Every year around my birthday, I think about how I was almost a single mom to three babies instead of two at 27.
My due date was in October 2015 and I would have had three under two (because my twin girls had turned one right before I found out). What’s even crazier is how the twins were triplets on their first ultrasound, so I almost had four babies moving into a single-wide trailer with just me to take care of them.
I’m the kind of person who wants to love birthdays and make a big deal out of them, but I’m also someone who has bad luck around my birthday most years. In 2022 we had COVID on my birthday (even though it was 2-22-22 and Taco Tuesday and had so much potential to be an excellent day).
So back in late 2014 when the twins’ ear surgeon scheduled their necessary surgery on my birthday, it did not feel like a good omen. I remember being extra anxious about it because bad things happened on my birthday. Not every year, but enough of them ever since I was little
The night before the surgery, we spent the night with my dad and his wife who lived closer to the hospital and were my main support system when it came to helping with the girls. Since it was also the night before my birthday, they encouraged me to let them take over bedtime and to go visit with friends.
I took to Facebook to see who could meet up and a few girls responded. We decided to meet at Applebee’s to catch up. I told them how nervous, but excited, I was to be pregnant again and how, when I found out, freaked out.
My husband at the time and I weren’t in a good place and I had been considering leaving him. So when I found out I was pregnant I called my mom from the inside of a pantry hysterically crying. “I can’t do this with him,” I kept saying over and over. I couldn’t live in the living room again and do the newborn thing by myself again. What if it is twins again??!!
The pregnancy with the twins almost killed me (not exaggerating—it actually did almost kill me)… I had what Kate Middleton famously had: hyperemesis gravidarum (intense, round-the-clock morning sickness), thyroid storms, preeclampsia and heart problems. I spent the majority of my pregnancy in and out of the hospital for days at a time because I would throw up so much, sometimes even blood. Being that sick sucked for me, and instead of supporting me through it all, my husband took the opportunity of my being occupied to cheat on me.
Our twins almost dying was the only reason we made it past that. I didn’t trust him, and I couldn’t trust him pregnant. So I continued to cry in that pantry on the phone to my mom and asked her what I was supposed to do.
My friends and I talked over appetizers and sweet tea about how my mom and my dad tried to tell me that if I didn’t start thinking positively I might make myself as sick as I was with the twins and how the twins needed me to not be hospitalized for the next nine months most of the time. You know—fingers crossed—I made it nine months this time and not just six. They tried to remind me how depressing it was for me not to get to experience life with a healthy newborn and how this might be my chance to do all of the things the twins and I missed out on.
We talked about how sweet dressing the three babies would be if I had another girl and how cute it would be for my nephew to have a cousin so close to his age without being even more outnumbered by girls.
So I let myself get excited about feeling a baby kick for the first time, since I never felt the twins move.I let myself picture having a cute belly since I never had a baby bump with them (I lost 50 lbs instead, I was so sick). I told myself I could take maternity pictures (for a photographer who didn’t get to take them the first time, this was exciting). I imagined holding my baby in my arms for the first time without a team of professionals and breathing tubes and wires everywhere. Without him or her coding in my arms like my twins did.I let myself imagine a normal first year with a healthy baby. Sometimes those thoughts actually still make me want another baby one day.
On the morning of my birthday and the twins’ surgery, my step mom and I loaded the twins up and headed to Mission Hospital in Asheville, which was only about 45 minutes from their house. The plan was for her to follow us, help with surgery pre-op and post-op, help me load them up and then I would drive the three of us home where my husband would be there to help out.
They were barely a year old and still solely on bottles (because technically they were nine months old developmentally) and weren’t allowed to eat for 12 hours before we arrived. One of them was on a high-calorie diet and ate every 2 hours. So skipping feedings was rough as is. Then their surgery ended up being pushed back a few hours.
They were screaming for bottles at this point. I’m feeling stressed and guilty. I’m exhausted. They won’t sleep or nap because they are starving. I am tearing up because I feel horrible about letting them cry while they are hungry. The doctor comes in and lets us know it’ll be another few hours until surgery, but that they still can’t have anything to eat or drink. So now all three of us are crying and I feel like the world’s worst mom (plus pregnancy hormones to boot).
Finally, about eight hours after the original start time for their surgeries they brought them back to have tubes put in their ears and their adenoids removed. I’m standing in the hallway on my 27th birthday, while my high-risk twins are being put under anesthesia for the first time (one has lung disease, so this was a huge deal and caused a great deal of anxiety) and I suddenly feel like I’m peeing myself.
Part of me didn’t even want to go to the bathroom. I already knew.
I tried to fight the faint feeling that the dread was causing and asked the receptionist if she had any pads. Then I cleaned myself up as best as I could and sat back down to wait for updates on them. It’s really hard to put into words what it was like to sit there worried about losing one of the twins while I knew for sure I was losing a baby—on my birthday.
The disconnect was intense and it felt very much like I was on autopilot. Then a nurse walked out to let me know that they were having trouble waking one of the twins up after anesthesia (the one with lung disease we almost lost to RSV a couple of months prior). I couldn’t tell you what my face looked like, but she asked if I was okay and if I needed anything…
“Well. I’m having a miscarriage and you said my baby won’t wake up. So no… I think I need to sit down before I pass out but thank you,” I said in a tone and at a speed that did not match the words coming out of my mouth. “I don’t really like the color purple but I do love blue!” those are the kind of words that would match the way I was talking.
I wanted to sit down on the floor and cry and go to sleep and not deal with any of it.
But I didn’t. I just sat down for a minute. Put my hands over my ears. Tried to tune the world out for a minute. Then got back up and let them lead me to where Brooklynn was.
My step-mom was with Chloe, giving her a bottle at this point. I’m so thankful she was there because I could barely be in one place at that moment let alone in two places at the same time.
I was trying not to throw up and the cramps had started at that point. Brooklynn did finally wake up. After about an hour of observation, the three of us said goodbye to my step mom and started the hour-and-a-half drive home in the dark (because at this point, it was nighttime the whole process at the hospital had taken so long).
Oh. Also, my weather alert is going off because it’s starting to snow and we have to drive through Balsam and The Nantahala Gorge to get home (both places are absolutely treacherous in winter weather). Because why wouldn’t it be snowing?
The three of us got home to Andrews just in time for the snow to start accumulating and the power to start going out. My ex-husband “couldn’t come home” because of the snow but I would find out later he stayed with his mistress that night. The irony of that was that this particular night would end up being the reason I knew I could take care of the twins alone, without him, which was one of the main reasons I hadn’t left before.
As I was continuing to lose the baby, Brooklynn screamed for hours in pain and finally passed a blood clot out of her ears so big it almost made me pass out when I was able to clean it for her. She needed to be held and cradled and cuddled standing straight up hurt me so much.
I got them both to sleep for the first time ever 100 percent by myself with nobody else there to pass off one almost-asleep baby so I could put the other down and then I spent the rest of the night wondering why God hated me so much.
I remember thinking I didn’t get a birthday card that year, but I got a dead baby.
He’d have to hate me to give me a miscarriage as a birthday gift just a year after the saga I endured with my twins—oh, and a cheating husband to top it all off.
Two months after my birthday I found out about his mistress.
Three months after my birthday I moved out with the twins.
I remember driving the UHaul back home and trying to be thankful I wasn’t three or four months pregnant, but the truth is sometimes I stop and think about how betrayed I felt by God. I feel that way sometimes, still, even though I also try to let myself feel like it happened for a reason. I want to believe it happened for a reason.
I want to believe that God watched me standing in the hospital trying to be a good mom to the twins in surgery while my ex-husband was making plans to stay at a hotel for the night with his mistress and he thought, “Nah, I’m not going to do this to her. She can’t raise three by herself… and she deserves better than him.” I tell myself that sometimes.
People don’t like to be told by other people that their miscarriages happen for a reason, but I do try to tell myself that. It makes it easier to move past it, for me. It makes it possible to be happy on my birthday, even if I spend time wondering about what their younger sibling would have been like or triplet that we lost and the miscarriage before their pregnancy. I spend a solid bit of time on each birthday thinking about the kids I should—and almost did—have.
That birthday was a horrible day for so many reasons.
I remember how horrible that day was all the time, but I think about it most on my birthday.
Even when I talk about it out loud I try to do so with a positive attitude and a gracious smile and I say things like, “Everything happens for a reason.”
I’m not fully convinced—it’s just that it’s so much easier to say and to try to really believe than the alternative.
Which is that life is just crappy and cruel and devastating sometimes, for no reason at all.
Even on our birthdays.
Read more powerful essays from mothers at Miscarriage Movement.
