Prior to my first loss, I didn’t know that it’s often recommended to wait three months before trying to conceive again. During my first appointment with my OBGYN (which would have been our first time hearing our baby’s heartbeat, had I not miscarried) he told me, without me asking, that we could try to conceive again as soon as we wanted to, outside of waiting for my cycle to restart (i.e.: get my period, to make sure my body had recovered). He explained that there isn’t a physical need to wait and it was a common misconception. What he said next, though, made me feel like he really saw me.

“You can try again as soon as you’re ready. That being said, don’t do it because you’re trying to replace what you lost. Make sure that you’re emotionally ready to try again, that part is really important.”

Maybe it’s because most of us are looking to replace something that we lost that he said this, but in that moment it felt like he could see through my skin, through my ribs, and straight into my (emotional) heart. The first thing I wanted to do after my first miscarriage was replace what I had lost. I thought that all of the sadness would be lifted away forever with a new pregnancy.

Without saying the literal words, he told me to take the time to grieve my loss. Even if you ignore the fact that my next pregnancy would result in another loss, getting pregnant right away would not have been good for me. The shock of my first miscarriage rocked me to my core; I needed to heal.

We were ready to try again five months after the first miscarriage (four months after we were medically cleared to do so). We got pregnant the first month that we tried. I remember telling a co-worker that I was one “fertile Myrtle!”

It took three months for us to feel ready after the second miscarriage, and we immediately started trying again after the third.

Feeling particularly disheartened after our fourth miscarriage, we decided to take a break. Let me tell you, the first month of not trying to conceive after trying for almost two years was HARD. Not taking my temperature every morning, not testing my LH levels up to twice a day (often at work), increasing or decreasing certain medications depending on the phase of my cycle…you would think that eliminating obsessive tasks would make life less exhausting, but it didn’t. I felt lost and scared; I wasn’t following my usual routine and what if I was missing my one chance to get and actually stay pregnant? I ugly cried the night before I got my period, in part due to the hormones, but mostly due to the fact that I wasn’t going to be pregnant that month, and it felt like I could be missing our one chance to have a baby.

This was actually just last month, my first regular cycle following my fourth loss. Most of the posts that I’m working on, or plan to work on, come from the past. This post is being written as it’s happening (more or less, due to editing/being my own biggest critic). In fact, 15 minutes prior to writing this paragraph, I spoke to my husband about starting to try again. I can’t not try.

Part of our brief conversation was agreeing to keep in mind that we’re likely to just miscarry again. We have to be able to live with this harsh reality if we’re going to make it through this journey of trying to conceive and recurrent pregnancy loss. It’s possible to be both realistic and hopeful.

According to Tommy’s, of the 1% that experience recurrent pregnancy loss, about half will not find an explanation. Then, of those that don’t find an explanation, 6 out of 10 go on to have healthy pregnancies.

We still have a chance, and I’m not ready to give up.