- I'm popping on just to say that
I am not doing a video this week.
I'm here with some medical emergency stuff
and everything is fine now,
but it's been things that I've been dealing with
for like a month, and please,
if you're going to send messages or anything,
please just send good vibes.
I really don't want to answer a bunch of questions about it.
I will share eventually.
(dinging) Hey guys, my name is Shayla.
Welcome to my channel.
If you are new here, I talk about pregnancy and motherhood,
which maybe seems a little weird
because this video is about miscarriage.
If you are not new here,
I have something to share that I have not shared yet.
This video has taken me so long to figure out what to say,
how to say it, because normally my videos are very upbeat,
lots of energy, 'cause that's just how I am,
but I wanted to make it because when I had my miscarriages,
I watched these videos and they helped me to get through
to not only see other people who had dealt with it,
but also to see that the video I was watching was years old
and now they have children and it kind of
gave me a little bit of hope.
I'm making this video two years after,
because when I first had my miscarriage,
I wanted to talk about it.
Seth is a very private person
and he preferred that we didn't put it on social media,
and he said until we have our baby.
I just remember watching these videos, and just like,
'cause in the first trimester,
you haven't told anyone that you're pregnant.
So if you're looking for support from anyone else first,
you have to say, "Hey, I was pregnant now, now I'm not."
I'm getting emotional.
Just like, what I want to start with is
I am so sorry that this is happening to you,
that you are watching this video,
that you are going through this.
It is so difficult and challenging
and challenging and uniquely your experience.
Above all, I want to tell you that however you're feeling
is exactly as you should feel.
Some people can have a miscarriage
at six weeks and be devastated.
Some people could have a miscarriage at six weeks
and think it's okay, and like, both of those are okay.
I am going to share with you my story
of my two miscarriages.
The first one, we got pregnant, it was a surprise pregnancy.
I got off birth control,
'cause I just wanted to see what my body did naturally.
I started tracking basal body temperatures,
and my cycle was like, sometimes it was 20 days.
Sometimes it was 40 days. So it was really hard to track.
And my mom was like, "Oh, you're going on the FAM method?
You're going to get pregnant."
Hence, I got pregnant.
So I found out and we were living in Minnesota.
During the pregnancy, we would be moving to Washington state
for Seth's training,
and then moving back to Minnesota to give birth.
We went to an eight week appointment in Minnesota.
We're about to learn the fate of our lives.
It's nerve-wracking.
This is the first time you hear the heartbeat,
and everyone's like, "Man, you have to hear the heartbeat
to know everything's fine."
So we're about to go hear a heartbeat
and figure out how many there are.
- So we got the sonar today or the ultrasound, I dunno.
I'm just excited for that heartbeat and nervous and excited.
How do you feel?
- Okay.
- Got those 4th of July sunglasses on.
- He did the ultrasound and he told me that
I was seven weeks along so that I had my dates wrong,
which I didn't think I did
because I was tracking all the ovulation,
but then he couldn't find a heartbeat,
but my uterus was tilted back, and then he goes,
but you don't want to do a vaginal ultrasound, do you?
No, I don't know. I don't know, no.
And I think if we had done one,
I would have known then that
it was not a successful pregnancy.
The next day, we start driving to Washington
and we take an entire road trip through Montana,
over to Washington, fly down to California,
pick up my van, drive it back up to Washington.
On the road again. - On the road again.
- Oh, that was good. - Yeah, I know.
- We are starting our drive up to Washington
from San Francisco.
We had our 11 week appointment at a midwife's office.
We're going to our first appointment in Washington
at the birthing center.
They're not going to do an ultrasound here,
but they can refer us out.
So we're crossing our fingers for an ultrasound today.
And she does the little, I don't know, it's like a Doppler.
I don't know what it's called, on the top,
where they look for the heartbeat.
She couldn't find a heartbeat,
and she's like, "Ooh, that's weird.
Can't find a heartbeat. Your uterus is the size of 11 weeks.
Hormones are elevated."
I don't think she tested it, but we found that out later.
"But we don't do ultrasounds here.
So I'm going to send you to the hospital
to go get an ultrasound."
I don't know why, but I was not concerned.
I was like, wow. Okay, yeah, sure.
If you've ever been to an ultrasound,
when there's a potential problem,
the tech can't tell you anything.
They have to tell the doctor
and the doctor comes in with the information,
just sitting there trying to read their body language.
So the doctor comes in and she goes,
"Your uterus is empty." Empty?
"That's called a blighted ovum."
Basically, some time in the pregnancy,
there was some sort of problem.
It just is an unsuccessful pregnancy.
It kind of like self terminates,
but your body doesn't realize it,
so it keeps acting like it's pregnant.
This was the biggest mind-body disconnect
I've ever experienced in my life.
My mind was like, you're not pregnant.
My body was like, yes I am. I'm growing a baby.
I was mad at my body because, hippie.
My body is made to give birth.
My body is made to get pregnant and have a baby,
and like, you're telling me that I wasn't successful,
and then like every time I had to wake up
to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night,
I was like, no, you don't.
You don't have a baby inside of you.
When I had cravings, I was like, this is not real.
And then I started to question, like,
was I just acting like I was pregnant?
But no, the hormones were there.
When she tells me this, I don't know.
I have this weird thing where I try and make doctors,
like, I try and make them feel better.
When I get my blood drawn, I'm always like,
you did a great job.
When the doctor told me that, I was like,
"Okay, yeah, I'm not going to make you feel bad
about telling me this terrible information."
We went into the car and I was like, it's okay.
It's fine. Like, we never even saw a heartbeat.
There's not even a baby. I think it's fine.
Clearly just pushing feelings down.
My doctor says, you've got three options.
You can get a DNC,
which will just clean out everything and you can start over.
You can take a pill which will start the process of,
like, expelling all the tissue.
Or you can just wait until
your body figures it out and miscarry naturally.
I like to do things naturally. I chose that one.
The next day we went and got acupuncture to try and,
like, get the miscarriage going.
Nothing happened.
I went and got a massage and she did cupping
in all the places you're not supposed to do
when you're pregnant.
I was scared to miscarry,
'cause I didn't know what to expect.
Is it going to hurt? Is it going to last a long time?
Am I going to bleed a lot?
Like, what's it going to be like?
After talking to a few people,
just expect to be on the toilet for a really long time.
Expect there to be a lot of blood
and expect it to be painful.
Okay, so I started spotting on Friday,
and then on Sunday, I started having really bad cramps.
I would say that this is like really bad period cramps
combined with early stages of labor
with the little contractions,
'cause what would happen is your body would just contract
and then you would pass a clot.
When I started having the really bad cramps,
I started walking up and down the stairs.
I don't know, I don't know why I did that,
but I just felt like it was going to help me.
Like labor, it was just going to help things move along.
Then I got to a point where my cramps
were so bad that I needed to lay down.
So I set up like a space in the bathroom.
I put towels on the floor so I could lay on the floor
next to the toilet and a trashcan.
I had pads. I had a barf bucket in case I got sick.
I had essential oils.
Seth would come in, and like,
put a cold washcloth on my forehead.
He put oils in the diffuser,
and something that I was doing during my pregnancy
was listening to a Headspace app, a meditation app.
I turned on the pain management package.
It helped a lot. Like, I almost fell asleep.
It basically tells you,
instead of thinking like, ow, this hurts,
is it hot or cold?
Is it a sharp pain? Is it a dull pain?
Where is it?
Describe it instead of just being like, it hurts,
and then just try and relax and just go limp.
So when a contraction would come on,
you would just try and be like,
just let it happen and let it pass,
and then I was basically on and off the toilet
for like three or four hours, and then it was midnight
and I was thankfully able to go to sleep.
I remember just almost every night, I just cried.
I just cried myself to sleep.
I needed that week and a half to be mad at my body
for my body to understand what was going on,
and then to be ready.
Let's get this on and move forward.
It gave me a little bit of processing time.
And so then the next thing they worry about is an infection
if you have pain in your abdomen, foul smell, or fever.
Well, I started to get a foul smell on, which is gross,
even saying that, but like, trust yourself.
So I called the midwife and she's like, smell is subjective.
If you're not having any of the other pains,
we'll let it go.
Then I got the chills one night and I didn't know
that the chills and fever were like the same thing,
and the next day I had a fever of like a hundred degrees.
I went into the ER and they're like, your uterus is septic.
We need to do an emergency DNC.
When's the last time you ate?
I was like, I just had lentil soup on the way here.
They're like, next time you go to the hospital ER,
do not eat because if we need to do a surgery,
you can't have anything inside.
So you'll have your surgery tomorrow.
I was like, okay, and the next morning,
they woke me up and I went in for my emergency DNC.
My mom flew out like the next day.
She was there immediately.
I actually made a video on my YouTube about
going to the hospital as an adult,
but I didn't talk about the miscarriage at all.
I just talked about very generic things that happened
and how I use humor to get through it all,
But she was like, I need to get there.
I need to come there. I need to see you.
Mom!
Then all of a sudden my mom's here, and she's like,
"Shayla, the only car that they have available
is a convertible Mustang."
If you want to watch that video. I'll link it.
And then I was in the hospital for a couple of days
while they, like, tracked the infection
and made sure that everything was kind of taken care of.
Then I got to leave the hospital
and I was taking this antibiotic
and my body just broke out in a rash.
It's like all over my back and my forehead.
It's going down the side of my face.
It's from the medication that I'm on.
All of this happened because of this miscarriage,
and it was just, it was a lot.
In the meantime, I'm still trying to make YouTube videos
and act like everything's super hunky-dory.
It was just kind of an eye-opening experience.
So afterwards, I was depressed,
and I've never been depressed in my life.
I'm more of, like, an anxious person
than I am a depressive person.
I have a new respect for depression because holy crap.
I was like, just get up, just keep moving,
do things so that, like, I would just sit at the table
and just like sit there and just stare off into space
and did not want to do anything.
Luckily, Seth got me out of the house
and we went on little adventures in Washington,
but I was just sad while we were doing them.
It was so bad. I can't, it was...
I don't know. I don't even know how to describe it.
It was just a dark time.
I remember going to one of my appointments to get checked up
and I just told the doctor, like, I'm feeling so sad,
and she's like, "You're grieving."
That's what this is, and she gave me a hug,
and I think I held on a little bit too long,
but it was hard.
Seth was going to training every day.
I was by myself and I didn't have my family around,
and I was just so sad.
Again, the meditation app has a grieving section.
So then I started doing that.
I would just cry through my meditations, and like,
every night, I would just bawl.
And one thing that someone told me is that
everyone in history who has ever
experienced a miscarriage is holding you through this,
and I was just like, wow,
because anybody who's experienced it
knows how painful it is, and just to know that,
like, I don't know,
that they send that energy around me or whatever.
So I had my DNC, oh, let me see. September 10th.
We were so excited to have a baby that we were like,
let's just do it.
Let's just try.
So, like three months later,
we got a positive test and it was so early,
and then a week later I had a miscarriage.
I had my period.
I feel like your grandmas must've
had these miscarriages as well,
but they just felt like a late period
because we have such early testing right now.
It's like, it's such a blessing and a curse.
There's no good words,
so I'm going to say what made me feel better,
and if you're like, "F you, Shayla," totally fine.
For me, I'm not a super religious person,
but I am somebody that believes that, like,
everything happens for a reason.
So for me, I was like, okay,
everything happens for a reason.
I don't know now, but I eventually hopefully someday
will understand why this happened to me
and why this happened now.
I also thought it's incredible that your body
and that these cells know
when it's not going to be a successful pregnancy.
I felt that I'm glad that my body knew that
the pregnancy would not be successful
and that I didn't have to make a decision later on.
The second miscarriage did not hit me as hard
as the first miscarriage.
Oh, it's just so difficult,
but I just want to close this video with, like,
honor how you feel.
However you feel is right,
because if you're at six weeks and you're already planning,
you're looking at the due date, you're thinking of names,
you're going to Target to imagine
your squishy little baby in these outfits.
Like, those things are real.
You have already thought about this human walking with you
for the rest of your life, and then it changes,
and so that is traumatic.
Don't question it.
Don't be like me and be like,
well, this and this and this,
so I should really shouldn't even be sad.
Other people have it worse than you.
Yes, other people have it worse than you.
Other people have it easier than you. It doesn't matter.
That doesn't matter as far as how you're feeling.
I'm sending you all of the love. Thank you for watching.
I have a goal of hitting 100,000 subscribers.
So if you like this video,
if you like any of my videos and you want to see more,
please subscribe and I will see you guys all next time.
Bye
Okay, so this video is kind of for me to sort of,
I dunno, talk about stuff, but if you're watching this,
you're probably going through
some sort of miscarriage or something.
Mine was a blighted ovum, and when it first happened,
we were like, "Oh, no big deal. It was never a fetus.
We never heard a heartbeat. This is easy."