Too young inside?

My second miscarriage...

I was 19 years old. It took 9 months to get pregnant again. Although my family doctor thought I was possibly getting pregnant and losing very early, because I had several 45-48 day cycles. I wasn't charting back then, so I will never know. But his telling me that, something I had never considered, just made me so sad.

I don't even remember finding out that I was pregnant. All that sticks out in my mind was that I didn't feel my husband was concerned enough about me. I felt very fragile, and afraid of another loss. One day, on the way to visit friends, he raced over a speed bump, and jostled me. I got very afraid for the baby, and told him that if I lost this pregnancy, I would blame him forever!

We went in to visit his friends, and they fussed over me, making me put my feet up, putting a pillow at my back and covering me with a blanket. OK, I didn't want THAT much fussing. I just wanted my husband to care about the baby and me.

Shortly after that, at 14 weeks along, I woke up bleeding. I called the doctor, but he said there was nothing they could do. Just come in if the bleeding got heavier. I don't remember how many days it went on. My husband had to go out of town for work, and I had a bad feeling. I didn't want to be left alone this time.

My husband wouldn't stay with me, so I told him to take me to my mom's while he was gone. As the day past, I began bleeding heavier and heavier. I was changing my pads nearly every half hour. Finally, I became too weak to get off the couch and climb the stairs, and my mom had to help me change my pads. I kept waiting for her to tell me if I should go to the hospital.

Finally, I guess she realized I was bleeding too much and she called a taxi. My mom lived in a townhouse complex, and the taxi parked in the wrong parking lot. So I had to walk several blocks to get to the taxi. When we got to the hospital, and I stood up out of the taxi, I felt a huge gush, and started to pass out.

The ER staff came rushing at me with a wheelchair, took me straight into a treatment room, and started working on me. I had no idea of what they were doing down there, I was really out of it. Later I found out I was hemorrhaging, and they were packing my uterus with gauze to stop the bleeding.

I was clearly in shock, and very confused. At one point, when they were working on me, a doctor swung open the door and announced, "She had twins!" and I thought he meant me, that I had twins and my babies were OK.

Finally, they all stepped back, and one doctor checked the clock, saying that they had done well, just 10 minutes. Then they all filed out of the room, leaving me all alone.

I thought they had left me there to die, and was so sad that I had to die alone. Finally a nurse popped her head in and asked how I was doing. I whimpered, "was my mom was still there?" I figured, if I had to die, I needed my mommy!

At some point, they came and took me to the operating room for a D&C. To scrape away the remains of my little one. No more baby for me...

Later, my husband came into my hospital room. He just sat down in the hospital chair and cried. In the midst of my grief, I felt a bit of gratitude, that he felt our loss, that he hurt too.

The next day, my doctor came in to check on me. He said that there was nothing wrong with the baby, that the baby was chromosomally normal. When I asked him why we kept losing our babies, he said it was because I was too young inside to carry a baby. Confused, I wondered how it was that 14 year old's had babies, if I was too young? Did he mean that there was something wrong with me inside??

The only knowledge I had about miscarriage was Scarlett O'Hara falling down stairs in Gone With the Wind, and losing her baby. The doctor told her she would never able to carry a pregnancy again. So I figured that, at 19 years old, my chance to have a baby was over. I would never have a child.

Walking with my mom, several weeks later, I dared to ask her, if having lost two babies meant I would never have a child? As my mother pushed my baby brother in a stroller, with the twins on either side, she laughed, and said, "I've had six miscarriages, and six children."

Great genetics!? Little did I know that I would go on to have several more miscarriages, just like my mother...