#recurrent miscarriage

A common thing I hear when I confide in people about my recurrent pregnancy loss struggles is, “I’ll pray that you can have a baby soon.” I know it comes from a place of love, but it makes me feel even worse sometimes.

Before I continue, let me be very clear: I’m not trying to police peoples’ reactions. I don’t expect someone who’s never experienced this to understand what it’s like. I’m not mad or offended when people say that.

I just think people don’t realize that it’s an oversimplification of the problem.

The problem is not that I’m sad because I don’t have a baby. The problem is that, for a very brief time, I did have babies. Then I lost them. And now I’m grieving them.

Hello, I’m Yennie Fer, and I’m here to share my story that has forever hit me the hardest. Some Can Only Imagine is a memoir about my journey through recurrent miscarriages. This book isn’t just my story; it’s for anyone who has experienced the heartbreak of losing a child, those who have struggled in silence, and for educating those who cannot comprehend the pain.

The link to my project is in the bio, but I appreciate anything to get my story out there 🥺 Let’s break the stigma and bring understanding and compassion 🫶🏻

Follow the project! Following is completely free!

Model Behaviour

Even in the earliest stages of pregnancy problems can occur. As the newly formed embryo attaches to the lining of the womb, called the endometrium, the lining changes to prepare for pregnancy. During this transformation some cells stop dividing in a process called senescence. When this happens in excess it can lead to recurrent miscarriages, and when senescence is lacking embryos can fail to implant properly. To further our knowledge of these early moments of pregnancy, researchers have developed a new model of the human endometrium which, when hormones are added, mimics the implantation environment. Using a drug called dasatinib to eliminate senescent cells, the team captured a time-lapse of a replica implantation failure, where cell movement towards the embryo stopped, and the embryo failed to expand. In the future this model could be used to test potential treatments for pregnancy disorders.

Written by Katy Pallister

Video from work by Thomas M Rawlings and colleagues

Division of Biomedical Sciences, Warwick Medical School, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in eLife, September 2021

***** DO NOT SHARE/REBLOG! *****

We heard our little one's heart beat on Tuesday at our Midwife appointment and it was such an incredible sound that I feel like I waited so long to hear.

I don't currently look pregnant to other people but can't fit in some of the clothes I was wearing before! I bought my first pair of maternity jeans today!

Happy International Women’s Day

1 out of 4 women experience pregnancy loss.

1% experience recurrent miscarriages.

I fall under these. I’ve made artworks for each losses.

Many women suffer in silence from such a traumatic event.

You are not alone. Break the stigma.

Spread the word.

Remember us.

Pregnancy loss isn’t “oversharing”. We’ve lost a part of us and family. Such a traumatic event in our lives that other people could share about their loved ones dying.

Our babies died, too. They’re valid to us. 💖💖

Let’s stop shaming women for sharing their stories.

I am still a mom this Mother’s Day

I'm thankful for those who wished me Happy Mother's day and including me. This is my second Mother's Day. I decided to draw our babies as a memorial.

I am still a mom even though my babies aren't physically with me. My arms seem empty, but there are babies there.

I have gone through labor 3 times to give birth to three angel babies.

They were lost through each miscarriage, but they always remain in my heart.

From right to left, I put our babies in order.

First is Jellybean. (White wings)

Second baby is Rosalina and third is Chily. (Both rainbow wings - indicating rainbow baby losses.)

1st miscarriage: https://www.deviantart.com/faithwalkers/art/Miscarriage-865213383 2nd miscarriage: https://www.deviantart.com/faithwalkers/art/Miscarriage-The-Lost-Rainbow-888137225 Sharing our whole experience with this 3rd miscarriage. Be warned, compared to other times I have shared this, I have become a very bitter person. I’m very broken so yeah. Be warned. Didn't think I'd make another artwork in regards to this. But here we are. WARNING: There is TMI talk, trigger warnings For those who don’t know, we have lost two babies before this one. These losses are our only offspring. Today, we’re talking about our recent loss: Chily. Reason for that name was the most cravings I had was chilli and tomato stuff. We unfortunately don’t know the gender and I’ll get to that later on. I’m so devastated with this whole thing of not knowing!! 11 weeks!! I should know, right?! Don’t mention surrogate, adoption, ect. I don’t wanna hear it. It’s very inappropriate. If your relative had died, would I tell you to adopt a new one? Get outta here. Surrogate is very triggering for me. All I’d feel is jealousy that I can’t have the bond with a baby that way. I will not be answering those types of comments or messages because I will blow up. So please delete or unsend anything like that. There are other types of treatments, but I rather not think about it right now as seriously, THIS HAPPENED LAST WEEK. Don’t say try again. I really don’t want to think about it this time after having such a horrible experience. AND PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, refrain from saying “I’m sorry” “God needed them.” stuff. It’s so draining at this point. Please don’t come at me about my anger towards God with it all especially if you don’t understand. You have no right to say anything. My reasons are valid. I’m suffering from a lot of trauma. My whole life has been full of it so I can’t even get a break. I am not in the place to have anyone sympathize with me. This is raw feelings of anger and depression. This post is informative for people who may need it or come to understand the depth of it. Anyway… I will share you our experience. Before anything started with the bleeding, I was noticing my pregnancy symptoms were disappearing. Although, it was hard to tell as this was the furthest I’ve been along. There was a 50/50 chance of it being normal and not normal. In my case, it wasn’t normal. I always had it in the back of my mind that this would happen again. Even though I filled the colored boxes per week that “I can do this” I prepared myself for the worst so I could hurt less. I wish that were true as our experience with the ER wasn’t the greatest. I’ll get to that. So the symptoms I’ve noticed disappearing was the sensitivity in my breasts, the morning sickness, and loss of appetite. As a reminder, I have been very anal on taking my baby aspirin and prenatals every day. We don’t know what happened. One day, I told my husband, “This pregnancy is weird. I hardly crave anything.” Before, I had more food aversions but that also had disappeared a little bit too. And there was another incident where I had painful pregnancy diarrhea. I heard that was ok too, but just never know. But after being on the toilet, I touched my belly. The uterus part was sunken in. I don’t remember when that had occurred, but maybe that’s when Chily was dying. So come New Year’s Eve. I was in the mood and it was around 11ish pm. Sorry for the TMI, but we made love. Immediately afterwards, I started bleeding pink blood. So I was like oh, this happened faster. Because last time, I had it. It was normal. I had the ultrasound after the fact. Baby had a strong heartbeat. So before anyone says anything, no, sex didn’t cause this. I had so much blaming on myself with this. I thought it was the cause. I’ll get to that later. Anyway.. so I went to bed… but I woke up at 4AM. Something was off this time compared to last. I had a thick, red clottish thing. It wasn’t a clot, but it was thick blood. So I started panicking. Now, this was when I was starting to figure something was happening. I’ve prayed to God daily to not have me go through it again because I wouldn’t handle it. I prayed for protection of the baby and to have things normally. I guess my prayers were in vain. They always are when it comes to desperately wanting a life to be saved. I’ve learned that when I was 13 years old and lost my sister to cancer. It’s still the same old thing these days. Hard for me to see a miracle… But even then, I was trying to relax. I did my anxiety reducing exercises and it REALLY helped. My cat, Mew, she was acting strange. The strange feeling where she acted like every time a baby was dying. She knew the time I was pregnant to the time baby was dying. So I go to bed, trying to not think about anything. I think both my husband and I were in denial in our own ways. Both our emotions were tense. For the right reasons anyway… I fell asleep and had many nightmares. even before this incident, I’ve dreamt of losing this baby too. I try not to think about my dreams, but sadly, they come true when it comes to miscarriages. I’ve dreamt I was bleeding. I dreamt I was saying it’s happening again. The most vivid dream I’ve had, I was shouting out the window towards the heavens. There was an orange cat there. Not sure if it means anything, but, I screamed to God, “God, Don’t take this one too!!” Then I woke up to mild cramping. It was front to back. The cramps radiated down my legs. I shoulda put myself on bed rest that day (Saturday now), but I saw the blood was turning brown and lighter. Thought it was fine, but it wasn’t. 5PM: I was spotting a bit more brown right onto the pantyliner. I want to tell you, MOST cases brown is normal. HOWEVER, don’t let brown on a pantyliner think things are ok. And then Sunday morning came… Why didn’t I call anyone? Well, the gyno’s closed. Every time this friggin happens, it’s on a weekend!! I can’t believe it… So Sunday morning was when things were turning south and I had no clue. It was still brown, but I wiped and saw mini clots and tissue. I was starting to believe something was wrong, but again, denial. Then it turned bright red. I wanted to not believe it. Then, January 3rd came. January 3rd, the day the miscarriage was starting to commence. I’ve called the gyno first thing in the morning. My anxiety was peaking. They made a note and said to still keep my appointment on the 7th. Come 12PM, I was bleeding thicker with more thick tissue. I was cramping front and back more. Some of the cramps became somewhat severe. I called the gyno. My heart sunk as they told me to go to the ER… This ER experience had been nothing but awful. The wait time was torturous. My pains kept coming and going. It was packed because of COVID cases and other stuff. The beds were filled. It wasn’t like our other times we were there. Last two times, I had priority and went in. An hour later, they did bloodwork and a urine test. The lady came for the urine an HOUR later. So now it was about 3ish. Two more hours of waiting and I’ve started to have contractions. They weren’t as bad as they were with our last miscarriage daughter’s, but it was pretty bad. I went to the bathroom, but nothing there. I thought it was strange how the bleeding was stopping and I was in so much pain… Finally, I heard my last name called in the bathroom. I didn’t bother washing my hands. (I sanitized them as soon as I got into the room) But I couldn’t walk. It was too painful. They grabbed a wheelchair and I was off. In the room, I was able to get into the bed to finally lie back. The waiting room chairs were SO uncomfortable to sit in for hours. And yes, I did take my prenatals and baby aspirin. It didn’t matter at this point. So the doctor came into the room to check it my cervix was dilated. I was in too much pain at this point and said I couldn’t do it. Sadly, my ER doctor had to leave the room and go help a trauma patient. I was already crying a lot because I heard my hCG was at 6000. Now if you look at the charts online for 11 weeks, the hCG is no where near that. Our baby’s levels were going down. I was devastated. </3 So, my husband and I were hopelessly in the room. I groaned and had a heavy need for some painkillers. The contractions sucked. Just like with our last angel baby, I felt a pop. It hurt. Last pregnancy, I had that with our daughter too when going into early labor. I would feel a hot gush of what I thought to be blood coming out of me. “It’s happening…!” I cried out, remembering the awful feeling of losing our two other babies. Our first one, Jellybean, the water didn’t break. I just massively soaked a pad in seconds. I thought that happened with our daughter and this one. But I finally figured it out it was indeed my water breaking… I was confused, at first, to see no massive blood. Like I was with Rosalina (our daughter)… so I went to touch down there to see. Clear, watery liquid. It soaked my panties. “I think..my..water broke…” i stammered to my husband. More denial. I can’t remember when but they gave me throw away underwear to put on a new pad. Practically useless for later on. And then, I felt like I hadda pee pretty badly. He helped me to the bathroom and I locked the door. I wished I didn’t go alone because I didn’t think this would happen. I tried to pee, but I’ve felt pressure. A lot. It actually stopped my urine stream. This was a first for me. But I had that familiar feeling when I passed our daughter at home. I hated to do this in the hospital bathroom!! I took the toilet paper as a futile attempt to catch what I thought was the sac. (It was the placenta WITHOUT the baby but I found out later on.) So My hands were soiled in blood. Blood was all over the floor. I felt helpless as i cried, seeing what was in my hand. I saw something else in the toilet and wanted to see if that was our baby. I kept calling for my husband like an idiot. The door was locked and I was tempted to press emergency. But I motioned myself slowly to the door. Using my elbow to open it. Thankfully, the bathroom was right next to my room. I was panicking as I needed someone to salvage whatever was in the toilet. I was given a glove to dig in the toilet. All I saw was a clot… But I feel like I should have look more thoroughly. I dunno if I had flushed the baby down the toilet. It’s still friggin haunting me because I really wanted to see the baby somehow. this was one of the parts where I thought I might have passed Chily. And so, I was taken back to the room. The throw away underwear was getting soaked. I was getting so much pain. Took forever for them to bring me the pain medication. At this point, I’ve had no food nor water for awhile now. They didn’t even put fluid IV in me. Which would have been friggin nice. I was severely dehydrated. The last two hospital visits for our previous losses, they had given me IV. Anyway, so the nurse came in and she discovered I had no IV for my medication. You can see how very chaotic and disorganized the ER was. It was a nightmare so I can kinda not fully blame them for some stuff with the chaos. But the IV was put in my upper arm. I was kinda scared since I never had it up THAT high before. It hurt, but it wasn’t so bad. What freaked me out was my arm was turning friggin purple from the band. I was freaking out to have it removed. So she did. My dang hand was looking a little shriveled up. They gave me three meds. One for nausea. One for inflammation. And friggin morphine. Look, I have never taken morphine in my life and I hated it. I felt very confused and hot. It made my anxiety rose. It was a rush. I hated it. Wouldn’t do it again. We were told the ultrasound was going to be brought to us, but it wasn’t… So the door was kinda creaked opened and I saw the bathroom across our room wasn’t cleaned. Felt bad for this guy who walked into it to see my blood massacre in there. Just to hear him say, “Omg…” I had a clot trying to come out, but it was stuck. They put a bowl underneath me for me to pee and push it out. I couldn’t. I couldn’t pee at all as there was like a blockage. i was finally wheeled to the ultrasound room and I was pushing. Just nothing. Morphine made my pain go away, but I still would never do it again. So I went into the ultrasound room. Got onto the bed and something came out of me. The lady wouldn’t lemme look to see if it was baby or not. I dunno why the frig she didn’t. Like what would hurt if I were to evaluate it myself?? So she phoned the doctor to come look. She was the good doctor who was always honest and kind. I wished she was around to do the whole thing honestly. She told me it was a clot and that’s all. So she left me with the ultratech lady. Did topical ultrasound and she said there was huge clots inside me. She had me use the bathroom to push it out. This was where she was helpful. She had taught me how to breathe and stuff to release the clots. SO MUCH came outta me. Now, I dunno if baby was among it all… she set up a toilet bowl thingy to catch everything. I had large clots that were size of a lemon and other sizes. She reassured (lied) to me that she would have the doctor come in to evaluate to see if baby was in there. She had no containers in the room to move it to the next room. I hated it because she was nice and I friggin fell for it. I did a pelvic ultrasound and pain wasn’t so bad with it. She had to see if there’s anything leftover. Return to the room with my husband in it… a couple hours later, the doctor came to get me discharged. I’m like wait… what about the stuff in the room? What about the baby?! A look of confusion washed over her face. Wow. Guess what? Ultratech person didn’t tell her anything. The doctor didn’t evaluate it, the ultratech lady DID. Why did she when she needed the doctor to look at the big clot yet she thought to look herself?! Even when I told my gyno on the phone, they seemed surprised they didn’t gather anything over there. So I gave myself a lot of self-blame from that. I wished I could have looked more thoroughly or even myself in the ultrasound room. I’ve talked to my therapist so she made me feel better about that. When going through something traumatic, it’s understandable. We finally got discharged around 11PM after being there for 10 hours. Went without food and water for 5 hours. So recovery from Tuesday-Thursday had been rough. Not many know how someone is able to recover after a miscarriage. You still bleed, have pain and very weak. I’ve had peeing issues because of being severely dehydrated. My blood sugar was low. Everything with that is ok now. January 6 was the worst day. I was having so much pain. I’ve passed more clots and tissue. We’d like to believe the tissue is the baby because it looked similar. So maybe it was or not. I’m going with was because it helped give us more closure. Anyway, recovering sucked. I could hardly move. Using the bathroom hurts like someone stabbing my butt. I can’t do dishes, laundry and other simple things. My husband and I get overwhelmed with it. He has work to do and I understand that. Our friend has been great. He had vacuumed our house and did the dishes. So very thankful for him. A lot of people who hadn’t been through it doesn’t think about that stuff. Well, now I’m telling you. It’s easy to say you’re here to talk to us, but when it comes to needing help with things, the harsh reality is you’re alone. I don’t like asking for help. Not at all. Maybe it’s the fact I wanted people to awful as I’m sinking into postpartum depression and feel ashamed. But yeah, don’t feel guilted into helping just because I have addressed it. Again, this is a informative post. If you ever have a friend who goes through a MC, I can’t stress it enough they would need help in a physical way. Anyway… so my update for January 7th So they're doing bloodwork on my husband and I to see if there's any problems between us... they want me to go back on birth control after my first period were to come. And then they will do 3D ultrasound on my uterus to also see it there's a uterus issue. They brought up adoption if there's actually no hope so I dunno. I don't have to do weekly bloodwork. I'd have to do a pregnancy test hCG is done to see if it's negative then start birth control pill when period starts. The bloodwork they’re doing is chromosome (for both of us) and lupus (me). The 3D ultrasound will be done after my first period. It will see if my uterus is abnormally shaped… or if there’s any other issues causing it. They will check for blood issues. I dunno. I am feeling sad even though they're trying to get to the bottom of this and I feel like my body's so broken...and just mentioning adoption I dunno anymore. They figured since the last baby had genetic issues, this one did too. And the first one didn't form properly. And the gyno asked me if I still have the pregnancy tissue and she said she could take it but they're already at the funeral home so that made me cry too. We don’t have answers yet. But we will… in time. Sigh. So I hope whoever reads this is more informed. This isn’t fun and I already feel the postpartum depression hitting me. I’m trying to fight my mind and it’s rough. And if anyone is insensitive, I will block you. Not sorry. In conclusion… Even though we never found out Chily’s gender, we still love them whether they were a girl or boy. :( I really felt they were a she. But we don’t know. Sorry, there’s a lot of emotional conflict in this whole post. And please help me to know what to do with postpartum depression. It’s already hitting me. Thanks for reading. Here's the brutal part of the story. IF YOU WANT THE RAW DETAILS OF THE STORY. IT IS GRAPHIC SO BE WARNED: https://community.whattoexpect.com/forums/ttc-pregnancy-after-a-loss/topic/not-sure-if-this-is-the-end-for-our-ttc-journey-heres-our-miscarriage-story-127285325.html