The Mother Runner Blog

I don’t know how to start this story, so I will start with this: I feel like I need to write about this, like someone may need to hear this. It seems that for some unclear reason pregnancy loss carries a stigma, a rule that we can’t or shouldn’t talk about it. Maybe it’s because it’s so painful, maybe it’s because we fear judgment. Maybe it’s because we’re afraid that it is a distraction from the joy of those who are welcoming healthy babies into the world. But the magnitude of this pain, the depth of this stigma, is exactly why I need to put these words on paper.

I didn’t really understand pregnancy loss until it happened to us. It wasn’t something that naturally came up in conversation, and any time it did, it felt awkward and cumbersome. Having had four healthy babies, I could wrap my head around how devastating it must be to lose a piece of you. However, I couldn’t truly understand the depth of that loss until I felt it myself.

Every person’s situation and experience with pregnancy and infant loss is vastly different. So, my story is only my own, and the next woman’s story could be very different. Still, I think it’s important for us to share our stories, so we know we aren’t alone, so we can carry our grief together. Mine is fresh, and maybe in time it will get easier, but right now it is still so heavy.

***

Jake and I decided we wanted to try for a baby after I ran the Boston Marathon in April 2025. We are both in our mid-to-late 30’s, and my last pregnancy came when I was 26, so I was worried about infertility. I was excited and thankful to discover it didn’t take too long for us to get a positive pregnancy test.

I found out in early June while two states away in Michigan, crewing a good friend for her first 50 miler. My period was late. I was inexplicably exhausted and was exhibiting other early-pregnancy symptoms that I was all too familiar with. My guarded optimism prevented me from waiting to get confirmation at home. I drove to a CVS and took the test in our Airbnb bathroom. Sure enough, it was positive! I was immediately over the moon. I jumped online and bought a onesie to give to Jake on Father’s Day that said “Daddy, I can’t wait to meet you”.

The next week when I gave Jake that onesie, his face immediately lit up as he realized what his gift meant. It flooded my heart with so much joy. I knew Jake was going to be an amazing father. He already was and is a great stepdad to my kids. I couldn’t wait to witness him experiencing fatherhood from the very beginning.

We were so excited that we told a few of our close friends and family, even though it was early. We even told the children. There was a nagging voice in the back of my head telling me, “You haven’t had your first appointment yet. What if something isn’t right?”, but I brushed it off. I had carried four normal pregnancies already. My symptoms were normal. I felt fine besides being exhausted, which had always been my most pronounced first-trimester symptom.

We had our first ultrasound appointment when I was about 7 weeks. The tech was pointing out the usual things as she did the examination – here are the ovaries, here is the uterus, etc. I was intently watching the screen. Where was the baby?

She searched around a little more. “Here is the gestational sac,” she said, “but I am not seeing an embryo or heartbeat.” Shortly after that, the appointment was done.

I was so confused and expressed this to the tech. She said it was possible that I was a couple weeks earlier than we had thought. Was my period regular?

I said it was, and that it didn’t seem likely that my pregnancy would be earlier than 7 weeks. Her face tried to be optimistic, but it was veiled. She told me that the doctor would be following up after the examination.

I left worried and confused. Jake was trying to keep me positive, being supportive as always. “I’m sure it’s just earlier than we thought. Or maybe it just is growing slower than it should.” I accepted his consolation, but in my heart, I knew something wasn’t right.

The days crawled by. I researched what would cause an embryo to not show up on an ultrasound. The prospect was not positive. My doctor followed up and asked me to come in for another ultrasound the following week. It felt like the longest week of my life. I couldn’t sleep, I struggled to eat, emotionally I was a mess. I kept trying to reassure myself. Everything will be fine. We will see the baby at the next appointment. But I think I already knew.

Steady rain was falling the day we arrived for our second ultrasound. I sat numbly with Jake in the lobby. I didn’t know what to feel or think. We waited for what felt like an eternity in the waiting room. Finally, we were called back.

The tech began with the normal procedures, but this time with the screen completely turned away from me so I couldn’t see. I could hear her fingers clicking on the keys as they took measurements and notes. She wasn’t talking to us. I knew. I still tried to cling to the smallest glimmer of hope, but I knew.

The tech withdrew the wand. “Ok, all done.” That was it.

I was shaking. “Did you see the baby?” I don’t know why I even asked. I knew.

“No, the gestational sac is there but there is no sign of an embryo. Your doctor should follow up with you later today.”

***

I tried to hold it together as we left the clinic. I avoided eye contact with everyone. I felt like I was floating outside of my body and someone else was commanding my limbs to move. Nothing felt real.

When we got to our vehicles, I collapsed into Jake’s arms. It was pouring rain now, soaking me through with relentless force but it had nothing on the sorrow that was pouring out of me. I wept in his arms as we stood in the rain. Our baby was no baby. There was no baby. Miscarriage was imminent.

As I headed home, the sky poured water to the ground in droves. It matched the tears flooding from my eyes. I could barely see. I could barely breathe. I screamed at the top of my lungs as I flew down the highway. I was a madwoman, shaking, screaming, sobbing, while flying down the road, trying to get home as fast as I could, as though that would stop this horrific nightmare. My heart was breaking, our dream shattered in an instant.

I fell into a functional depression. I had kids to take care of, work to do, I couldn’t let myself sit and wallow. But there was a coldness in my bones. I didn’t feel much of anything except a dull ache and a longing that I would wake up to find this was all just a crazy, elaborate joke.

We, of course, had to tell our family and friends. I sent out a mass text message conveying the facts, asking for privacy and no questions. And then came the matter of the kids. We sat them down at the dinner table one night and calmly explained that I wouldn’t be having a baby right now after all, but we were going to try again. We expected a throe of tears, but either they were too young to understand or their youthful hope kept their spirits in tact.

That is, until I found my oldest in her bed, curled up with a baby onesie, a red, blotchy face, tear-stained cheeks, and Kleenexes all over the floor. I curled up next to her and we wept together, holding each other as we mourned the future we had both begun to build in our minds.

The next few weeks were a blur. Doctor’s appointments, countless labs to check my hCG levels, waiting anxiously for the bomb to drop. We were told I had a blight ovum, where the embryo fails to form. I would have a miscarriage within a few weeks, but it was hard to tell when. So, we had to just wait.

Two and a half weeks later, it happened. To give you the short version, it was hell. And then it was over, and I was empty and numb.

***

Four days following the miscarriage, I was supposed to run a trail marathon in the North Dakota Badlands. I had very strategically planned out my race schedule for the year to accommodate our family planning. I knew that I could run a marathon in the early months of pregnancy without an issue if I took it easy. Now, I was dealing with the emotional and physical aftershock of a miscarriage rather than strategizing how to run while pregnant.

I felt so empty after losing the pregnancy, I questioned if it even made sense to make the trip. How could I run a marathon when all I wanted was to lay in my bed and weep? How could I take a vacation and experience any amount of joy when the joy I had wished for had just been ripped out of my uterus?

As I waded through the sort of numb shock that clouded my brain, I resolved I had to do the race. I knew it would be hard. I was both mentally and physically exhausted by the shock of my experience. But, hell, how many times have I showed up to prove I can do hard things? I needed to show myself that this was still true, now more than ever.

Running has always been the way I can let go of the heaviness of life. It is a visceral reaction. I become feral, drumming a guttural, instinctual, carnal beat as I fly down the road or trail, working my body, my lungs, my legs. I fly, unbound, where I am stronger and bigger than anything that threatens to subdue my spirit.

Crossing that finish line was bittersweet. I experienced immeasurable beauty while we were in Medora. Jake and I were able connect and work through the emotions together, away from the walls of our home that felt slightly haunted. Theodore Roosevelt National Park gave us a stunning display of nature. The Maah Daah Hey Trail challenged me, but drew me along with its breathtaking views and calls to stay strong. I felt hope and solace in the knowing that life would keep moving forward if I did. Just like in running – left foot, right foot, repeat.

***

As the months have passed by, I have tried to find peace. For the most part, things feel back to normal. But there are still ghosts. Baby onesies and pacifiers and bibs that I had purchased out of excitement in those couple weeks that we had our dream and our joy. A baby blanket I had begun knitting the moment I found out. “We’re Expecting!” announcements. These things are tucked away in my home office, the room that was supposed to be our baby’s. I have a hard time working from home now – they are hidden away in the closet, but I know they are there. I know there should be a crib in here. The dream we had is on hold.

I say and pray it is on hold. We are going to keep trying. We believe there is a future for one more child within our family. I am not going to give up hope – I have never been one to give up when things get hard and I am not going to start now. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified. Scared shitless even. The miscarriage was physically and emotionally traumatic. It took so much out of my body and my heart.

There is a weird combination of isolation and shame that has surfaced through this grief. Seeing other people experiencing the dream Jake and I lost hurts, which feels so strange and selfish, though I do not mean it to be. It is curious the mixture of joy and grief that can comingle in a person’s heart. I want to say first and foremost I am overjoyed for these families. They deserve these futures, to see their dreams come true. I never ever want my grief to hurt or overshadow someone else’s dream. But it does break that wound open a little. Every time I see someone with a little bump, a part of my brain thinks, “That should be me. I would be showing right now. I’d be starting to feel little kicks,” and it rips me apart inside. Some days I can handle it better than others. (Today is not one of those days.)

It feels isolating because not many people talk about it, and if someone hasn’t gone through it, they truly don’t understand it. I can attest to this as I found myself transformed after we lost ours.

I feel ashamed of my grief. I feel guilty and selfish that I am grieving so deeply, still three months later. There is a laundry list of reasons why I tell myself that I shouldn’t feel this way, even sometimes feeling like I am to blame for losing the baby. I have had 4 successful pregnancies, some women have never had one. Your children are healthy. Time has passed, it shouldn’t hurt anymore. You can try again. If you hadn’t/had done [XYZ thing], you wouldn’t have lost your baby. You should be happy for the women who are pregnant. At least it happened early. The list goes on.

I had someone tell me that my baby “wasn’t really a baby”. I had another imply that my running somehow caused my miscarriage (which is, for many reasons, completely untrue, but hearing these words was incredibly damaging to my already grieving heart). This and more, piling on the guilt that I’ve processing for the last 3 months, trying to make sense of it all.

Sometimes I think I should be “over it” by now, but grief is funny that way. The weight still wells up at times and threatens to spill onto everything I touch. Just last week as I sat at the Athlete’s Village prior to running the New York City Marathon, I pulled my sweatshirt hood over my head and wrapped my foil blanket around me as I folded into a ball and wept. I had just written down my goal splits on my hand and it hit me – I wasn’t supposed to be able to run this race this fast. I was supposed to be 6 months pregnant, running a modified race, slow as hell. Every domino suddenly crumbled and I lost myself in a moment of grief, sobbing in a sea of strangers.

Don’t get me wrong, I was still ecstatic to run such an iconic race, but there were threads of sadness woven into the fabric of this joy. The grief has threaded itself into every milestone that has passed, every unchanged space in our home, my unchanged body. It is laced into every day as we wait to see if the future we are so desperately dreaming of will become a reality. There’s an unspeakable heaviness when I hear this song or see that photograph, when I hear a baby cry or brush my fingers over the space of my empty womb. Who is to tell how long this grief will choose to visit me, slithering through the cracks unannounced?

So, I am going to let it out, here. Writing calms me, helps me make sense of the jumbled words in my brain that I can never seem to articulate verbally. It’s a form of therapy, and a way to hopefully connect with others who are also struggling to find the words.

If anyone cares to listen, I appreciate them for it. If anyone can relate, I am deeply sorry for the loss you’ve experienced, and I hope that finding my story validates that you are not alone. Your grief is valid. You don’t need to feel ashamed or selfish or guilty for feeling sorrow. The isolation we have felt is not fair. We should be able to freely talk about this, grieve together, and support each other. And I hope that, in time, if you feel led to share your story with others, you could find the bravery to tell it. And I will listen.