Did you know that 10-20% of women are likely to go through a loss and that women under the age of 35 typically only have a 15% chance.

I’m that 15% chance.

It took my husband (fiance at the time) and I nine months to conceive our first and we were beyond ecstatic. We instantly started telling our family and had names picked out within the second week of us finding out that we were expecting.

On Thursday July 5, 2018, I had reached 9 weeks and that Saturday my bridal party and I were heading down to Southern California to attend one of my bridal showers that my family was hosting and my bachelorette party at Disneyland. But that Friday night before we left I had noticed some spotting when I went to the restroom. I immediately told my husband and called one of our hospitals on call nurses and advised her what was going on. She told me to keep and eye on it and that it was normal for most moms to experience some sort of bleeding through out their pregnancy, but that if my symptoms worsened by morning to go straight to the closest ER.

Her words slightly put our worries to ease, but I still felt as if something was wrong. Thinking back on this time, I start to wonder if my ‘Mothers Instinct’ where coming into play, but as a first time mom I knew that I would be paranoid and freak out over every little thing that my body did. I was ready to completely cancel the whole trip and just curl up in bed for the rest of my pregnancy and only eat whole food from god himself and cleanse my body of all sins… Like I said, I was a first time mom and scared.

By the next morning, the spotting had stopped. I hadn’t even spotted enough to fill a pad let alone half of one, so all my worries just flew straight out the door with my luggage as our ‘Girls Trip’ was ready to commence. One of my local besties was attending the trip with my bridal party and picked me up as we headed out of our little town in Northern Nevada to Sacramento, CA to pick up the rest of the bridal party that wasn’t already in Southern California.

As we picked up the rest of the group, I quickly advised each of them of the issues I had had the night before and that I was just telling them as a precaution. Little did we know that half way through our trip my symptoms would come back and this time 5x worse… I say 5x because this was just the beginning.

We reached our half way mark and thats when the cramping really kicked in. The bleeding progressed and I just new for sure that something was definitely not okay anymore. I had called my mother and asked her if she could try to call kaiser to set up an appt for me, as we were driving in and out of cell service and every time that I tried to call I was placed on hold before I even spoke to an operator.

My mom was able to reach an on-call nurse and advised her of my situation and that my symptoms were escalating and at a pretty alarming pace. The nurse advised my mom that she would try to get my an appt around 7 am the following morning, but that she needed me to call back in as soon as I got to our final destination for the night so she could ask some more in dept questions about my pain and when I was finally able to call her back she had even asked me to cough over the phone to her… at the time I had no idea as to why she needed me to cough, so I let out one of the most pathetic ‘coughs’ ever…. it wasn’t until her follow up question “Did you feel any pain in your abdominal area while coughing?” that I understood why I needed to cough and shared a good laugh with my girls.

After all her questions and my pathetic cough, she had advised me to go straight into the closest Kaiser ER. Luckily we were only staying about 10-15 minutes away from one in Anaheim. We had arrived at the hospital a little after 9:30 and shortly after I checked in I was called back. At that point, everything was sinking in…. I was now being admitted into the ER because I could potentially be losing my baby and that I was now almost 500 miles away from my husband. I was beyond thankful that my sister in-law, quickly stood up and asked if she can join me as they escorted my to my room.

We waited for what felt like forever, however the ER staff that night were nothing less then the best. They continuously checked in on us and even allowed my girls sitting out in the waiting room to bring me back some food from the local Italian restaurant my best friend had been raving about before we left for the ER. They ‘preformed’ a pregnancy test, the same exact thing as an ‘at home pregnancy test’ but the hospitals version and then drew some blood from me. I also had my very first Ultrasound, not just the normal ultrasound, but an internal… You can probably guess where my comfort level at that time was… let me give you a hint, there wasn’t anything comfortable about it! But the ultrasound itself was okay I guess..

After a long night in the ER and from the blood work and ultrasound. They had advised that the sack was only measuring at 6 weeks and had diagnosed me with a threatened miscarriage.

Now I knew, before walking in that door, that I was supposed to be 9 weeks and 3 days at this point. So my first and only question I asked was “Is there a heartbeat…”. At this point you could see the Dr kinda tense up in away and had even said something along the line of “I didn’t want to bring this up, especially cause your measuring so early” but out of everything he told me to try and ease my mind was “no, we did not detect a heartbeat…”

At that point I knew what was going to happen, but I was going to hold on to what ever little hope i could from the diagnoses of a ‘threatened miscarriage’. He advised me that if I was going to lose the pregnancy that it was going to happen and that there was nothing I or anyone else could due to stop/prevent it and that ‘IT WAS NOT MY FAULT….AT ALL’. He cleared me to do all of the activities we had planned for the weekend but that I was not to drive, walk excessive, or participate on any of the more aggressive rides at Disneyland and told me I must rent a wheelchair for the day.

I was finally discharged from the ER around 3 am and we headed home to get some sleep before we headed out for the bridal shower the next morning that was about 2 hours away. That morning, I had also broke the new to my Oma (grandma) who was supposed to find out about the pregnancy at the bridal shower along with my great grandma and a few great aunts.

I spent the whole shower in and out of the bathroom, wondering if every new pain or feeling I had was the loss… I was in so much discomfort and pain, but tried to hide it behind a smile and laughs. Only a few people there knew what was going on and could see past the fake smile, and looking back at the picture you could see I wasn’t being ‘my self’. We finished up the party and said our goodbyes. Some of the girls and I drove down to my favorite beach, Seal Beach, and enjoyed a nice relaxing evening watching the sunset.

At that point I had finally come to peace with what may come with it the next day or even week. I enjoyed the sound of every wave that crashed down on the shore, and even the exciting screams that the little kids cried out as another wave chased them back up the embankment, and the sand that was fingers and toes as a soaked up the sun before it set for the night.

I was at my most happiest point on this trip.

The next morning was Disneyland. I had planned to get all dolled up for the day, have a full face of makeup and my hair super cute, but from the pain I was enduring and the little to no sleep I had gotten… it was not happening. I threw on as little to now makeup and possibly even just barley brushed my hair for the day. By the time I had got done with that I was ready to just go!

We were at the park for a couple of hours and was enjoying a nice easy ride, when I felt this intense pressure and then the tension that was there… just released… I knew something was not right at all and that I needed to go straight to the bathroom after the ride and as soon as I got my self to the bathroom stall…. it happened.. at 10:02 am I had passed what we believe was the sac. I spent the next 5 to possibly even 10 minutes in the stall alone and then finally talked my self out of the stall and walked over to my best friend who had escorted me to the bathroom and told her what had happened, where we then spent what felt like a lifetime crying in the corner of the tomorrow land bathroom and by the time we walked out the expression on our faces, the rest of the group new exactly what had happened…

Now earlier I had mentioned that the Dr told me “THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT” and “YOU DID NOTHING WRONG TO CAUSE THIS”.. now the reason I write them in caps, is because those sentences played in my head the whole weekend and still play on a loop every single day and at that point, in the middle of tomorrow land with a group of grown women crying at the HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH. I knew that I was not going to let this tear me down, and that I was not going to curl up and cry. In that brief moment I told my self “You are amazing, You are strong and YOU will over come this because dammit Kaite, You are a BADASS”  and once I was done with a good cry I immediately demanded Cotton Candy and from that moment we went on with our day. I still had some pretty bad cramping and let me tell you, you can definitely tell from some of the picture how uncomfortable I was through out the whole day. But we made the best out of a shitty day.

Now from the research that I had come up with I had read stories and articles of moms having a threatened miscarry that led into a loss, but once the loss happened they were relieved of most if not all pain they were enduring before.

That was not the case for me.

Once I arrived back into Nevada, I had my husband meet me at one of our closest ER so that we could confirm the loss. We spent close to 3 hrs in the waiting room and then another 4-5 hours in our room before the only Sonographer on rounds that night to come in. It was about an hour and a half after my ultrasound that the Dr came in an confirmed the loss, but that it was a incomplete loss. Meaning, I was still retaining tissue that my body needed to pass.

I spent the next few weeks going in and out of the hospital for sever cramping and complications. It wasn’t until close to a month and a half after the initial confirmation of the loss that all my symptom and complications went away.

My story isn’t the first nor will it be the last, as miscarriages will continue to happen as they are unfortunate a natural thing that can happen in a women’s life.

Miscarriages aren’t talked about as much as they should be and to many people are to quick to blame the mom for the loss. There are so many factors to what will cause a loss and we need to make it socially acceptable to talk about these situation so that other mom’s can find peace with them self and understand that IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT!

XO – Kaite

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