tw: pregnancy loss.
please do not hesitate to save for later or pass on entirely if this is not for your heart right now.
After a season of the most effervescent joy, we recently learned our precious time with our baby girl had come to its end.
Here is how we are finding our way through.
+ Carter carried everything. He told the people who needed to know. He made sure I ate. He cared for me in the most tender, messy ways post-surgery. He held me. He watched an embarrassing amount of Housewives and Love Island with me. He quietly took the reins on a baby shower I was meant to host. He met my worst days — the ones I couldn’t get out of bed — with nothing but grace, even while carrying his own immeasurable grief.
+ Our village showed up. Flowers, casseroles, words. My mother flew in and gently helped me remember how to function.
+ I was gentle with myself. Some days, brushing my teeth was the whole of what I could do. I let texts and emails and the obligations of life go unanswered. On good days, I made it to the couch.
+ I stepped away from work. This is precisely why protections like sick leave and the PWFA exist. My colleagues have been extraordinary and human and loving and compassionate.
+ I got a facial. I went to therapy. I took walks with Taylor Swift in my ears. I ate the foods that felt like comfort. I window-shopped at places that feel like home.
+ I checked out thirteen Elin Hilderbrand novels from the library and read them everywhere — in the sun at Chastain, in pre-op, curled into the couch, basically anywhere and always. When grief felt too large to hold, I disappeared into her stories for hours.
+ I stepped away from my phone and social media. I wrote. I needlepointed. I read (see: thirteen Elin Hilderbrand novels). I listened to music, or to strangers' small talk in cafés. I tried to keep the TV off. I let the news pass me by entirely.
+ I bought myself a special pair of Lake pajamas for after surgery.
+ We got away. After my first 24 hours of post-surgery recovery, my parents sent us to our favorite resort for a few days. Some days we sat by the pool. Some days we stayed in bed and ordered room service. We healed in a place that felt tucked away and quiet.
+ I keep managing symptoms, because my body still believes — and is behaving as though — it is still carrying a viable pregnancy. My hcg levels are still so high that pregnancy tests remain positive and I am still grappling with the debilitating symptoms that have been plaguing me from the start (namely extreme nausea and vomiting). After surgery came long bleeding and pain that arrived in waves, deferred and interruptive.
+ Above all, I try — every single day — to find gratitude. If I’ve learned anything from the last five years of life’s most heartbreaking challenges (my mom’s cancer battle, my husband’s cancer battle, and, now, the loss of our baby girl), it’s that you are never a victim, and that joy is something worth fighting recklessly for.
+ We are still in pain that, at times, feels insurmountable. The other side of this valley is hard to see. So when you see us smiling, laughing, and sharing the light and fizzy and beautifully vapid corners of life — please root for us. We are fighting recklessly for this joy.
We love you more than words could ever hold, baby girl.
Wherever you are, we carry you with us — and we cannot wait to meet you, one day, on the other side of all this.
P.S. I promise to always keep The Lauren Letter free as my little exercise of trying to make the world a bit more beautiful. If, in return, you could considering giving this post a “like” or share with a friend, it would just mean the world to me.
So very sorry Lauren. Be gentle with yourself.
Lauren and Carter, I am unbelievably sorry for your loss. Thank you for having the strength to share you experience with all of us - sending you all the love I can 💜💜