⚠️ Trigger Warning: Miscarriage, Grief, and Emotional Trauma
This post discusses pregnancy loss, grief, and postpartum depression. If you’re in a tender place, please read with care or come back another time. Your wellbeing matters most. You are not alone. 🖤

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The Shadow I Grew Up With

At sixteen, I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)—a hormonal disorder that affects up to 10% of women of reproductive age. It can cause irregular cycles, problems with ovulation, weight fluctuations, acne, excess hair, insulin resistance, and increased risks for infertility and miscarriage.

The doctor’s words landed like a curse: “It may be harder for you to get pregnant. Harder to stay pregnant.”

That warning followed me like a ghost, shaping how I saw my body, motherhood, and the future. Always humming in the background, like a horror movie score I couldn’t mute.

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The First Loss

January 2022. Five weeks pregnant and glowing with hope, as if the universe had finally granted me the role I was born to play. My ex-husband and I had names ready, futures storyboarded, and hearts open.

The spotting started at our weekly board game night, tucked into our friends’ apartment with laughter and dice clattering across the table. I felt a twinge of worry, but a late-night Google search reassured me—it could just be implantation spotting. We were so sure this was our moment that we even told them the happy news by sending the Jim Halpert GIF to the group chat, the one where he learns Pam is pregnant.

By the end of the night, the bleeding grew heavier. By morning, clots and cramping. Pain that refused to let me rest—no matter how I shifted, I couldn’t escape it. I didn’t dare take anything for relief, clinging to the fragile thought that maybe he or she was still holding on. I was nauseous, dizzy, and barely in control of my own body.

The hardest part was that I went through it alone. I didn’t know what to do, and in hindsight, I probably should have gone to the ER. Instead, I stayed home, trying to convince myself it might stop or that somehow things would turn out differently.

The next day, the OB confirmed it: miscarriage. She looked me in the eye and said, “we will get you pregnant” and prescribed me Femara (letrozole), a fertility drug often used for women with PCOS.

The rest of the week wasn’t any kinder. I fainted in the shower and came to disoriented, scrambling to get myself together for a board meeting. And then, as if the universe wanted to drive the point home, I hit a deer on M-22. The thud rattled through me, a fresh jolt to a body already raw. I pulled over, stepped out into the dark, and screamed profanities into the winter air, each one spilling out in clouds of frosted breath. The deer, dazed but unbroken, eventually staggered up and ran off into the trees. I was left shaking on the roadside, headlights cutting into the cold, feeling like even the magic of that road had abandoned me.

Nine months later, my marriage was over.

The Vanishing Twin

Life didn’t wait for me to heal. I met someone new—messy, reckless, alive. He’s now my husband. I let him get me pregnant quickly, with the help of Femara.

I went to Pregnancy Services for an ultrasound, still waiting on my Medicaid to come through. My mom came with me, running a little behind (as always). The tech turned the screen toward me with a spark in her eye, “there are two.”

Twins. 💫

We heard my mom’s footsteps in the hall, and the tech whispered, grinning, “Let’s see if she notices.” She did—immediately. For a heartbeat, the universe felt bewitched, like I was carrying not just life, but a spell doubled back on itself.

But December brought shadows. Spotting again. The dread that history was repeating itself.

The OB explained Vanishing Twin Syndrome (VTS)—a condition in which one twin is lost early in pregnancy, reabsorbed into the mother’s body or pressed into the surviving sibling’s growth. It happens in up to 30% of twin pregnancies.

Common, yes. Easier, no.

One heartbeat silenced. One heartbeat still steady, flickering like a candle flame on a stormy night. 💓

The Dream That Stayed With Me

Pregnancy dreams are strange things—wild, vivid, stitched together like omens. One still lingers:

Grams held my lost son in her arms. My mom hovered nearby, exactly as she did in life. I sobbed because I hadn’t even held him yet.

I don’t believe in life after death—despite my ghost stories, despite my witchy obsessions. But that dream felt like a visitation. Maybe Grams was keeping him safe in that liminal space between here and whatever comes next. 🌌

That dream became a song—Missing Part. Music is its own spell, a way to bleed gently when paragraphs collapse under the weight of grief.

Lyrics written by me, plugged into Soniva Music, and protected under copyright. Please do not copy, reproduce, or distribute without permission. 🎶🖤

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The Girl Who Stayed

On July 24, 2023, my daughter was born.

Perfect.
Mine. 🌈

I think often about the children I lost—the one I never saw, and the one who vanished while his sister grew. They shaped me. Made me softer in some places, harder in others.

Now grief and gratitude burn together, like twin flames in the same candle. 🕯️

I will never forget what I lost.
And I will never stop holding close the girl who stayed.

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For the Women Reading This

If you have carried loss—you are not broken.
If you are holding grief—you are not alone.
If you are still waiting for your rainbow—you are still whole.

Our stories matter. Our scars matter. And the children we lost, the children we carried, and the children we dreamed—they all belong in our constellation

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References

• PCOS facts & fertility: Mayo Clinic – Polycystic Ovary Syndrome
• Femara (letrozole) for infertility: National Library of Medicine – Letrozole in fertility treatment
• Vanishing Twin Syndrome: American Pregnancy Association – Vanishing Twin Syndrome