That was the Facebook message I got from a friend on April 27th. I was pregnant, about 6 weeks along, and while I wasn't telling anyone, I wasn't exactly hiding it either. Well, at least not on Instagram.

I've always posted about birth, nursing, doulas, etc. because of my work as a doula. But I also started pinning best cloth diapers, best foods to eat, best ways to stave off morning sickness, best yoga and low-impact exercised to do while pregnant. I only told a few close friends, and of course my mother, but I was aching to let the entire world know.

Nearly one year of TTC had passed, and while we didn't try for 12 months straight, it felt like a miracle that we were finally pregnant after praying and pleading to G-d for our miracle.

Now I sit, at what would be the half way mark of my first pregnancy. My stomach is not swollen, I've not purchased any maternity wear and I'm not having a baby. The month-long miscarriage process was hell on earth and the month that has passed since then, while better, has not been a cake walk. I am feeling a bit more like myself; I laugh and smile easily now, I've started running again, and my G-d summer rosé is pretty amazing. Every once in a while I'll get sad; My first period was rough, as was the confusion of my fertility app. Did I have a miscarriage, it asked clearly confused I was marking a period again. Sympathy from an app, yay technology! My sadness doesn't come from seeing babies, which I thought would be the case, but from swollen bellies.

Perhaps it's because of my birth work experience that I don't blame myself for the miscarriage. Of course, in my darkest moments, I did wonder what I'd done wrong; Was it the glass of wine I had before realizing I was pregnant? Was it the feta cheese in that salad? Did the salad dressing have raw eggs in it? Maybe there's just something wrong with me and I'm not supposed to be a mother. Maybe it's because I made a registry and Jews don't do things like that. 

It wasn't my fault. It happened. It happens to more women than most know. And it could happen again. For now it's about figuring out what my future will be like, how I can shape it, and remembering the lessons I've learned and continue to learn during this process.

Like my sister's death, my miscarriage has shaken my center. I'm no longer interested in simply existing in this life, I want to live it wholly and fully and without fear. Birth work, adding a nursing degree to my doula certification, is my driving motivation. And I also want to continue to be more vocal about pregnancy loss and miscarriage, even provide doula support for women who lose their pregnancies because while it's 100% necessary to have a doula by your side when you bring life into the world, it's possibly more important to have a doula by your side when you realize the life you were growing isn't.

My partner did the best she could when we lost our baby, but miscarriage is hard, possibly harder in different ways, on partners. Our doctors and nurses did a rather shitty job providing comfort. There were forced hugs, diagnostic works that lacked emotion, a need to remain professional, rather than personal when all I needed was someone to look me in the eyes, hold my hands, give me a hug and tell me how incredibly sorry they were for the loss of my child.

The first step in this journey is science. Lots of science courses in subjects I loathed as a lazy undergraduate. But as an adult woman who has seen glimpses of what life is like when you don't live it fully, I'm pretty confident that I can kick Chemistry (and bioChem, and Biology, and Anatomy)'s ass!

Since this time I've tried to doula for a client, but realized that it was still too raw, too soon, and not quite right. So I'll be blogging my thoughts, but not taking clients, possibly until after my EDD in December.
So thank you for reading, for support, and for understanding.

Erika