I had just gotten out of school for the summer. I was 21, living at home, with little to no responsibilities other than going to work and paying for gas to get there. My boyfriend had decided that he wanted to move closer to me and I had caught him looking at rings.
My life was great.
I had my wisdom teeth out on a Friday. My boyfriend, Josh, had said that he would take care of me. He had just moved into a small apartment in my home town. He and I had decorated it together. He had just gotten a new job.
Everything was perfect.
Then it happened.
The day after my wisdom teeth came out, I was still numb and Josh called the doctor. The doc sent in some steroids and antibiotics. I was weak, but after 48 hours of being in bed, I was ready to get out of the house.
We went to the Renaissance Fair and had a great time.
A week or so later, one night, I took a pregnancy test.
It was positive.
What?! There was no way. I mean, of course there was a way, but no...no this couldn't be happening. We weren't ready to be parents. We were just having fun.
I went to the doctor and got a blood test and the doctor sent me to the hospital because I was cramping so bad. The physician's assistant at the ER told me that I was most likely going to miscarry. A flood of emotions came over me, along with the rising hormones in my body, and I couldn't think. I didn't know what I was going to do. Josh was beside me, he told me that no matter what happened, he was going to stand with me. He loved me.
The blood test came back, and I was indeed pregnant, but my hormones weren't rising like they were supposed to. They were too high for how far along I was, but they were also not high enough. They were just there, stuck, in the middle. Kind of like my mind was.
Then one day, my now-husband told me, "You're not going to do this by yourself. I'm going to be there. I want to marry you and I want to support you. I'm not going to leave you."
And in that exact moment, we decided that no matter how hard it was going to be, we were going to keep this baby and we were going to be the best parents we could be.
We were so excited the day we went for our first ultrasound. I had been at work all day and I had been counting the hours until I got to see my baby on that black and white screen. Josh met me at work and we went together with hopeful hearts to see our future.
I was seven weeks, so we knew we might not see much, but it was what we didn't see that hurt us. My gestational sac was on time, but the embryo wasn't and there was no heartbeat. The technicians prayed for us and asked God to send us comfort.
I went home and called my OB.
Two weeks later, I was laying on another table, praying that the tech would see something different.
She didn't.
She told me that the embryo had never developed past six and a half weeks, and that the heartbeat probably stopped within the last couple of days, if it had ever even started.
I didn't want to believe it. I had chose to have this baby. I had chose to turn my life in a whole new direction in order to suit this baby. For two months, I had been planning a new life. I had been planning a new future.
Two days later, I was in the hospital waiting for my D&C.
The morning of the surgery, I woke up, took a shower and cried. I cried while I got dressed. I cried the whole way to the hospital.
When I woke up from surgery, I cried. I wanted my baby. I wanted the baby that had been taken from and out of me. Every time I would feel blood gush from me, I cried.
I went back to Josh's apartment and cried. I just kept crying.
I never got to hold my baby. But it had a name. Josh and I decided that we were going to name that baby, boy or girl, Harper.
Harper Tobin.
I never got to hold my baby.
But I can use my experience to help someone else.
No mother should have her child taken away unnecessarily
In under-developed countries, mothers are watching their children die due to diseases such as Malaria or even something as simple as diarrhea. Mothers are giving birth to beautiful babies that they only get to hold for a short period of time before having to bury them, due to lack of resources for newborn care.
Mothers are miscarrying their babies because they don't have proper prenatal treatment.
I can tell you from experience, that July 13, 2012 was the worst day of my life. My heart has never hurt so bad. I have never ached from the inside out. I have never hurt so bad. When I miscarried Harper, I felt my heart break.
No woman ever deserves to feel that.
No woman ever deserves to lose her child, especially when it doesn't have to happen.
There was nothing I could do to stop my miscarriage. There was nothing I could do to save my Harper, but I can do something to help save someone else's Harper.
And so can you.
Visit http://www.savethechildren.net/mdg500/ and see what the "500 days to MDG" campaign is about.
"The campaign breakthrough is that no child under the age of five dies from preventable causes, and public attitudes will not tolerate high levels of child deaths."
If nothing else, spread the word.
Help these mothers.
Help these children.
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