'​I Had A Miscarriage With Twins And It Was As Awful As It Sounds' (2024)

I started campaigning to have a third child when I was still pregnant with my second son. My husband Chris and I had always assumed that we’d have two kids and call it a day, but I burst into tears when he mentioned getting a vasectomy after our baby was born. I couldn’t explain it, but something deep inside me felt that our family wasn’t complete.

It took six months of long talks, but Chris finally said he wanted to expand our family, too. It only took a few months of trying before I was pregnant—and we were both excited. About seven weeks into the pregnancy, I had my first ultrasound and the results blew us away: We were expecting identical twins.

Once we got over the initial shock, we were thrilled. But twins are automatically deemed a high-risk pregnancy by doctors—and ours were what’s known as monochorionic-diamniotic twins, meaning they had different amniotic sacs but shared a placenta. That made my pregnancy more high risk than fraternal twins, who have their own sacs and placenta, but less high risk than twins that share a sac and placenta.

Because the pregnancy was high risk, we were given multiple scans and all of them painted the same picture: The babies were active and growing on track. They also aced genetic screening around 12 weeks.

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We made it to the second trimester, when the risk of miscarriage lowers dramatically, and we had fun telling everyone we talked to that not only were we pregnant, we were going to have identical twins. Chris and I started sending each other YouTube montages of the crazy things twins do, and I even ordered him a silly shirt that said “Real Men Make Twins.” We were so excited for the future.

But during a routine visit to my ob-gyn, everything changed.

I was about 14 weeks pregnant at the time and, since the appointment was routine (we had just had an ultrasound, and everything was looking good), I told Chris to go to work while I went to the visit on my own. After chatting with my doctor for a bit, she listened for the babies’ heartbeats with a fetal Doppler ultrasound. The only sound we heard was my heartbeat.

I wasn’t freaked out at that point—I have a tilted uterus, which makes it hard to hear fetal heartbeats until the babies are bigger, and we had the same issue with my last son during the pregnancy. Still, she sent me across the hall for an ultrasound to make sure everything was okay.

As soon as the babies came up on the screen, I knew something was wrong. They had always been jumping and kicking, and they were just…lying there. The ultrasound technician looked concerned and, after what seemed like an eternity of scanning, she said what I knew in my gut: “I’m sorry. I’m not seeing any heartbeats.” They were gone.

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I covered my face and burst into tears. “I need to call my husband…I need to call my husband,” I kept saying. She left the room to get the doctor and I called Chris. “The babies are gone,” I choked out. He immediately ran out of work to come to the doctor’s office.

What happened next is kind of a blur. My doctor came in and said that measurements showed that the babies hadn’t grown since our last scan, a little more than a week ago. They had likely been gone for days before we even realized it. I was escorted to a private room, where I sank to the floor and just sobbed. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

Chris arrived a few minutes later. I’ll never forget the look on his face—he was devastated. We just held each other and cried.

My doctor came in a few minutes later and gave us several options: We could do nothing and I would likely miscarry on my own at home; I could take misoprostol, a drug that would cause a miscarriage, and miscarry at home; or I could have a surgical procedure known as a dilation and evacuation (D&E;), which would dilate my cervix and essentially vacuum everything out while I was under general anesthesia.

Since the first two options sounded like mental torture, I chose the D&E.;

I had surgery later that day.

Chris and I went home and spent the next four hours leading up to surgery crying. I sobbed in the passenger seat as we parked at the hospital. Our next trip to the hospital was supposed to be when I delivered the babies; not this. Once we were at the hospital, my doctor did another ultrasound to be absolutely sure that there were no heartbeats. I prayed so hard that it was all a mistake, but everything was the same: The babies were gone.

I cried as I was prepped for surgery, and cried as they put me on the OR table. The surgery was supposed to be “quick” we were told, but Chris said I was in there for an hour. When I woke up, they told me everything went well, but that I had lost a lot of blood. (That's actually pretty common during a D&E;, according to Jessica Shepherd, M.D., a minimally-invasive gynecologist at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.)

I was too weak to walk on my own at that point, so I was taken to the bathroom in a wheelchair. I looked at my face in the mirror—I was incredibly pale and my eyes were red from crying. I barely looked like myself.

We were discharged and assumed the physical trauma was over, but that night was worse.

I had lost so much blood that I had trouble getting around. I couldn’t sleep and I drank a lot of water, on my doctor’s instructions, which made me have to pee a lot. But I was so weak that I had to crawl to the bathroom. Chris tried to help me, but I wanted to try to let him sleep, so I often went on my own. I passed out several times on the toilet, bruising my face, shoulders, and head in the process.

At one point, I remember using the bathroom and then hearing Chris yell from what seemed like far away, asking if I was okay. I had fainted and was lying on the floor in a heap—he had to carry me back to bed.

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From then on, I knew I needed a chaperone every time I used the bathroom. In the morning, Chris’ mom came over while he left to take our boys to school. I called my doctor, who said I’d need a blood transfusion if things didn’t start to get better. Luckily, they did.

Chris and I both took the day off from work and just spent it crying and holding each other. Several times during the day, I just walked to our bedroom, laid on the ground, and sobbed. I couldn’t believe that our little babies were gone.

Chris went back to work the next day, and my mom stayed with me to make sure I didn’t pass out again. I wasn’t allowed to drive for several days after the surgery because of the blood loss, so she and Chris took turns taking the boys to school and picking them up.

Chris and I eventually decided to post something on Facebook to let our friends and family know about what happened. Everyone knew about the twins at this point, and we figured it would save us a lot of awkward conversations. We also wanted to be open about what we had gone through, since we know so many others have suffered in silence. I was shocked at how many messages I received from friends and acquaintances who shared their own stories of miscarriage.

It’s now been more than a week since this happened, and it all feels like a weird, bad dream.

I don’t break down every day, but I allow myself to have a moment to sit, reflect, and tear up a little in the morning before I start work. Little things here and there during the day will remind me of the twins and the future we imagined for them, and I’ll just cry. There’s nothing else I can do.

Physically, I’m doing better. I’ve stopped bleeding, and even that makes me sad. It’s a reminder that I’m healing, and I’m oddly not sure that I’m ready for that. My energy levels aren’t back to normal, though, and the few attempts I’ve made at exercise have been pretty short-lived. Emotionally, it’s still tough, but every day is getting a tiny bit easier.

I hate that this happened. I hate that there’s nothing I can say or do to bring those babies back. I want so badly to be pregnant with them again, blissfully imagining what our future as a crazy family of six would be like.

I feel guilty about occasionally feeling overwhelmed by my pregnancy and how we were going to handle two babies at once. If only I had known.

I hate that I can’t read or hear about other people’s gripes about the minor aspects of pregnancy like stretch marks and nausea without wishing I could drill into them how lucky they are to be pregnant at all. I hate that we have no idea why this happened, and probably never will.

I hate that this has jaded me for future pregnancies, if we’re lucky enough to have them. Even though statistics show that the majority of women go on to have healthy pregnancies after a miscarriage, I know that I’ll worry every day that this will happen again.

There is some good to come from this, though.

This experience made me stop to appreciate and fully reflect on how incredibly grateful I am for my two children. It's also made Chris and I realize how much we want a bigger family, and we plan to try again.

My doctor said it’s a good idea to give my body a few menstrual cycles to repair itself first, and we’re planning to do just that. The experience, as terrible as it has been, has also brought us closer and introduced a new level of empathy in our relationship. I’m so grateful for him, and I plan on appreciating him as much as possible for the rest of our lives.

To other women who have been through a miscarriage, I want to say this: I’m so sorry for your loss. I didn’t understand before this how devastating a miscarriage can be. You are not alone in your grief, and even though it feels like your body has failed you, it’s so important to remind yourself that it’s not your fault. People keep telling me that, and I’m slowly learning to accept it.

We can never get those babies back—and that’s a fact that I’m still struggling with—but we will never forget them. Still, we’re hopeful for the future. And right now, that’s all we can be.