My sister and nephew were in town, and we planned to celebrate my 6-week pregnancy. 

we had just returned from a river camping trip and were excited to have a good dinner out later that evening. 

About mid-morning I started to feel tired and bloated. 

Things went from bad to worse quickly and 15 min. later I was experiencing heavy cramps and a lot of bleeding. 

I came out of the bathroom and told my sister and my husband that I was pretty sure this was it. I was having a miscarriage. 

I called my nurse, and 5 min later my husband and I were in the car headed toward Denver. 

My cramps slowing got worse and I could feel a lot of blood coming out as we made the 2-hour drive to the clinic. 

I didn’t cry, panic or even talk the entire drive. I was probably in shock and all I can remember was repeating a silent plea to my baby over and over. Please hold on…

There wasn’t desperation in my plea, and at the time I felt ready to accept whatever was in store for us. I told my baby that if she wasn’t ready to come to us it was okay, and mommy and daddy would be okay too. 

I remembered the story of the child and the sandcastle. The first child builds a castle and when the ocean comes and sweeps the castle away the child begins to wail at his failure and runs to mommy defeated. 

The second child stares as the ocean sweeps away his masterpiece and goes over to his sand tools and begins to rebuild. He’s determined to build this one even better and stronger then the first. 

I told myself I was that second child, and if everything I had worked so hard for was about to be gone than I would allow myself time to grieve and then I would rebuild. 

I’m sure I looked like a complete train wreck as I walked into the clinic, but I didn’t care. 

Thankfully the nurse called us back within min. of our arrival and I prepared myself for the news that we were about to receive. 

During the ultrasound I was a little bit surprised as the nurse began to point out the different parts of our baby. The yolk sack, fetal pull and then the tiniest flicker. My anxiety lessened slightly as she told me that tiny flicker was the babies heartbeat. 

I wanted to be excited that my baby was still inside me, but I needed to know what the hell was happening if this wasn’t a miscarriage. 

After making sure everything was okay with baby, the nurse began to look around for what was causing me so much pain. 

Near my cervix thankfully far from the baby the nurse found what she called a sub-chorionic hematoma. She didn’t seem too concerned, and told us they were quite common, 

At this point I started to relax a little bit. 

I walked into the clinic feeling like my world was falling apart and when I walked out everything was okay. I couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. 

I called my sister to let her know everything was okay. She burst into tears of relief. Tears that I would need to release pretty soon as well. 

The cramping and bleeding went on the entire drive home.

I couldn’t wait to get home and run a warm bath. 

I let the warm water and Epsom salts pour over my tortured body and slowly the stress began to melt away. 

I felt weak as I got out of the bathtub, but the cramps and bleeding had come to a complete stop and I felt like the nightmare had ended. 

It took me a couple of days to process the experience and questions like why and how kept popping into my head. 

We went in for another checkup a week later and there was no sign of the baby. 

Perhaps, the trauma of the hemorrhage was too much for the tiny growing body. Perhaps it just wasn’t the right timing. I guess I’ll never know why after all the years of longing and pain I was also unlucky enough to have to experience a miscarriage. 

The sadness over the next couple of days was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. The nights were extremely long filled with uncontrollable sobbing. I’ve never seen Chris like that before either. It was terrible, but we hung on to each other for dear life and slowly our grief started to lessen as we decided to let go of the past and step boldly into our future.