Our second miscarriage left me feeling naïve and angry. This wasn’t supposed to happen again.

It was exciting to get pregnant the first month that we tried to conceive following our first miscarriage. I couldn’t believe our luck! In my mind, getting pregnant so quickly meant that the first miscarriage was just a “fluke”. How could we have any sort of issue if it’s so easy for us to get pregnant?

Since a second miscarriage wasn’t likely, I didn’t obsessively “search” for potential spotting as I do now. Going to the bathroom wasn’t a stressful event.

Our first miscarriage cost us about $600, in addition to the emotional toll that it took; it’s expensive to miscarry. Wanting to avoid having to pay for three blood tests (one to confirm the pregnancy, one to confirm the loss, and one to confirm that the miscarriage was complete), I scheduled the first blood test for our 5-week mark. Since we hadn’t made it a full 5 weeks the first time, I thought this would save us time and money in case things didn’t go well. This first test was scheduled for my husband’s 31st birthday.

As of that day, I still felt pregnant; nothing came up (or disappeared, symptom-wise) that lead me to believe that we were going to miscarry again.

When the clinic didn’t call me within 30 minutes (remember when I mentioned that the phlebotomist’s response would re-play in my head?), I comforted myself by saying that they were probably just busy and that just because the results were ready didn’t mean they had the time to call me right away.

I got the call about two hours later and was given bad news. My HCG levels weren’t where they should be. And once again, the floor disappeared beneath me. Why was this happening again?

I felt so stupid, I should have known. Why did I let myself believe that everything would be okay? My body let us down, and my mind let me down. I felt like I should have protected myself better.

Again, I left work immediately and met my husband at home. Although a second miscarriage was the likely scenario, since I hadn’t started bleeding, I was to go in for a second test to confirm the loss. Depending on when I ovulated in my cycle, there was a chance that things were okay. At that time, I didn’t really know when I ovulated. I just knew that the app that I used to track my cycle told me that I ovulate on day 14. I realize now that the app was just guessing. Now that I’ve since monitored my LH levels between the end of my period and the LH surge (ovulation), I’ve learned that I do ovulate on/around day 14 (in case you were wondering!)

Can I also just say that getting the call about a miscarriage at work totally sucks? It’s such private news to receive in such a public place. My co-workers have now learned that if I suddenly leave in the middle of the day, I’m likely suffering another miscarriage.

In addition to feeling naïve, I was angry. This wasn’t supposed to happen again. We were supposed to give birth to our rainbow baby! Why was this happening to me, to us?!

After the first miscarriage, the OB had said that they don’t really worry about your first two losses as there isn’t really a “problem” until there’ve been at least three pregnancy losses. All I took from that was that I had to go through another miscarriage before anyone would take my losses seriously. I felt even more alone than I did after our first miscarriage.

A follow-up blood test was scheduled for two days after that first test. I remember spending those two days asking my body to start bleeding so that I wouldn’t have to pay for multiple blood tests again. I begged my body to just let it go. Unfortunately, the timing didn’t work out and we ended up paying another large bill for our miscarriage. These bills generally arrive a couple of weeks post-loss and always add salt to our still-raw emotional wounds.

I wouldn’t necessarily say that things went back to “normal” quickly, but getting back into the swing of things happened more smoothly than it did after our first loss. This wasn’t because this loss was easier than the first, it was because we knew that we would eventually come out ahead of our grief. We accepted that the world would continue on with or without us, so we didn’t fight the inevitable.

And so, life continued on.