My First Miscarriage

Learning About Chemical Pregnancies

Deciding I was ready to start trying to conceive felt momentous. From the moment I got my period, at the very young age of nine, I knew that I needed to be careful, because now, I could get pregnant. What a shift to go from doing everything you possibly could to never get pregnant, to wanting nothing more than to be pregnant.

José and I decided to start trying to conceive one month before our wedding. I didn’t expect to get pregnant on our first try, but part of me worried I might be making a huge mistake before our wedding. We had recently moved our wedding up seven months. Would people assume we were getting married earlier because we were pregnant? If I did get pregnant before our wedding, would people notice I wasn’t drinking?

What felt worse was that I was worried I might not be able to stomach my wedding at all if I were pregnant: our reception was on a schooner floating in Brooklyn Bridge Park, turned into an oyster bar. I was certain the combination of the waves and the aroma of briny oysters would make me sick the moment I stepped on the boat. And, I wouldn’t even be able to eat the raw oysters!

To no one’s surprise, we were not pregnant by our wedding day, and I was able to eat all of the oysters I wanted without a hint of seasickness (not to mention endless bottles of Rosé).

We continued to try after our wedding, and weren’t surprised when October passed without a positive pregnancy test either. We managed to get married, move into a new apartment, and I moved into a new office, all within two-weeks. It would have been shocking if we had managed to time my peak ovulation perfectly that month.

But, in November, I took a pregnancy test. I was at work, in-between appointments. According to my fertility tracking app, this was the day to take a pregnancy test. I hadn’t yet adhered to the important rule of taking a pregnancy test first thing in the morning, when your urine has the highest concentration of hCG.

As the timer ticked down the 2-minutes to wait for the pregnancy test results, I saw a faint line appear. Did it have to be dark to be positive? I made a mental note to search the internet for an answer to this question. But even posing this question threw me slightly – I had never taken a pregnancy test before, and I always assumed there weren’t any grey areas in interpreting the results of a pregnancy test. I thought you were either pregnant or you weren’t. But now, I had this looming question: was I really pregnant? And my next client was about to walk into my office at any moment.

By the time I was able to find answers to my question, the day had passed, and I was on the subway headed home. José was waiting for me with dinner prepared. By the end of the night, I decided to hold off my internet search for answers, and simply take another test in the morning.

At 4am, I woke up to terrible cramping and bleeding. I went into the bathroom and saw my period had started. I thought I had my answer: I wasn’t pregnant. But the pain of this period was far more intense than any period I had experienced before. Over the next two hours, I moved from the toilet to the cool tile floor, pressing my stomach and face into it, hoping for some relief. I took a double dose of Motrin – probably not my best idea to take an extra dose, and it didn’t even help alleviate any pain. I tried a hot compress followed by a cold compress. Nothing worked. My cramping and bleeding intensified. José heard me moaning from the bathroom, and opened the door to me writing on the tile. This was not normal. I had always had heavy periods, but nothing like this before.

José began the internet search for me – and it did not take him long to discover the term “chemical pregnancy.” And just like that, everything made sense: the faint line on the pregnancy test indicating a positive pregnancy, an intense heavy period. I was pregnant, and now I was miscarrying.

I took the day off work and went to the doctor. They drew my blood and found an elevated level of hCG, confirming what I thought was true. I spent the rest of the day confused and in a haze. Phantom pains continued to shoot through my body. I couldn’t tell if I was sad that I had lost a pregnancy, or if I could even be sad since I wasn’t even aware that I had been pregnant.

In all of the books I read on trying to conceive, not one of them had mentioned a chemical pregnancy. That’s when the anxiety amped up: had I been pregnant before and never knew it? Was this my first miscarriage, or my 10th (this was impossible – while anxiety can often feel overpowering, it does have its positive attributes. My anxiety made me terrified to ever have unprotected sex as I could list every sexually transmitted infection and their symptoms without blinking)? Were chemical pregnancies even common?

What helped me?

·      Getting answers: I began researching chemical pregnancies. I wanted to learn everything I could about what a chemical pregnancy was, and if it counted as a miscarriage. I wanted to know if there were other women who, like me, had a positive pregnancy test one day, and their period started the next day. I also spoke with my doctor, who reassured me that since this was my first pregnancy loss, and that since chemical pregnancies are so common, she felt I would be able to keep trying to conceive without any concerns.

·      Renaming it: after all of my research, I decided to rename my experience. It was not a chemical pregnancy. I was, in fact, pregnant, and I did have a miscarriage. This felt validating and supportive of my experience. Even now, I consider this my first miscarriage, and not “just a chemical pregnancy.”

·      Seeing my acupuncturist: I loved my acupuncturist! She specialized in fertility, and didn’t even need the hCG blood test results to recognize a miscarriage. She was the first person who really validated the difficultly of my experience, and took really good care of me over the next few days. She even opened up appointments for me to come in.

·      Walking our dog around our neighborhood: José and I spent our next few evenings walking our dog around our new neighborhood. It was still warm enough to be out, and even though we had been living in our new apartment for a month, there was still much of the area to explore. And Remy, our French Bulldog, loved getting to meet the other dogs in the neighborhood.

A chemical pregnancy is a pregnancy loss. It doesn’t matter how far along in your pregnancy you are – these losses are just as tragic and sad, and these losses deserve to be validated and supported.