Even though it’s been a year since they happened, I still don’t really feel like sharing my chemical pregnancy stories. I don’t really feel like opening up my torn and insecure heart to a world that mostly will not understand.
However, as I read this post about why it’s okay to grieve an early miscarriage, I was reminded that if I want to encourage other women that it’s okay to share and grieve, I have to be willing to be transparent with my own grief. So I decided it’s finally time to publish the following post that I wrote so many months ago, long before I was ready to share it.
Grieving Early Pregnancy Loss
Let it be a comfort for some grieving mother going through an early loss that I am also grieving my own chemical pregnancies. It’s okay to grieve. It’s okay to have a hard time with it. The length of your pregnancy does not correspond to how many days, weeks or months you are allowed to grieve.
Our stories are probably different, but we can still encourage one another through our losses. I hope you find some level of comfort from commonality as you read my chemical pregnancy stories. And at the end, I would love it if you would share your chemical pregnancy story in the comments.
What is a Chemical Pregnancy?
Chemical pregnancy is simply the label given to pregnancies that end before they would be detectable on an ultrasound. They are not fake pregnancies or false positives. They are real pregnancies that end too soon.
A chemical pregnancy is defined as a pregnancy that is miscarried before 5 weeks gestation. If you don’t take a pregnancy test, you may not even realize you conceived.
However, your late “period” that might be different from your normal monthly flow may tip you off that something happened this month. You may have a heavier period, possibly with some blood clots. It is also possible that you have already begun to have some pregnancy symptoms before you miscarry.
On the other hand, a positive pregnancy test may be the only confirmation you have that a pregnancy actually occurred.
In my case, I had both the symptoms and the positive tests to prove my pregnant state before each loss.
My First Chemical Pregnancy Story
My first chemical pregnancy story began on a Sunday morning with a faint positive pregnancy test. It was light, but it was definitely there. I was pregnant.
I could not possibly be carefree enough to assume this pregnancy held a baby after my recent complete molar pregnancy. But I was happy to be pregnant and hopeful that we might get a healthy baby out of this pregnancy.
I prayed frequently for this potential child. I prayed it was a baby. I prayed it was a healthy baby that would be in our arms in nine months.
I had already been having multiple pregnancy symptoms for a week, but I had brushed them off as being the result of night-weaning my daughter from breastfeeding. Now that I knew I was pregnant, I found some cautious excitement in those physical indicators of my new pregnancy.
In light of my pregnancy history, I had many doubts about the ultimate fate of this pregnancy. But I certainly was not expecting it to be as short as it turned out to be.
It was only three days after that positive test that the emotional rollercoaster started. Wednesday morning I took another test to make sure the line was getting darker.
But it wasn’t. Instead, it was lighter.
With anxieties rising, I rushed out to buy another brand of pregnancy test. That one produced a negative result. I was in shock and couldn’t understand what had happened.
Were those other tests faulty? Had they been false positives?
I began reading reviews on the tests on Amazon and found several women complaining of false positives. My heart sank. Had I not even been pregnant at all?
But no. That couldn’t be. My period was late. And of the 17,862 pregnancy tests I have taken during the course of my motherhood journey, I have never gotten a false positive with these or any other tests. Evaporation lines, yes. But never a clear positive showing up within the timeframe that even my husband could easily see.
As it happened, I was due for my last monthly HCG blood draw as follow-up from my complete molar pregnancy. So after getting the negative result on my home pregnancy test (hpt), I immediately drove to my blood draw.
My HCG for the last couple of months had been 0, so I knew that any HCG in my system would mean I had at least briefly been pregnant.
The next morning, my HCG result was available online, but the result was confusing. Instead of a number, the result was “Indeterminate”. When I talked to the OBGYN scheduler on the phone, she told me they had done the wrong test and I needed to come back in.
My anxiety was pretty high at this point, making me desperate. I practically begged the lady on the phone to tell me if she could tell if I was pregnant from the test they had done. She refused to answer.
When I went in for my re-draw, I asked the nurse what the first test had meant. She informed me that they accidentally ordered a qualitative test instead of a quantitative test. It was basically a positive/negative pregnancy test.
When I asked what “indeterminate” meant, she was also reluctant to answer. But from what little information I extracted from her, I deduced that it meant I had HCG in my system but it was very low. My fears continued to escalate.
I called my mom from the parking lot to tell her in between sobs that I thought I was about to have a miscarriage. She hadn’t known I was pregnant. I hadn’t wanted to tell anyone unless and until we had a healthy ultrasound. But sometimes you just need your mom.
On the way home, I prayed and prayed and prayed that God would save this pregnancy and make a healthy baby from it.
But there would be no saving of this pregnancy. The miracle I prayed so hard for would not be granted for reasons only God knows (I struggled for a long time to accept this seemingly unanswered prayer and trust God again until the moment I discuss in this post).
The next morning, I started bleeding. It was not unexpected at this point, but it destroyed what was left of my hope.
A few hours later, I got my HCG result. It was 6. I had definitely been pregnant.
It hurt. It hurt more than one would expect from a pregnancy loss at 4 weeks and 4 days. It hurt that this was now my third loss. It hurt to feel like I had confirmation that I had more defective eggs than good eggs. It hurt to lose even more time.
The feeling of loss was just as potent with this brief pregnancy as it had been with my first miscarriage at 10 weeks 4 1/2 years prior. The grief was just as strong.
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The silver lining was that the healing process physically was much, much shorter than it was with my first miscarriage. This faster physical healing kept me from feeling stuck in the miscarriage phase for weeks on end as I had the first time.
I chose to believe that what I had lost was a baby. I had hoped for a baby, and I could not bear to believe it had only been another tumor. I needed to grieve the loss of what I had desperately hoped to have.
I told my husband that you can’t choose grief. It just comes to you and you have to do whatever you need to do to deal with it. Grieving the loss of my pregnancy that only lasted a few days may seem ridiculous to some, especially someone who has never experienced a miscarriage.
But I didn’t choose grief. It is the natural reaction God equipped us with to process our losses. Some grieve deeper and longer, some grieve lighter and shorter. But when we lose something precious, we must grieve.
My Second Chemical Pregnancy Story
Despite my grief over losing my precious pregnancy, I did not want to wait to try again. My husband and I already felt like we had lost so much time waiting to have another baby.
Waiting for 21 months while I breastfed my daughter full-time; waiting 8 months after partial-weaning for my hormones to regulate enough for me to have a cycle; wasting 16 weeks on a pregnancy that ended in a D&C to remove the tumor growing in my womb; waiting through many difficult months of HCG blood draws and angry grief as my body and mind recovered from that strange pregnancy.
I was tired of all the waiting. I was also afraid that waiting would only exacerbate my grief.
So we tried again right away, in the midst of my grief. I realized pretty quickly (but too late) that it was not a wise decision to try again so soon. Less than a week after I ovulated, I began having multiple, intense pregnancy symptoms and each day it became increasingly difficult not to anxiously try to figure out if I was pregnant.
With my emotions and hormones still fragile from my recent chemical pregnancy, my anxiety was extremely high during the “two week wait“. By the time I was finally able to get a positive pregnancy test over a week after all the pregnancy symptoms started, I was emotionally exhausted.
Once again, I did not have the luxury of being naively excited or making any plans for this baby. Every mention of the baby included the phrase, “if this pregnancy works out”.
But at the same time, once again, I was also happy to be pregnant. There was just something about being pregnant that filled me with the feeling of contentment, value and purpose.
My two main goals were to make it to five weeks and then to survive until my first ultrasound. Fortunately, we were in the process of moving to a new state right when I found out I was pregnant, so I had enough other things distracting my mind to keep me from going too crazy as I waited and wondered how this pregnancy would turn out.
But sadly, I learned all too soon how the pregnancy would turn out.
It was only four days after I found out I was pregnant, at 4 weeks and 2 days, that I went to the restroom only to discover that I was bleeding. For the second time within a month, my body was shedding itself of the tissue that had been my child and my child’s protective home.
Another miscarriage. Another loss. Another due date that would never happen.
I was in shock, perhaps even more than I had been with the first chemical pregnancy. I had feared it would happen, yet somehow I could hardly believe that it had actually happened again. The score was now at 4 failed pregnancies to 1 successful pregnancy.
How had this happened? Why had it happened, this chemical pregnancy? Why had it happened twice?
My grief was different this time. Similar in some ways. But also different. I didn’t want anyone to know. I didn’t want to talk about it. I couldn’t handle it. It was too much to try to process and accept.
I didn’t want to call my mom right away this time. I didn’t even have the energy to tell her in a message that first day. I didn’t even want to discuss it with my husband. I just wanted to be alone. I just wished I could escape. Escape this nightmare that seemed to keep replaying in my life.
God blessed me by working out my daughter’s very messed up sleep schedule during that weekend to give me time alone to process and rest for a while. She was behind on sleep and took a very late nap that lasted for three hours. Normally, I would have been pretty frustrated because this very late, very long nap meant she would not be able to go to bed until at least 1am.
But her nap happened immediately after I discovered I was bleeding and gave me a good chunk of time to myself. It gave me time to work through the shock and have some space so that I didn’t lash out at someone.
Despite the turmoil in my heart, God was there, providing me with some time to cope before facing life again.
My Search for Answers
After my first chemical pregnancy, I sort of figured it was a fluke. Unfortunately, chemical pregnancies are common, whether they are detected or not.
But after the second chemical pregnancy, I wanted answers.
I looked for an OBGYN in our new state and painfully tried to pick someone I would go to if and when I had a healthy pregnancy. Looking at hospital affiliations and reading reviews on birthing units is not terribly enjoyable after having recurrent miscarriages, but I knew I had to do my due diligence.
So I went in to get answers I had already heard from members of my miscarriage support group and online reading. I already knew the main causes of recurrent miscarriage: Hormonal imbalances, medical problems such as diabetes, immune issues, blood clotting disorders and genetic problems, with the last being the most common.
The doctor ordered the expected boatload of bloodwork and asked me to come back to discuss the results. When I went for my follow-up visit, everything was normal. The doctor wanted me to do an ultrasound to check for anatomical anomalies or scar tissue from the D&C I had to remove the molar pregnancy 9 months prior.
That ultrasound revealed a septum (a ridge inside the uterus) that we thought could be causing the miscarriages. However, when I went to a specialist to have it removed, he informed me after the procedure that it was so small, it would not have caused the miscarriages.
The specialist then performed his own blood tests on me and my husband, all of which came back normal.
So I am currently without any real answers as to why my pregnancies keep failing. The only answer I have been given is that chances are good that I will be able to have another healthy pregnancy if I keep trying since I have one healthy child already.
But the phrase “keep trying” produces as much pain as it does hope. Because it means I must be willing to miscarry however many more times are necessary before I get another healthy baby.
A healthy baby might be in my next pregnancy. It might be five pregnancies from now. It’s a heartbreaking reality that “keep trying” literally means that I continue to go through potentially doomed pregnancies until I either get a baby out of it or my heart can’t take it anymore and I decide to be done.
Why I Share My Stories
I am sorry if this post offends someone who has experienced greater losses. I am sorry if it sounds trivial in light of darker tragedies some mothers go through. I do not mean to magnify my chemical pregnancy stories to make them sound like the worst thing that can happen on the motherhood journey. It certainly is not.
I am so very blessed with my daughter, my spouse, my family. God is so good to me. I pray frequently for several moms I know who have gone through much more traumatic and painful losses.
I am not writing this to get extra sympathy. But I have discovered that writing and sharing my story somehow helps me process it and heal.
And just maybe there is another mama reading this who has also had a very short but cherished pregnancy. If you are that mama, I’m so sorry for your loss. It is good to grieve. It is good to share with those who will support you. It is good to remember your little one.
If you would like to share your pregnancy loss experience, please comment below or email me. Let’s walk this motherhood grieving journey together.
For more stories and information on pregnancy loss, check out the posts below.
- My Beginning of Motherhood: Miscarriage
- Miscarriage Grief: Two Years Later
- Karen’s Infant Loss Stories
- Trying to Conceive After Miscarriage
- Samantha’s Miscarriage Story
- How to Process Miscarriage Grief and Preserve Baby’s Memory – From Mamas Who’ve Been There
- My Complete Molar Pregnancy Story: Pregnant with a Tumor
- God Cares About Your Miscarriage
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