnant in the first place if it was always going to end like this?
Everything is different today than it was yesterday.
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But I know I have to trust God. I feel God humbling me. Bringing me low, softening me over and over again. What if there’s not much left over of me when it’s all said and done? What if that’s the point?
Part Three: Completing the Miscarriage
“Enjoy your first cuddles, Father, and keep my child warm for me, until the day of our uniting.”
— Strahan Coleman
“Let her who walks in darkness
And has no light
Trust in the name of the Lord
And rely on her God.”
— Isaiah 50:10
It’s been a week since that horrible day in the blue room with all the pamphlets. Today, I woke up to the first snowfall of the season. As well as really painful, heavy bleeding. I think it’s happening. I’m definitely losing the baby.
Snow has always made me think of renewal, fresh starts, a new season, cleanness, and hope. But today, it doesn’t feel that way. My heart aches when I think about 2 years ago when it snowed, and I took a pregnancy test for the first time and found out that I was pregnant with Abel. This first snowfall, I’m losing my second baby that I only knew for seven weeks, even though I thought it was nine.
I feel so conflicted. I want this miscarriage to be over. I want to stop bleeding. I want to feel like myself again. I want to try to get pregnant again. I want another baby. But, I’m also terrified about it being over. Waiting to miscarry was this weird week of grieving and staying in my bubble with meals prepared by loved ones, help with Abe, and lots of time alone and resting.
Now I feel this weird internal pressure to wrap a bow around the experience, have my quick words for those who ask, and move on and move forward. I do feel less fragile than I did at first. But I think a lot of that is because I feel safe in my bubble. I’m terrified to pop it. I’m scared to leave this heavy, intense, isolated stage of grief. It’s dark, but in a strange way, it feels safe.
I’m still broken.
I’m still scared.
I’m still healing.
But I know I’m not alone.
Part Four: Flickers of Light
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you…. Behold I am doing a new thing; how it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
— Isaiah 43:2, 19
I know time heals. I can already feel the original sharpness of the grief begin to dull. But I think it will always be a part of me, under the surface.
I’ve had glimmers of peace, hope, and joy in the midst of the heaviness.
The light beam through the window in the late afternoon.
Abe wearing my sunglasses with his cheesy grin.
Levi’s warm embrace and frequent check-ins to see if I need to talk or just cry.
The many homecooked meals made by family and friends.
The bouquets of fresh flowers throughout my home dropped off by loved ones.
In the moments where I still dream of another baby, my heart still open to try again and yearning to grow our family.
In the fresh snowfall that reminds me of new seasons of the circle of life of death, rebirth, resurrection, and hope.
The fact that I can still smile and laugh and dream of a beautiful future when days ago, that felt impossible.
It’s been one of the worst weeks of my life. I’ve never been so ‘close’ to death. In that, I had it inside of me. Something so connected to me died, and I hadn’t even known. There has been a lot of guilt, disbelief, anger, sorrow, and fear. But I’ve also felt covered in prayer, surrounded and supported.
These flickers of light remind me that I’m not alone in any of this. Although I feel incredibly alone in grief. I know no one can truly understand my loss; no one else was connected to the life I lost like I was. But I know they see the pain. They want me to have the time and space to sit in it, process, feel, and heal. And they’re supporting me but giving me the space I need, which slowly but surely is bringing me back to myself.
Something I’ve been reminding myself, almost meditating on, is: “God’s plan is better than my own.” I planned to get pregnant at the end of the summer and have a baby at the perfect time — May. I would be out of the post-partum fog by summer and have two babies almost exactly two years apart. Everything was happening according to the plan. Except when it didn’t, and I realized any illusion of control I feel in my life is just that — an illusion.
Finances, health, work, etc. it’s all completely outside of my control. In a second, it can be gone. In a second, it might be gone. I think that’s one of the things that’s hit me hardest in all of this. I am not in control. What I think is ‘best’ doesn’t always happen. And that doesn’t change who God is. He’s the same God as when I took the pregnancy test, left for the hospital, and got the news that there was no heartbeat, as He is today. He’s still good.
I hope I can remember this truth. That I’m not in control. How terrifying, but how freeing. To know that God has a plan, and it’s better than my own. God is my healer. He’s a good Father, he’s gentle and kind and patient with me, and he never left me. Not once. He’s the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. And He loves me.
Part Five: The Stewardship of Pain
“Pain can become treasure if we treasure it to the point where it can become compassion and healing, not just for ourselves, but also for other people.” — Frederick Buechner
“God of seasons,
You make even fallen leaves beautiful and bare autumn trees a work to behold.
May these same signs within me now be monuments of holy beauty,
Singing grateful songs in darker times, welcoming the spring’s new light.”
— Strahan Coleman
Hopeful expectation is a strange thing. On one hand, you have to believe that what you hope for can and will happen to you. You have to be faithful to not give up and let discouragement and disappointment close you off to the possibility of hope.
On the other hand, you have to simultaneously accept that if what you hope for doesn’t happen — you’ll be okay. You’ll be taken care of. You will survive it. So it’s kind of like a complete lack of expectation.
Maybe what I’m talking about is hopeful un-expectation. And man, is it a balancing act. Between blind hope and stubborn belief and not expecting anything.
I know I have to take it day by day, moment by moment. I can’t worry about how long this season will last. I can only trust God and hope in His good plan. Everything is in His perfect timing. Definitely easier said than done. That’s for sure.
In the days and weeks following my loss, I’m on a see-saw of feeling numb and distracted and complete grief and despair. I’m just trying to ride the waves as they come, knowing they won’t last forever. There will always be pain and heartbreak here. But one day, I’ll be able to look at and talk about this loss without breaking down. One day there might be more purpose than pain.
I pray the Lord takes care of my babies — past and future up in heaven. I’m not sure how that all works, but I know He knows each of them by name.
I know I have a choice right now in how I handle this. I can numb the pain away. I can get angry and bitter and barren in my heart. Or I can let the pain change me. I can steward it to build my hope and confidence in God, and I can let Him put the pieces of my broken heart together again. I can let Him carry me through the suffering of this life that comes for all of us — just in different forms. It doesn’t feel fair — but no one said it would be.
What I do know is we’re all in pain in different ways. What matters is how we steward it.
Part Six: Why I Write [About Miscarriage]
In the many doctor’s appointments, ultrasounds, and prescription pick-ups since my two miscarriages, I’ve been told the same thing over and over again.
“You know, people don’t really talk about it, but it’s a lot more common than you think.”
“There’s nothing for you to worry about — 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage.”
“It happens to a lot of women. You just don’t hear about it.”
As much as these healthcare providers meant well. As much as they were trying to help me see that I wasn’t alone, that women everywhere experience this every day. It didn’t help.
It broke my heart to think of all the women around me who may have experienced loss or infertility. I started walking around with new eyes, searching other women’s faces to see if they’d touched the same darkness I had. Was their heartbreak years in the past? Were they still bleeding? Did anger and grief tighten in their chest when they saw a mom pushing a newborn in a stroller?
What I’ve learned is time goes on, and grief gets less sharp, but it’s always there. You live with the reality of the loss of the children you never got to hold — you grieve the life they were never granted. All of us mothers who have lost our babies too soon feel the ache of their absence every day.
When I was in the trenches of grief, my belly still swollen from the baby it had started to grow, my mind still unable to comprehend the scale of the sadness I was sitting in — it was the words of women who had gone before me that kept my head above water.
I found a few people on Instagram and online who had shared their stories of pregnancy loss. Their words were a lifeline to me. The rawness of their emotions, the overwhelm of all the decision-making that comes once you discover the baby no longer has a heartbeat. The very physical experience of death is hard to understand until you’ve walked it yourself.
So here I am — bearing my pain and loss for the world to see. I hate this vulnerability. But if there is one person out there, sobbing alone in bed, feeling as though she’ll never be the same again, feeling like she’ll never be whole. Aching with loss, disappointment, and disbelief. Just know — you’re not alone. Things will never be the same, but you will survive and come out stronger than you ever thought.
These posts are based on my journal entries from exactly one year ago — October 2022. They go through the experience in detail, from shock and disbelief to healing and hope. I hope the rawness of my experience can bring meaning and hope to your own.
