October is Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Month

Facebook Post from Mom 📝

Today 3 years ago we lost our baby girl, Hannah Lynn. She was born sleeping at 20 weeks. I labored for 12 hours and delivered her at 10:17am on 10/17. 

❤️ You leave the hospital without your baby and you're no longer pregnant. No matter how supportive your family, spouse, and nurses are, you still feel alone. It's a different experience; it has physically changed your body. You've announced your pregnancy publicly weeks ago and everyone is asking about the gender. All of the testing comes back normal with no answers as to why this happened. You are told repeatedly that "pregnancy loss is common" as if providing statistics will remove your suffering. There's nothing worse than loss of a child who you've held in your arms. Your grief will last a lifetime. ❤️

To this day, there is really only one thing that has helped me. I needed to connect with those who could relate. I received a FB message from a friend of a friend and although she was a complete stranger I immediately felt like she understood. She let me know that the ones you are closest to will struggle watching you struggle and try to help you "get over it" when you just need to grieve without a timeline. She reminded me that people would stop asking how I was doing, while the pain still lingered. I already knew this to be true losing a parent. Now I was a member of a new club, and I was not alone.

I remember going back to work that Monday and being reprimanded by our CIO for not responding to an email fast enough. Yes, that's what I needed. Even though my manager was fully aware of what I just went through she also wanted to know my reason for not responding, copying everyone on the email. I would say that is was issue of understaffing; however, the problem was and still is the stigma of not talking about pregnancy loss. 

👼🏻❤️👼🏼❤️

I know people are sick of hearing about national this or that day and what awareness month it is but this one is actually affecting more people than you know. October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month, so let's break the silence and raise awareness. 

Miscarriage is 1 in 4. Stillbirth affects 1 in 160. Infertility impacts 1 in 8 couples. Notice I said the word couples. Most people immediately think only of women when they hear the word infertility. The fact is you know someone that has been affected by either pregnancy loss, infant loss, or infertility. Unfortunately couples with infertility that undergo IVF have a higher risk of infant loss. It doesn't make it any less painful knowing the numbers, in fact it's worse. They also have to endure the cost of IVF which is not only financial, but also mental and physical.

*Photo - 423 needles. Total number of fertility injections I did between 2019 and 2020. This was for both Baby Hannah and Baby James. This includes one round of IVF and two rounds of frozen embryo transfers. It doesn't include the injections done this year in 2022 (yes, we did another egg retrieval). I took this photo in August 2021, when I was home for a few hours from the PICU. I needed to get rid of these sharps containers in the house. So before disposing of these safely, I counted every needle. I was curious and it was therapeutic. I had no idea it would be so many and I also had no idea that we would be miscarrying 2 weeks later. This was a miracle baby without IVF. At only 7 weeks we would never know the gender but we would know that they would be with their sister and our parents.

If anyone needs any support with IVF or infant loss or just has an inquistive mind, please feel free to reach out. I know how much it has helped me to talk to someone who can relate and I would like to be that person for others. ❤️