It’s always been said that pregnant women should not share their pregnancies openly until they are out of their first trimester. The main reason for this is during the first trimester, that’s when there’s the most concern about whether your pregnancy could end in a miscarriage. And who wants to tell friends that they are pregnant, to then retract that statement just a couple weeks later? It’s devastating and tragic, and well, society doesn’t know how to respond to miscarriages in a tasteful way that doesn’t blame the woman who had the miscarriage. Miscarriage is the result of at least 30 percent of all pregnancies, and that’s only what is reported; the actual number is likely much higher. That’s very much fear inducing in itself.

But maybe we’re actually part of the problem in continuing this. Maybe by not sharing, we’re actually increasing the stigma around pregnancy loss. We’re making it “not normal” to share before you clear the 13th week mark of pregnancy. Maybe we should all be openly sharing when we are pregnant during our first trimester because that will increase awareness and communication around pregnancy, the highs AND the lows, and the very real fear and worry of miscarriage. Miscarriage doesn’t just affect people you don’t know; it actually has likely affected MOST people you know whether you are aware of it or not.

The only downside of this idea is that when you are the pregnant person hoping to share, to lead the way in being progressive and forward thinking, is that the burden will ultimately fall on you if your pregnancy does end in a loss. And that’s quite a heavy load to carry on top of the loss itself. It’s a complicated matter about a complicated topic. There’s really no winning in this. I just wish more people had more empathy when it came to pregnancy, pregnancy loss, and the real burdens that pregnant women, and women hoping to become pregnant, face. There is so much anxiety that is not openly acknowledged. It’s not really a fun and exciting time in the first thirteen weeks because you’re plagued by fear of the unknown.

I couldn’t deal with work or the rest of the world the rest of this week, so I took Wednesday through Friday off and told work I was feeling unwell…. and told my manager I had a family situation emerge. When one of your growing embryos that had a strong heart beat suddenly just dies and starts shriveling up in a matter of days with zero warning, nothing else in the world really matters.

I had a long Zoom session with two of my close friends tonight, two of the three people outside of Chris and me and the medical professionals I’ve worked with who knew that I was pregnant with twins. Even if just for three short glorious weeks, I thought I was going to be a twin mom. And they knew, too, and they were so excited and happy for me. Yet even after detecting strong heart beats in two, one of them just vanished… literally into thin air. And when telling them about what happened, it was like my pain was their pain; we all cried, grieving the loss of this little embryo that had split off from its sibling… who I thought could both survive. This is when you know that your friends are really your close friends for life; when they mourn when you mourn, even when you are mourning something you only had for a few weeks.

I had two babies… and now I have one. Chris doesn’t quite get it; he said it wasn’t real. He insists that they are not babies. He said they are “two potentials” and one “went away.” I told him he’s wrong; they both had strong, detectable heart beats that I heard. I heard them with my own ears. There’s documented proof in my flow chart that they REALLY existed. How dare he tell me they never were “real.” Of course, it’s not easy for any man to understand this, my friend said. They don’t have the burden of carrying the child. They don’t have the physical feeling of being pregnant, the pelvic tension, the weird food aversions, the bloating, the intense breast soreness that is a constant reminder that your body is growing a living thing. They never had to go through the countless clinic visits, all the endless transvaginal ultrasounds, all the blood draws that have left bruises and scars on my arms that I’ve gotten questioned about during physical therapy visits. Yes, it might be a loss to him, but the loss will never be the same. He thinks rationally with his head, and I’m thinking with literally everything I’ve mustered up in this fight with the world and my body and the forces out there working against me just to fucking get pregnant. He has not invested as much into this as I have. He has not fought as hard as I have. It’s just not the same at all. This is where men just truly cannot empathize AT ALL.

They don’t call women who have to go through IVF “IVF warriors” for nothing; it really feels like you are fighting a war just for the chance of being a mother. Their partners are just spectators reading news in newspapers of the results of that war, attempting to sympathize but not quite getting close enough to really feel the pain and the loss and the suffering.

We got the first and only available appointment today at the Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist that my reproductive endocrinologist referred me to; given his referral, they were able to squeeze me in this last minute, which I was grateful for. Chris and I went together; I wasn’t sure I could stomach any more bad news this week, and I absolutely did not want to be by myself if I had to hear more crappy news.

Typically, if you are having any complications during pregnancy, whether it’s preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, or abnormal growth with your fetus, that’s when you’d see a maternal fetal medicine specialist for more careful monitoring and direction. Otherwise, you’d just go to your OB-GYN for routine visits and scans. Sitting in the waiting room here was a bit unnerving; it was very clear I was the only patient in the waiting room who was so early on in her pregnancy; everyone else looked at least six months or more along.

We were invited in, and after undressing waist down, a sonographer came in and performed the longest transvaginal ultrasound I’d ever had, ever. She took so many pictures at so many angles, zoomed in and zoomed out; it was certainly an extremely thorough ultrasound. She confirmed that Twin A no longer had a heart beat, and well, even worse: it had already started shrinking in size even just from yesterday. She also confirmed that Twin B was progressing well, with 171 beats per minute. She took a very close up shot of Twin B and printed it for us. She identified where the brain, head, and tush was. Twin B is currently the size of a kidney bean, and it certainly looked like a little shrimp at this point. She then completed the scan and said the doctor would review the results and come in to discuss with us.

When the doctor came in, she seemed confused as to why we were even here. “Did your fertiilty doctor want to confirm that it was twins….?” she asked, confused. “Yes, it was definitely twins.”

No, I told her. We knew it was twins all along, but the doctor wanted to confirm they were in their own sacs. She said they were, in fact, in their own sacs, so Twin A not progressing would not affect Twin B; Twin B would basically progress as though it was a singleton pregnancy all along. She did say that the two twins did originally share the same placenta, so I had a moni-di pregnancy: this means I had a monochorionic, diamniotic twin pregnancy: one embryo that split into two, which would have been genetically identical offspring. These twins share a single placenta (blood supply) but have separate amniotic sacs.

So thankfully, since they are in separate sacs, Twin B would be unaffected. And I hope for the best for Twin B’s progression. And while I have calmed down since yesterday and feel relief that Twin B will be unaffected by Twin A’s death, I still feel heavy in my heart for A. I was also annoyed that the doctor today seemed pretty un-empathetic and so matter-of-fact. She also just stood in the doorway and made it clear that this would be a quick, couple-of-minutes long conversation. It felt very rushed. While I get that vanishing twin syndrome is very common, she really doesn’t have to be so robotic at sharing this and completely disregard my feelings as the person who was carrying these two embryos. Some doctors are truly just assholes. Given there appeared to be no other complications, she said, I didn’t need to follow up with her and could just go back to my clinic doctor. Thank god, I thought. I did NOT want to continue working with this doctor again. She kind of epitomized everything I hate about the worst New York doctors.

Now, I just have to hope for the best and pray for Twin B; my little embryo that could. You can do this. We got this.

I was on the treadmill this morning, doing my usual morning jog to start my workout, thinking about all the times when Chris and I had spent time with Raj and his wife Maria. We’d had so many conversations, serious, fun, jokey, hypothetical, about the past and future; everything. I was thinking about all the things we’d talked about. Raj was so openly vulnerable and admitted how much he depended on and needed Maria; it was so sweet and adorable. We talked about our future hypothetical deaths once.

“No, I definitely need to go first,” Raj admitted, squeezing and bear-hugging Maria. “I can’t live without Maria. I just don’t know what I’d do! I need her for everything! I don’t care how that sounds; it’s just true.”

Chris insisted the same in different words, saying he’d definitely go before me. I gave them both annoyed but comical looks; I hated discussing our future deaths. This kind of topic always made me feel so sad. I wanted to focus on the now and the positive.

What none of us realized at that time was how soon Raj’s “going” would happen. Usually, when we think of our deaths, we think it will happen decades and decades later, not in the prime of our lives in our 30s.

Even if Raj did live as full of a life as he possibly could, it’s still robbery that his life was taken this soon. It just hurts to know that we’ll never see his huge smile or feel his big, nearly crushing bear hug ever again.

Raj’s untimely passing reminded me of Ed’s passing. In my adult life, they are the two people I’ve lost that I have genuinely cared deeply for. They both lived such different lives, yet passed away at similar ages. Ed passed away just a few weeks shy of his 34th birthday. Raj was only 36 (I think?). Raj had traveled the world and truly lived life to its fullest. Ed had never left the country and was just asking me months before he passed about the passport application process. Raj had friends pretty much everywhere and was a true extrovert. My brother was socially awkward just like our dad and had no real friends… just like our dad. Raj had a loving and close relationship with both his parents, to the point where he even called his dad his “best friend.” My brother had a tumultuous relationship with our parents, always with endless conditions, lots of judgments, and our dad barely acknowledged him until after he died.

When I look back at Raj’s life, or at least, what I know of it, he truly did “live life to its fullest “as trite as that sounds. He made the most of every single day. He did as much as he could wherever he was. He hated wasting a moment and was always just so damn positive. When I reflect back on Ed’s life, something held him back quite a bit. Part of it, I’m sure, was the fear my mom instilled in him of the world, always believing something bad was going to happen when you turn the next corner. The other part of it was that he just didn’t have the parental love and support system he needed to be secure in himself to go out and explore the world and really be independent in the way that Raj was. Ed had a lot of potential that just never got seen or recognized. Raj had all the potential that was seen, recognized, and appreciated. And then life had a different plan for him than to continue on with us. Their deaths were a tragedy, but more, as sad as it is, will look at Raj’s life and truly feel it was tragic, whereas with Ed, he has likely already been forgotten by most people who knew him. The world is a cruel place, during life, and even in life after death.

I wonder… if there truly is an after life, a heaven, will Raj meet Ed? Will they have a conversation? Will they have some sort of connection because of me? One day, when it’s my time, will they open up the gates for me?