Can we talk about post-partum after you lose a baby in pregnancy?  I mean, how do you live after the loss of a baby?

When I was home after my losses, I found NOTHING on the internet that was remotely helpful when going through the post-partum grief.  NOTHING. Friends or family didn’t know what to tell me. Or what they said wasn’t what I needed.

It was extremely frustrating.  I knew that millions upon millions of other women have gone through similar experience, yet no one wants to talk about it.  Well, I’m going to talk about it.

Let’s talk about the hormones

Let’s talk about the pregnancy hormones for a second…despite losing one of my two babies; I was still pregnant with my second baby.  Pregnancy hormones + grief. Let’s try an organize that first.  But wait, I was told and I knew that this second baby wasn’t going to survive, so let’s throw on a dash of hopelessness and a sprinkle of hope that the doctors are wrong!  Let’s see what happens.  Then, I was encouraged to stay calm, stay positive, stay healthy for baby number two…which they had already told me wasn’t going to survive.  Talk about being absolutely confused in a place of already immense confusion.

Then my second baby died.

Here come the post-partum pregnancy hormones crashing down on an already overwhelmingly, oversaturated, immense feeling of guilt, grief, and shame.

It is so messed up.  There I was, bleeding, crying, cramping, doing all the things that a woman who has just delivered a baby does.  Then comes the leaking of the breasts.  The hair loss (yep, that still happens).  Then those post-partum hormones do a nose-dive.  It was exactly like I had delivered baby, but without the babies.

Here’s what happens next…

Then about 4 weeks after that, Flo shows up.  Yep, she’s a bitch!  So just before that I was PMS’ing hard!  You know, trying really hard to see how good things are, when really it’s complete shit!

By this point, my body doesn’t know up from down.  I went from pregnancy highs and hormone lows, to grieving a baby and hanging on to hope for the survival of #2, to then post-partum hormones with the loss of two babies, to getting my period about a month that the ordeal began.

Riding the wave of emotion

To this day, I’m not sure how I walked out of it.  What I want from writing about this is for anyone who has had to go through or is going through this to know… it sucks.  This whole up and down wave riding sucks!  Let it suck.  Don’t let anyone tell you “it’s for the best”, or “you’ll get over it”, or whatever other “reasoning” someone wants to say to make themselves feel better… the roller coaster of emotions is real and it sucks!

Feel it. 

Live it. 

Survive it. 

Once you come out of it, you will be a new person.  What that looks like, I’m not sure.  I just need you to read and know that it’s real.  But mostly, you aren’t alone….YOU. ARE. NOT. ALONE! I am proof that you can live after the loss of your baby. It may not feel like you can, but yes you can and you will!