Surviving Pregnancy After Loss: Understanding PTSD

In this heartfelt episode, Jacqueline shares her personal journey of navigating a pregnancy after experiencing multiple losses, including miscarriages and the loss of her daughter Maren at 20 weeks. Recorded from a makeshift desk in her family room, she discusses the emotional and physical changes her family has undergone in preparing their home for their new daughter, who is arriving via surrogacy. Jacqueline candidly talks about the complexities of dealing with PTSD and mental health issues after loss, her experiences with the healthcare system, and the importance of support for women going through similar challenges. She aims to offer reassurance and solidarity to listeners who may be facing their own struggles with pregnancy after loss, highlighting the significance of recognizing and addressing mental health and grief.

00:00 Welcome to My Makeshift Studio: A Glimpse into My Life

00:18 The Journey of Room Transformations and Personal Loss

01:29 Embracing Change: Office Spaces and Preparing for Our Daughter

02:02 Channeling Nervous Energy: Home Projects and Nursery Dreams

04:26 Facing PTSD and the Complexities of Pregnancy After Loss

08:36 Navigating the Emotional Landscape of Surrogacy and Anticipation

16:22 The Importance of Mental Health Awareness in Pregnancy and Loss

21:58 Improving Care for Women Experiencing Miscarriage or Loss

28:26 Final Thoughts and Resources for Support

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• 22:49 (Cont.) Surviving Pregnancy After Loss: Understanding PTSD

Transcript

Hi, thanks for joining me on today's episode. I'm currently recording in the wee hours before my kids wake up and I'm sitting at a makeshift desk I made in our family room with a little end table on the couch. Um, our office is currently under construction.

So. We have moved our bedrooms around a lot.  We've been in this house almost four years, and when we first moved in each of our sons had their own room. We had an office and then we had our master bedroom. Then, when we were preparing to welcome Maren into our family, 

we moved the boys into a shared room in the biggest bedroom, kept that room empty.  We wanted them to get used to sharing a room long before,  baby was to arrive. And if you followed my story, you know that unfortunately my pregnancy had ended and we lost Maren at 20 weeks.

So, at this point, thankfully did not get to the point of, like, decorating a nursery or anything like that. We had just kept the space open. It was just an empty room that we were going to get to. Hopefully around 24, 25 weeks along when we felt was just confident because Because again, this was not our first experience with loss. So, then that room stayed empty. 

And as you know, a year after losing Maren is when I started working on the podcast. And so that room had turned into my office, my space to grieve, my space to record, my space to heal. And so that brings us to today where we have moved things around yet again.

 The boys ended up moving into that bedroom.  They've shared that room for a while now, and they love sharing a room. My office became their old room. Josh's office stayed the same. Once we became successfully pregnant, thanks to our surrogate with our daughter, that is going to be here so soon, literally three weeks or less.

We move things around again. So now Josh and I share an office. The boys share room, we have our master bedroom and the nursery. However, we have done so many projects in the last couple of weeks. I think it's just like putting our nervous energy to good use. At least for me, I am like equally excited and terrified at the thought that we are so close to.

Welcoming our daughter into the world that I just like, don't even know what to do with myself. You guys, it's such a unique experience. Not being the one carrying the pregnancy and me being pregnant every other time. I've always just been very hyper focused on the pregnancy itself. You know, nerves, anxiety, wanting to do the best I can, everything I can as if I could truly change the outcome of any pregnancy.

Like I just, I thought I could, but my body just was going to do what I was going to do anyway. So this time I just have all this built up energy. And so we've been doing a lot of house projects over here. And shout out to my parents because they have been aiding in this process for sure.

My mom and I have been swapping pins on Pinterest and all the things to try and, Update our house I don't know why,  at this point, but we are just doing all the projects that I've been wanting to do for a very long time. So we redid our master bedroom. I will share some pictures of that on Instagram.

But of course, I'm not like a usual DIY like home anything. So I did not take a proper before photo, but I'm sure I have like an old photo of our bedroom somewhere.  But it turned out really nice the bedroom is done. We still need to do our like master bathroom, but you know, we'll get there.

And then the nursery of course is done, which I've been dying to share that. I have not shared that yet, especially because I've got so many pieces for the nursery off of Facebook marketplace, you guys. So my mom is like the queen of marketplace. She finds anything you could possibly be. Even if you're like, have a very specific thing in mind, somehow she finds it secondhand.

And. Like quality pieces, so,  I will be sharing that on Instagram soon as well. So you can see the nursery. But that leaves us with the office. The office has kind of become like the move it into the office while we're working on this room, because then we'll figure out where it's going to go.

We had a Peloton in there. We move that into our bedroom. Cause it makes more sense. We have bookshelves to get rid of and. Like just, it is, you can barely walk in that room right now. So that's why I'm coming to you from our family room today. But honestly, it's kind of nice. I am in front of a fire.

It is quiet down here. I apologize if it's a little more echoey than usual, since I'm not in like a closed space, but you know, mom life, we are just rolling, rolling with it. Okay. Today's episode is going to be a bit shorter, and it's just me today, you guys, because I wanted to come with you.

That's something that has been just weighing me down this last week,  unexpectedly. And I know that if you're listening  and you've unfortunately experienced a miscarriage, we know one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, or if you have been through a loss, whether stillbirth or a neonatal death or truly any loss at all, it's grief.

Grief will just smack you in the face. A topic that's not often as talked about, I feel like after a pregnancy loss or an infant loss is PTSD. We talk about the grief a lot, you know, I, you've heard me talk about it, how it comes in waves and everyone deals with grief differently  but PTSD, for those who have experienced a traumatic birth or a traumatic pregnancy or a loss, it's hard to shake those experiences sometimes,  it's important to recognize that PTSD can affect anyone.

So of course I have experienced this, with my own pregnancies when I was carrying the pregnancy. After losing the twins, That first trimester with Hunter, I was just on edge,   time could not move fast enough. So I mean like I unfortunately just kept wishing time away. I was just like, I just need to get like 17 weeks. I just need to get farther than I did before and It's really hard to be present and enjoy an experience when you're constantly just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Of course, once I got to that point, I I unfortunately had a slew of issues and as you know, Hunter was born at 24 weeks. So that pregnancy truthfully was a blur and that sad to me now at this point looking back because That's all I had. That was me carrying our first son into the world.

Following that of course with Noah, and this was post my cerclage surgery. So I was feeling a  I'll say blindly confident. I was confident in science, but like also stranger things have happened and I've had doctors tell me that this through collage is going to hold before. So with Noah,  I feel like I enjoyed more once I got into my second trimester and was  Feeling confident.

But the second I felt confident, I found myself in the hospital  with a polyhydramnios and preterm labor. And that was 24 weeks to 28 weeks. And again, that was at a time when I was like, Oh, if I get to 24 weeks, like I know my son was brought into this world now this time,  I knew too much, that just was terrifying.

That is too early. I saw my son fight for his life and beat all the odds in four months. And, and then all the therapies and things to follow. So it's not that I felt comfortable, but I just had this weird like marker in my brain of like, okay, we just need to get past it. And then after a month in the hospital, I spent my third trimester at home on like a modified bed rest.

And. At that point, I was just so disconnected from my pregnancy because I just wanted to get through it. I just wanted to bring baby home. So Noah was born on a scheduled C section date after all the highs and lows of that pregnancy. He was born at 37 weeks and one day, which was a planned C section and moved up just to avoid any kind of labor and risk of uterine rupture with my cerclage in place.

As the story goes, I had gotten pregnant naturally with Maren and at this point I can genuinely say that I was confident,  bringing home a full term baby and I know there's technical terms, like early term, I guess is 37 weeks,  to me, that seven pound, seven Three ounce baby who was perfectly healthy and came home within a few days of the hospital with no Nikki's day was the fullest term I've ever seen.

So I felt confident and not having all the, you know, fertility drugs in me and just having a natural pregnancy. I felt amazing. During  the first 19 weeks of that pregnancy, I was taking in  everything, you know, every little movement, every symptom, every growing inch of my belly,  I just, And I took it all in and at this point, I'm so glad that I did because that's all I had.

That's all I got. And within 24 hours of back pain, we had lost Maren and I was rushed into an emergency C section and that's all I had of that. And unfortunately,  in this last week, we are down to the wire, right? We are so close to bringing a baby home safely that these feelings of PTSD have crept in, in more ways than one.

Throughout this pregnancy with our surrogate, it has been manageable for me. It has truly been the best thing for my mental health to have somebody else carry our baby. not that I could have physically done it anyway, but during this process, I've often thought like, even if I could technically physically carry our baby,  I think it might break me mentally.

You know, my mental health would be in a lot of trouble because there's just so much trauma that I've experienced. And. It's become apparent to me recently, as I am still feeling these feelings

from my perspective, this pregnancy has just flown, and I think it's for a couple reasons. You know, the obvious. I'm not the one carrying the baby, of course. So I'm not feeling the pregnancy. I'm not experiencing it in that way, but also I'm busy with my six year old and four year old boys and the podcast and my husband, he works and travels for work.

You know, we've got a busy life. And so it's been very easy to be distracted and. I don't feel guilty because I'm as involved as I can be. 

And that's been really good for me. Plus, I think it's also flown by because getting to this point was so slow. I mean, from the time that we decided to do surrogacy from the time our daughter will be born Is about like two years and three months.  So it was like slow, slow, slow, slow, slow. And then the second we found out she was pregnant, it was lightning speed.

And so here we are. And this last week has been challenging for my husband and I, um, you know, we haven't had a lot of time to sit down and talk about it, but we both are feeling a lot of the same feelings, but in different ways. For example, in the last week, we both have slipped up multiple times and referred to our daughter that's due to arrive as the name Maren,  which has been triggering and unexpected.

So I'm not going to share it today, but we have chosen a name for our baby who will be here soon. And we've had the name actually for a while. And so when referring to her, we have called her by this name and all of a sudden in this last week, as it's becoming real, and we are like preparing to bring her home, we've started slipping up and referring to her as Maren, her daughter that passed away in 2021.

Which is unexpected. And the first time it happened to me, unfortunately, was with our son. I was asking him to put something in the baby's room he was helping me organize  and this is my four year old. I was like, can you go put this in Maren's room? And he's like, Maren has a room. 

And I was like,  Noah, you know, I'm like  the nursery, you know, which room. And then he looked at me and then it clicked. And I was like, Oh honey, I'm sorry. I meant. baby girl's room and luckily he didn't seem traumatized by that. He was actually excited that like, he thought that,  his angel, sissy,  Maren gets a room  and, um, I was taken back.

 And then my husband made the same mistake. He was talking to my mom about something and referred to our baby as Maren and then even my mom had a slip up, We were organizing stuff for the baby's room and referred to something as like, Oh, well, when Maren's here and you know, my mom felt mortified, but to me, it was  something we were already doing.

And it just showed that like, it kind of made me feel oddly good to hear somebody else  say Maren, because she's not forgotten. We are about to welcome another daughter, but like  losing Maren is still losing Maren. And so if you're listening and you are experiencing a pregnancy after a loss, I hope you know that a subsequent baby pregnancy does not replace any pregnancy or child or baby lost that came before.

So hearing Maren's name just shows me that she is still loved and she was greatly wanted and not just by us, but by our family and everyone who knew about her. Life. The other triggering experience unexpectedly that I had is At our surrogate's latest appointment, we learned that baby girl is about six pounds, 11 ounces. she's in the 66th percentile and she is head down. And our surrogate had said, you know, I had a feeling because I've been feeling kicks in my ribs lately, especially when I like bend down to put on my shoes, I'm feeling kicks in my ribs. So I had a feeling she was head down. 

And for me, I'm like, wow, I have never, not once have my, any of my children been head down, right? Like everyone was either too early. Hunter was literally born feet first, even though I delivered vaginally, it was just so abrupt. And my cervix legitimately just. caved, like opened.

There was like one push involved,  but he was feet first, like so traumatic  for him and myself. And then Noah, even though it was a scheduled c section at 37 weeks, I remember being on the operating table and my doctor being surprised. They were like, he's breached, she's breached.

And I just remember thinking like, does that matter? Like it's a C section, but I think it just took everyone by surprise, I guess. I'm not quite sure, but not once have I had a baby head down. And so hearing that she's like, ready and in position. Just had be feeling all the ways one. I was like, Oh, and you know, our surrogates, like they, her cervix is soft, but it is closed.

You know, she is not dilated. I'm just  I had like a wow moment of like, huh?  Like a six and a half pound, almost seven pound baby head down. And, and like your body is just. Protected. Like it's not, nothing's going to happen. You're just closed. And I just remember having a 22 week baby in my uterus and thinking he's trying to bust out at any moment.

I like the kicks were so low.  It was traumatic.  Her being head down now, I also was just like, wow, like this is, this is happening. Like any moment. I mean, we're 37 weeks in one day today. And I'm like, Holy cow. Like today is the day that I gave birth to Noah. Like how is this even possible right now? It just really put things into perspective. 

And then of course the obvious PTSD moment at this point, which again, I thought we were past and I didn't think that I would feel this way because the pregnancy has been flawless.

I mean, Our surrogate has been so healthy. Our baby has been so healthy. We are so close to the finish line, but I think it's because we're so close. Like I genuinely just cannot fathom this working out. Like logically, I know that it will, but my core and just everything that I feel just has a hard time accepting it.

And honestly, it's because after losing Maren, I just, you know,  Like in my gut going into it, I was like, this is too easy. This is too good to be true. I got pregnant on my own after eight years of infertility and not having success. I had a beautiful pregnancy. I felt good, and. It was taken away in a moment.

And so I just don't think I'll ever be okay until I am holding her in my arms. I know if you're listening to this, you yourself, and if not you, you know, somebody who has experienced a pregnancy. After a loss. Now, I know my situation is unique, but I'm also confident that there are listeners out there who may have experienced this as well, where you are finding yourself growing your family with a surrogate and still experiencing these feelings bubbling up, even though you're not the one carrying the pregnancy.

I wanted to be open and honest with you and share this with you today because these are very real feelings. Okay. But they're also very scary. 

PTSD and depression are very real mental health scenarios and if you're a mom, I feel like this can easily get overlooked because you are caring for others.  I don't think I properly grieved after Maren. Because I was busy trying to be strong and keep our family going for the kids that we had with us. I  don't think I properly grieved Charlotte and Cecilia because they were our first and in my head I wasn't like worthy of it.

I was so early on and it's not even early on, you know, sadly, that's the thing I mean, I was in my second trimester and I still felt like well, I just need to suck it up and I just this sucks, but I didn't think I was worthy of the feelings I was feeling. So I'm here to tell you whether you had a chemical pregnancy, you lost a baby, you lost a pregnancy at five weeks or whether you had a stillborn baby, your feelings are valid and it's so important that you acknowledge them, sit in them, be open about them and not be afraid to talk about them because Years later, I promise you it will creep up on you.

So I was reading this study done by the Imperial College of London from a couple years ago, and it revealed that the extent of women affected by PTSD after experiencing an early miscarriage, so like before 12 weeks, or even an ectopic pregnancy. So the study of 650 women, 29 percent showed symptoms of post traumatic stress one month after losing a baby.

That's PTSD from an early miscarriage. So I'm here to tell you, it doesn't matter how far along you were when you lost your pregnancy or baby, almost 30 percent had PTSD a month after. Now that declined to about 18 percent of the women experiencing PTSD after nine months. The  study also found that one month after losing a baby, 24 percent of women had symptoms of anxiety and 11 percent had symptoms of depression  after a period of recovery.

So after nine months, these percentages did decrease and it reduced down to 17 percent and 6 percent after nine months. So that just shows you that it will get better. But if you lose a pregnancy,  take those nine months and process it.

I know when we're in the moment, we don't always know to take that pause. Especially if it's your first loss, if it's your first pregnancy, you know, you just want to be a mom so bad that you want to keep going, right? You want to try again. I have plenty of friends and acquaintances in my circles that have had a miscarriage and got right back up and,  Try it again as soon as because the doctors will tell you just get a period or you'll be fine you know a month passes and then you're trying again and while We're not all blessed to have timelines where we can waste time in the pregnancy department.

I still think it's important to pause and take care of your mental health because  the last thing you want to do is be pregnant and Dealing with PTSD and depression when you should be enjoying your pregnancy to the best of your ability Obviously, you're gonna have some of that With a pregnancy after loss, but take this as a reminder to pause and take care of yourself because I've had to do that multiple times over the years. And, you know, mine has been very drawn out, but I do know, the main reason I paused after. losing our twins was really because I needed a break from fertility treatments and I needed to regroup because it had been four months straight of medications and IUIs and my body was just done.

And of course I carried a pregnancy until 16 weeks. And I had two traumatic,   vaginal deliveries. So I had to recover. But at that time, I was not thinking about my mental health. I was just thinking like, I Do not want any more fertility drugs right now.

So we ended up pausing for about six months and I wish in that time I would have dove deeper into my feelings. So learn from me, talk to a therapist, talk to a friend,  and take care of yourself.  

Now, if you're listening to me talk about this and you're wondering, like, no, but like, what is PTSD? Like, what are symptoms of PTSD? So symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder,  they, of course, vary from person to person and in the situation, but they can include things like flashbacks to the experience.

Nightmares about the experience, repetitive and distressing images or sensations, physical sensations, such as pain, sweating, feeling sick or trembling, and of course, anxiety and depression. I know I've experienced some of these things when just being in a hospital. I'm hoping this time around, since I will not be in my own hospital, we will be in Texas in a hospital  hopefully some of those nerves will be calmed. And you know, of course it's, it's not me and it's just all a new experience. So I'm hoping that will help, but I do know that, it was paralyzing. My body was just like paralyzed every time I thought I had to go to the hospital. And that's like knowing that I would be in great care and I love my doctors and all of that.

I just, you know, had actual physical sensations of like sweating and like feeling like I could get sick. which was when it was also hard when I had to make the call to go into the hospital with Maren because my body literally was paralyzed. My brain was saying like you need to be seen.

This is not okay. My body was. stuck. Like I was like, it took a lot for me to be like, okay, like I need to go to the hospital because I just knew that I was not,  not coming home with a baby. And that is just, it's a lot.  Stay tuned, but I'm hoping that I can have a calmer experience in a hospital this time around.

So I'll be the first to tell you that I think there's a long way to go still in caring for women who have experienced a miscarriage or a loss and find themselves back. In a pregnancy, in an OB office, in a hospital, there's a lot of education that needs to go on still surrounding this to support women in the ways that they need mentally.

I saw something recently on Instagram that someone shared that an OBGYN's office was putting in they were having a separate waiting room for those women who were being treated.

We're currently like going through a miscarriage or had an experienced a miscarriage so they can be separate from the other women. And I just think like, how have we not done that yet? I mean, I know we're just now starting to be in the recent years, openly talking about miscarriage and loss,  but I think we're there.

I think it's time. Everyone should be doing this.  It is so hard, you know, you go for your follow up your six week or whatever post miscarriage and you're sitting in a waiting room of all of these pregnant women.

And  for me, at least it was not like a hopeful feeling, like seeing other people. It was devastating sitting there waiting to go into an appointment to discuss what had happened and to be checked out. When I didn't get to bring a baby home,

you know, I've never experienced a  miscarriage in this way. Cause mine have always been premature deliveries, but how about those of you who have had to sit in a waiting room knowing that you are currently miscarrying  sitting next to someone who's pregnant or people with  a baby with them for a followup.

Like it is, it's a lot and it's not hard to separate these things for the good and welfare of. women's mental health. The other thing that I think that can be improved is just etiquette from nurses in hospitals and labor and delivery. 

Knowing that you could have a patient who  just delivered a baby. And this wasn't their first delivery. This wasn't their first pregnancy. This wasn't their first baby. You know, they've lost, they could have lost a lot multiple times. 

And it's important to train nurses to be sensitive to these situations, even when they aren't shared, I think there are just like protocols that should be in place that you should just assume certain things or better yet, this always blew my mind. Like, Look at your patient's chart. 

I mean, I have dealt with nurses in the past,  I'm trying to remember, you know, when I was on bedrest with not so much Hunter, because that was very just on edge.  And I was not moving and there was, we were just hoping to get a baby here safely.  But when I was on bedrest for a month in the hospital, praying it with Noah,  I mean, I had a nurse go on and on about how,  that's awesome that you're gonna have two boys.

Boys are so much easier than girls. Like you wouldn't think so, but boys are the best boys, boys. Meanwhile, all I'm thinking about is like,  I'm not saying boys are the best or girls are the best, but I know that  I have two girls that I wish were here with me, like, as she's complaining about her  teenage daughter.

And I'm like, well, I will never get to see my daughters, um, actually become teenagers because I lost them because. They were born premature. Like give a quick glance at the chart, maybe, or maybe just be sensitive when you are talking about these topics because this should not be happening to women. You know, I'm already on my third traumatic pregnancy.

I am in the hospital on bedrest and Now I am grieving, like again, grief has come up because now my daughters are on my mind, not just trying to bring my son here safely, but now I'm thinking of what I've lost. So it's just, there's a lot of instances like this. And I also had a nurse. I think it was during the month of my hospital stay,  pregnant with Noah that, you know, after kind of chatting with her about my experiences, and I don't know how it came up because to be completely honest,  I was not like as open as I am now, you know, four years ago, five years ago, Especially in this moment when I am on hospital bedrest trying to essentially survive and get through it and just do what I need to do.

I was not ready to just like talk about my whole past, five year experience with loss and infertility, but somehow it came up and basically had a nurse suggest that I should be done having kids because. That's a lot.  And I remember thinking like, wow, I was really hoping that this experience was going to be the hope that I needed.

I thought that having surgery prior to this pregnancy would allow me to carry to term and everything else would just fall into place. And my husband and I would have the big family we've always dreamed of. And you're telling me openly that, wow, that's a lot.  At least now you'd have to, like, that'd be good.

And I'm just, you know, dumbfounded.  So I will say I'm a part of the share program at my hospital  check your local hospital or your area for a share program. It's a supportive group for navigating miscarriage and loss and even pregnancy after loss. And it has been so helpful to me. There's a share walk every year where we honor the baby's gone too soon.

I had the honor of being the speaker at the event last year, and this year I am on the committee hoping to help out however I can. So check your local area for a SHARE program. You can just Google it and look it up. But I know with that program, they, at least at my hospital, are working towards having trainings for the staff. To work around these delicate topics. I know the group has reached out to members multiple times to see if anyone is willing to share their story in front of a board of staff members so they can learn from our experiences so we can talk about what it feels like to be in these positions so we can share our experiences with birth and our care after loss.

So they can better these situations, but I know that I'm blessed to go to a very great hospital that is working towards these goals, but I just think everyone needs to be doing that and be sensitive with these situations because as we know, one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage. So many of you listening out there. have or unfortunately will experience this in one way or another.

Another thing that is helpful. So if you are pregnant again, after experiencing any kind of PTSD, after experiencing a miscarriage, you should have the option of like an extra early pregnancy scan to help reassure you. I know my OB does this. I was told throughout my pregnancies, if at any point you are just, you know, feeling unsure, come in and we can, have you listen to the heartbeat, or we can do an ultrasound, like we'll squeeze you in for a quick scan, just to put your mind at ease. So, keep that in mind, and if it's not offered to you, just ask. Because your mental health, especially when pregnant, is so, so important.

Okay, as you know, I said this was going to be a short episode. Spoiler alert, it wasn't. Because I am long winded and I'm just so passionate about these topics.  And I'm thinking about you. If I can save just one woman from experiencing some of the trauma that I've experienced, obviously I can't stop things from happening, but I hope I can support you in how to support yourself if you've been through any kind of trauma.

As always, I am rooting for you, I am here for you, and I hope you take care of yourself. If you haven't yet, join us in the Motherhood Intended community group on Facebook. It is linked in the show notes along with the link to follow along on Instagram, which is where I share more of my personal stories and episode teasers.

And then, of course, if you're navigating infertility, I've created kind of a month by month roadmap just to kind of keep you focused on what's ahead. It's broken down month by month, but it's really just not to overwhelm you, with different things that you can be doing on your journey to baby.

So it's all in the show notes. And last but not least, you know, as a quick reminder, if you're enjoying the podcast, if you find these episodes helpful, share it with a friend,  I really want to spread awareness of these topics and offer support to as many women as I can. So somebody came to mind to you today in this episode, share it with them,  screenshot it, tag a friend on Instagram, tag me so I know you're listening. No one should have to experience these things alone, so let's do it together. And if you are enjoying what you're listening to, hit the fifth star and leave a review. I love the feedback I'm preparing for the next season already, and we'll spend most of the summer just amplifying all of my resources for you. So your feedback is always helpful.