The Beginning

I knew I wanted kids from the very beginning. Maybe not quite as young as in the above photo (around 1 year old, I’m guessing), but very close. Even as a small child, I LOVED babies! Growing up, anytime someone would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, “mom” was always part of the answer.

Fast forward to my first semester of college. I was barely 18 years old, my life was turned upside down by sexual assault, and then it was turned upside down again when I realized I was pregnant. Thankfully, I was not pregnant from the assault. My boyfriend and I were “careful” but in a very 18 year old, “nothing will ever actually happen” kind of way. Suddenly, my life as a teenager was looking VERY different than I had expected.

I spent New Year’s Eve with my boyfriend at the time, and his family. We were having so much fun, but I kept having to excuse myself to the bathroom. That’s when his mom pulled him aside and asked if I was pregnant. He came to find me, panicking. He asked me, and I had to tell him that I didn’t know for sure, but I thought it might be possible. We decided we would talk more the next day and figure it all out. When I went home that night, I felt it in my bones: I was pregnant. I was so scared, but I was also already attached to the idea. It wasn’t at all how I had hoped it would happen, but I wanted to be a mommy more than anything! If this was how it happened, so be it. I quietly sang You Are My Sunshine to my stomach.

Trigger Warning Ahead: blood, miscarriage

The next day, New Year’s Day 2009, I was out with my family playing laser tag, when I had a sudden, sharp pain and ran to the bathroom. I sat down and gushed more blood into the toilet than I thought I even had in my body. I was in more pain than I’d ever been in before, and I had no idea what to do. Eventually, my mom came looking for me. I told her I had started my period out of nowhere, and needed her to take me home to get a pad and a change of clothes (I had bled so much and so suddenly that some had splashed out onto the top rim of my jeans). The thing is, I wasn’t lying to her. I really thought that my period was just really bad, and turns out I hadn’t been pregnant.

I was wrong.

Over the next week, I was miserable. I had no idea what was going on, but I knew I didn’t feel right. My bleeding had slowed down, but while it had lasted, it was not at all like normal for me. I told my boyfriend I wanted to go to a doctor, because maybe I was pregnant and something was wrong with the baby ( I really knew nothing back then). He didn’t want me to go to a doctor, because then it would show up on my insurance and my parents would find out. I waited another week and a half. I returned to school, and decided to go to the school’s medical clinic. They didn’t take insurance, and if my parents saw the charge I’d just say I had the flu. I went in and talked to the lovely PA working that day. She did a blood test, had them process it right there, and then talked to me about the results. She told me that my hcg levels were high enough to indicate I had been pregnant, but was not pregnant anymore.

When I left that office, I had no idea what to do with myself. I had just… lost a baby? My little sunshine?

I got into my car and called my boyfriend. He was incredibly relieved, which looking back, is SO FAIR. But at the time, it made me so mad. I felt so alone in the fact that I was sad about it. When I got off the phone, I sat in my car and cried for the next 40 minutes.

To cut this long story short, eventually my parents DID find out I had been pregnant. The person who informed them got it slightly wrong, and told them I was currently pregnant. My mom took me to our family doctor, who ran more tests and looked at the results of my previous blood test. He agreed I had experienced a miscarriage.

The thing is, no one really wants to allow an 18 year old to grieve a lost pregnancy that they were never supposed to have. I was raised in a religious environment, where the very fact that I had been sexually active was BAD. So I kept that grief to myself.

And it ate me alive.

It should come as no surprise that my boyfriend and I broke up not long after that. I moved away to go to a different school out of state, absolutely running from my many problems (that didn’t work, by the way. Never does. Just face your shit). I named my baby, as a way to help my grieving process. It actually did help, quite a bit.

Life got better. It really did. I was able to move forward, make friends, date, work hard at school, and have hope for the future. I had been told by my doctor (and others) that my miscarriage was probably a fluke, or even caused by some medication my boyfriend had been on that can cause genetic issues. I had no reason to worry about my ability to have kids in the future. I was feeling optimistic.

If I had known back then what I know now, I’m not sure what I would have done differently. Maybe nothing, because really, what could I have done? It’s probably for the best that I had time to be optimistic. It’s a lot easier to fall in love when you can’t see all of the obstacles you’ll hit.

But that miscarriage was not my last— not even close.

Sadly, this journey was just getting started.

Stay tuned for the next part of the story, and in the meantime feel free to comment with any questions. I hope this series is helping you to not feel so alone, or to have your eyes opened to what others experience. I promise, even amidst the pain I’ll be discussing, there is light and there is hope.

~Dannika 💙

For my first, sweet boy: Mason Grey