A Moment That Took My Breath Away -Pregnancy Loss

In September, hours before we left on vacation with my in-laws, I found out that the heartbeats of my identical twin boys stopped.

I keep re-reading that previous sentence, the way I have re-lived that doctor’s appointment a hundred times since. Begging my heart and mind to understand, to process, to do anything really. I’m stuck like a clogged sink. I haven’t written in months. I just keep re-reading, re-thinking, wringing my hands, and trying to knead meaning into a rigid truth.

I feel tears start to prick at my eyes. Those boys were so desperately wanted and loved. My husband has a lifelong dream of identical twin boys. We couldn’t believe it when we made it to the 6.5-week appointment and heard a heartbeat, and then the words, “and I do see twins.” Strong heartbeats, measuring on track, genetically normal boys. We were beside ourselves. How could we possibly be so lucky? How could this happen to us? It felt like winning an impossible lottery ticket. Two boys to complete our family with our two daughters. It felt like such a divine answer, a perfect ending to a hard chapter of growing our family. We witnessed a miracle in the dimly lit ultrasound room, and I will forever hold onto that truth.

We bought t-shirts for our girls and told them they were big sisters. That was the hardest part, telling them again, a week and a half later, that the boys’ hearts stopped. I went to the 8-week appointment with my 3-year-old while my husband was trying to tie up loose ends before vacation with his family. I couldn’t breathe. My husband came home, and we went to pick up our first grader for vacation and to tell her the news. She cried. She had told her class. No pain was worse than watching my first grader grapple with this news from the rearview mirror.

My 3-year-old cried, “Mom, are you so sad because the heartbeats stopped? Mom, I’m so sad too.” I’ll never stop hearing those phrases that she so often repeated during that first month. When I smiled again, she would ask me, “Are you not sad about the heartbeats anymore?” And I tried as best I could to explain that I am happy and deeply sad at the same time.

As our family made our way through the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee en route to Florida with our awaiting family, I kept thinking those boys are a miracle in the same way the mountains are a miracle. Those boys were no more mine to keep than the mountains are mine. But I got to witness splendor, miraculous splendor, however brief. The moment I learned of them took my breath away, and how many moments in life take our breath away. What a gift. I prayed then, and I pray now that maybe we were allowed to glimpse these miracles because it’s the promise of what God can do. The promise of more to come. I pray we see that promise answered.

I finally write this now as an attempt to unclench my fists and unblock my soul, as we prepare to begin another round of IVF. This next month will be our sixth egg retrieval, and my God, do we pray it’s our last. We pray for unyielding peace that has carried us this far. We pray for understanding in a wisdom that I will never have. We pray for a humbled and servile nature, that we may be aware of every blessing and walk toward what is certainly a miraculous, albeit uncertain future.