On Love, and Loss.

There is nothing in the world that adequately prepares you for how harrowing the first few weeks of a pregnancy are.

From the extreme high — or low — of the first positive pregnancy tests to the worry that comes with early cramping to trying to keep the secret to yourself — and occasionally slipping — the first few weeks are a veritable rollercoaster of emotions.

Then you go in for your seven-week appointment and hear the fetal cardiac activity for the first time and…relief.

Relief that this pregnancy is becoming really real. Relief that after 40 years of bad luck and bad dates, your dreams of becoming a parent are going to be coming true.

Relief that everything is going to work out…until suddenly it doesn’t.

My wife and I went in for her ten week ultrasound appointment this week to check on the status of our unborn child. Almost immediately, the doctor sensed that something was wrong. Seconds later, she confirmed the inevitable — No heartbeat was detected. We had had a miscarriage.

The dreams that we had for a family that we had both waited so long for, dashed in an instant.

The look on my wife’s face when the doctor told us this is one I’ve never seen before, one I swore she’d never wear when we said “I do” two years prior. Despair, fear, anguish.

In that moment, I felt my soul physically leaving my body and floating above the office. It is an utterly helpless and uncomfortable feeling as a human being when the person you love above all else is in an unimaginable amount of physical and emotional pain and there is nothing you can do about it.

Miscarriage is something that isn’t talked about often despite the fact that it is not an uncommon occurrence. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists estimates that roughly 26% of all pregnancies end this way.

This was something that was confirmed to me the more people we started to tell. People who we had no idea had gone through something similar shared their stories of love and of loss in the early stages of pregnancy.

The look on my wife’s face after she was told she was having a miscarriage is one thing I will never forget from this week. The other — The fact that she is far stronger than either she or I ever knew.

No woman should ever be in the position that my wife found herself in this week, and no human being should ever have to experience that level of anguish. However, our situation isn’t uncommon.

And if you find yourself in the awful situation we found ourselves in this week, please know that you are not alone.