It was supposed to be my husband’s and mine’s “No TV Tuesday”—a day we set aside to connect in the midst of this chaotic phase of parenting three really small children. But Holiday planning got the best of us. We would “No TV Wednesday” and watch one of our favorite shows live for a change: This is Us.
Photo: NBC
It wasn’t the episode this week that got us; it was the preview for next week’s. That 30-second or less clip that brought fat, ugly tears to our eyes. We learned this week that Kate lost the baby, but seeing a quick glimpse of her and her husband’s reaction to it after the fact—was too real.
We had a miscarriage 14 months ago. Like Kate’s and Toby’s loss, ours was the “easy” kind; the kind that happens early in pregnancy. The kind you know can happen, the reason you hold off telling anyone the news at first because it’s common.
But there was nothing easy about it.
I classify those days as the loneliest in our lives. It felt as if we should not have felt that the miscarriage was that big of a deal; that the loss wasn’t that great. I know people who have lost their babies days before their due dates—that was real pain. This was almost expected.
So, we spent the weekend of the procedure to remove our baby’s remains taking turns quietly crying.
When the tears kept coming, I suggested we deal with it once and for all. Genetic testing had revealed she was a girl. So, we sat down and made a list of names and gave her one after her great-great grandmother. It was perhaps the most gut-wrenching night of our lives. We talked about what we thought she looked like in Heaven. I pictured her with shiny brown hair like her dad’s and dimples like her sister’s. We imagined her with our own family members up there. We dreamed about what it would be like meeting her one day.
