In 2023, I had my first miscarriage. I was 19 years old. Young. Confused. Completely unprepared for the grief that would crash into me like a tidal wave. One moment I was pregnant, the next I wasn’t—and I didn’t know how to make sense of the before and after. I cycled between denial and devastation. I’d cry for hours, then feel completely numb. My boyfriend at the time—now my husband—held me through it, but we were both so lost. We sobbed together, asking each other the same question over and over again: Why is this happening?
What I didn’t realize then was that this would be the beginning of a long, painful road. In the years that followed, I experienced multiple miscarriages. Too many to count. Each one chipped away at my hope. One pregnancy made it to ten and a half weeks. We let ourselves believe, just for a moment, that maybe this one would be different. That maybe we’d finally get to meet our baby. But then I started bleeding again. I miscarried. Again.
I remember the helplessness of that moment. I remember clutching my stomach and whispering apology after apology to my husband, as if I had done something wrong. “I’m so sorry,” I cried. “I can’t give you children.” He held me tight and told me it wasn’t my fault. And while his words meant the world, they couldn’t silence the voice in my head that insisted it was. That voice had grown louder with every loss, every appointment, every disappointing test result. It became a part of me—this cruel internal narrative that told me I was broken.
Eventually, I told him I wanted to stop trying. I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t keep putting myself through the physical and emotional torture of building up hope only to watch it collapse. We both knew we needed space to heal, and for a while, we stepped away. We tried to find ourselves again outside of the constant cycle of trying and grieving.
But in November of last year, it happened again—another miscarriage. This time, the physical aftermath nearly broke me. I bled for over 70 days straight. That’s over two months of pain, exhaustion, and feeling like I was trapped in a body that had betrayed me. Every day I woke up and wondered how I could still be bleeding. Every trip to the bathroom was a reminder of what I had lost. It felt endless.
There were medications. There were virtual appointments with a provider I thought was an OB, but who turned out to be a nurse practitioner. There were questions with no answers, symptoms dismissed, and a healthcare system that felt impersonal and inaccessible. No real care. Just bills piling up and blood still coming. I became numb. I stopped crying. I stopped hoping. I stopped feeling altogether.
Then, one night, I experienced what felt like full-blown contractions. I was doubled over in pain, sobbing on the bathroom floor. I begged God to make the bleeding stop. I was bawling, pleading with everything I had. I felt like I was breaking. I woke my husband to take me to the ER, but he was too tired to drive. I didn’t have time to be angry—I was in too much pain. I called my brother and sister-in-law. They came immediately, without hesitation.
At the hospital, a kind and attentive doctor finally asked me a question no one else had: “Have you ever had a pelvic exam?” I hadn’t. Not once, despite everything I’d been through. Despite all the appointments and the losses and the bleeding. He did the exam then and there. I was still bleeding, still actively miscarrying. The pain was excruciating. I squeezed my husband’s hand as I cried on the table, and when it was over, the doctor gently told us: “You need to rest. It’s not safe to try again right now.”
A few days later, for the first time in more than two months, the bleeding stopped. And I breathed—for what felt like the first time in forever. The stillness felt foreign, almost suspicious. But it was also a small relief, like the first warm light after a long, dark winter.
We haven’t had another loss since. I’m not sure what the future holds. I still carry fear. I still feel the echoes of everything we’ve been through. But I know I’m still healing—physically, emotionally, spiritually. I’m learning to forgive my body. To grieve what’s been lost. To believe that I’m still worthy of hope. I’m learning that strength doesn’t mean being unaffected—it means continuing to show up, even when it’s hard.
And most of all, I’m learning that my story isn’t over yet.
