Life Lately

Happy Friday y’all. Today I will be sharing a life update – something I have not done here in about six months (the last life update I shared back in March was on “Life After Travel Nursing”). I have been thinking about this blog post a lot over the last week and trying to decide what to include. I know that this is primarily a wedding and elopement photography blog, but I hope you will forgive me this week for sharing a little bit more of my life with you.

Trigger warning: today’s post includes the topic of miscarriage. If that is sensitive for you in any way, feel free to stop reading. 

In my 20s, I went through many phases of wanting to be a mom, not wanting to be a mom, and not being sure if I wanted to be a mom. But one thing I always knew was that when the time came, I wanted to be 100% sure that it was what I wanted. My parents had their own struggles with infertility, and I grew up being told that I was prayed for and that I was a miracle baby (a story for another time). Because of that, I always wanted my kids to know – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that they were longed for.

I have always been a planner, and proof of that goes back to when I was in high school and decided that I wanted to have my first baby when I was 29 years old. I reasoned that by then I would have been able to have all kinds of kid free adventures and would be ready to “settle down”. Of course, I did have so many adventures in my twenties that I am very grateful for, but one thing that no one realizes when they are young is that the older you get, the faster time goes by. 

The summer I turned 29 – two years ago – we had just moved into our house and I was still working at a very toxic job. I still could not fathom motherhood. So that year came and went and I did not have a baby like I had planned all those years before.

When I turned 30, a lot of things changed. I finally got serious about finishing decorating our house, and for the first time in my life I actually started to feel that the decor in our house was actually creating a calming environment for us. I started to be intentional with my clothing style and began to actually feel good even in the around-the-house clothes I was wearing, instead of just throwing on any old thing. I felt more grounded and in-tune with my body than I had before. And, more importantly, I longed for a baby. 

Of course, it was not such a simple thing as that. Keith and I made the decision together to start growing our family, and then it was almost a year before anything happened. 

In June, on Father’s Day weekend, my husband and I found out that I was pregnant. It felt so special, finding out on that weekend, that the very thing we had been wanting and praying for was finally becoming a reality. We were, of course, elated. A few weeks later, on my birthday, we went to the doctor to get a confirmatory blood test and schedule the first ultrasound. Despite the fact that I am a nurse, being pregnant myself and everything pregnancy related felt so extremely foreign to me. 

The weekend after visiting the doctor, we shared the news with our immediate families. Even now, looking back, I would still have shared the news with them then. People say that it is best to wait and share the news of your pregnancy after eight weeks, or after the first ultrasound, or after the first trimester. But, in light of what happened to us, I am glad that we had a support system and were able to be joyful about the pregnancy with our loved ones, even if it was for such a short time. 

Four days after my doctor’s visit, I started to feel pain in my abdomen. It was late at night, and I thought it was just gas pain and that I would feel better in the morning. 

But I didn’t. 

After calling to consult with my boss (who told me to go to the emergency department), I decided to go back to the clinic. It was a classic case of “nurses make the worst patients”. Luckily, I was able to quickly have an ultrasound and was told that not only was my pregnancy ectopic, but that my fallopian tube had ruptured and that I needed to have emergency surgery.

From then on, everything was a blur of crying and being ushered from one area of the hospital to the next. There were so many kind hospital workers who cared for me, and I am so grateful that they were there to make a devastating experience just a little bit better.  

During surgery, the doctor removed a 500 milliliter blood clot. Afterwards, while I was in recovery, Keith was told that the blood clot had actually stopped me from bleeding out during the night by putting pressure on the ruptured fallopian tube and preventing it from bleeding any more. The surgeon also removed the fetus and my left fallopian tube. 

The last few months since the surgery have been hard. Although it only took about three weeks for me to heal physically, I am still in the process of healing mentally and emotionally. I am learning that I can’t expect myself to be the same that I was before the miscarriage. And I am learning to embrace and love the changes in myself – from my physical scars to my emotional scars.

One of the things I have noticed is that most people are uncomfortable bringing up the miscarriage subject to me. And while I don’t necessarily want to talk about what happened all the time, it is a pretty big part of my life right now and it dominated my summer. So I haven’t hesitated to bring it up in conversations. And I have been overwhelmed by the number of women who have miscarriage stories of their own. And while I wish it wasn’t that way, while I wish miscarriages were a rare occurrence (or, better yet, that they didn’t happen at all), it has actually been a comfort to know that I am not alone in my grief. That’s why I decided to share my story today, so that if someone is going through something similar and happens to read this post, you will know that you are not alone. And if you need someone to talk to who understands what you are going through, you can always reach out to me. 

*All my blog posts contain a selection of images that I’ve taken. This blog post contains an image that I took myself for personal use and enjoyment and is not intended to be used for marketing purposes.