The Miscarriage Dads Podcast
A podcast dedicated to humanizing the experience of miscarriage, and normalizing dads openly talking about its impact on us as men and fathers.
The Miscarriage Dads Podcast
E11: Trying Again After Miscarriage (part 1)
Welcome to episode 11!
In this episode, Chris and I brave the tender subject of trying for another child post-loss in our latest heart-to-heart series. Revealing our personal journeys, we explore the intricate dance of hope and hesitation. We navigate this delicate terrain, not with all the answers, but with open hearts, inviting you to take part in this communal wisdom—an offering of solace and understanding.
Decoding the communication chasm between expectant parents and medical professionals, we dissect why the detailed statistics ubiquitous in surgical discussions are often missing from conversations about conception and childbearing. This episode is a clarion call for transparent dialogue in healthcare, a beacon for those yearning for candid discussions as they step onto the unpredictable path of starting or expanding a family.
The tapestry of fatherhood is woven with threads of joy and sorrow, and in this series, we don't shy away from either. We celebrate the milestones of our living children while also honoring the grief for those we've lost. Through our exchange, we underscore the necessity to mourn dreams departed, to find strength in vulnerability, and to heal through connection. We invite you to join us in this exploration of fatherhood's full emotional spectrum, as we support each other in the trials and triumphs that define our experiences as fathers.
Thank you for tuning in to find solace, gain understanding, and embark on your healing journey with us!
Sincerely,
Kelly & Chris
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This is the Miss Carriage Dads podcast, a podcast humanizing the experience of Miss Carriage by normalizing dads openly talking about its impact on us as men and fathers. Welcome to this episode of the Miss Carriage Dads podcast. My name is Kelly and I'm your host. My name is Chris and I am your co-host.
Speaker 2:And, as promised, chris and I are excited to be back on the podcast together so we can continue this incredible work. Thank you so much for all of you who have been patient with us and getting back together. Last week you heard my voice just sort of explaining the reason why we took so long to get back, at least from my perspective. Chris had expressed to me that he was dealing with some things on his side, but we are. We're in a good place now. So, chris man, the people want to hear from you. Bro, how are you, how have you been? And I'm excited that you are back. We are back together to get this thing started or continuing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I'm doing. I'm doing a lot better. I had pink eye and it is the worst case of pink eye that I've ever had Apparently. It is the worst case of pink eye that anyone I know has ever had. Like, when I think about pink eye, I just think about itching my eyes, my eyes being red, sometimes getting a little swollen and watering all kind of stuff. When I tell you that my eye was swollen, shut like my, it's my right eye. Actually it's still a little small. No, you can't really tell. Like people that know me know my right eye is still a little small, but my right eye, the inner eyelid, was so swollen, wow, that it was covering my eyeball. Like I could lift up my top and bottom lid Actually the bottom little, so I could lift up my like my outer lid and the it wouldn't move, like the inner lid would not move.
Speaker 2:Wow it was crazy.
Speaker 1:Wow, it was crazy. And then on top of that I had swollen lymph nodes. I had a fever, lost appetite, chills, body aches. The whole works Like I didn't even know that could happen with pink eye, but apparently it can. I was a leper in my own home for two weeks or two and a half weeks. I slept downstairs while my family went out and lived life and did happy things. I didn't realize how much would miss being able to just just touch my kids.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, you know just being able to kiss your wife. Goodbye, man. That was hard, it was really hard, but I'm back. I'm on the other end of it, man, feeling good. I'm feeling good.
Speaker 2:We're going to hop into a series of conversations, this being the first installment of it, and the topic that we're going to talk about is how do you talk to your partner about trying again after you've experienced loss to miscarriage? And this question came from someone a listener of our podcast, of our show, who recently wrote to us and asked that question, thanking us first and foremost for having this podcast available, expressing how useful and important this podcast has become to him. And he also went a step further and asked this question. So we encourage that from our listeners. We encourage that from people who are curious about something relating to this whole process, which is, you know, you've shared your experience, I've shared my experience and we have a lot of similarities, but also I know that there are many men who have gone through this who also have aspects of their experience that perhaps we haven't even thought about exploring. So we definitely encourage and welcome these types of questions and feedbacks. You can email them at themiscarriagedadcom or you can find our IG account, themiscarriagedads, on Instagram and just send us a DM and we'll collect those. We'll be happy to craft a series of conversations to be able to address the questions that you're asking.
Speaker 2:Again, chris and I, we're not going to give you answers because we don't have answers.
Speaker 2:What we can do is talk from our unique experiences and we can share our perspectives, we can share our opinions and we invite other people to bring their voices to this conversation also, so that the collective wisdom can be what you take and help you along your journey in navigating your loss and your grief and how to start piecing things together again and once you and your family are in a healthier place to do so. So we're going to start talking about, we're going to start talking about those questions, chris. How do you talk to, how do you even begin talking to your partner about trying again after you've experienced loss to miscarriage? The first question that I want us to talk about and I want you to share your experience, if you have experience in this After you and Amber had the miscarriage, how long did it take for you to have that conversation? Did you have that conversation at all? Let's start there. Did you have that conversation at all about trying again? And, if you did, about how long after the loss did it take for you guys to start?
Speaker 1:talking about that. Yeah, it took a minute for us to talk about it just because obviously, when something so frail happens and you're damaged like that, it's hard to put those things into words. You're talking about feelings here or there. You're supporting each other here or there, wherever you feel like you need, but bringing up the idea of having a child again is hard. Talking about it on my end, on my feelings, about things I know early on I was scared to try.
Speaker 1:I don't think anyone that goes through something like that isn't going to have some kind of second guessing going on in their minds about if it's going to work again. But it's not so much about if it's going to work as much as if it's not going to work. Going through that the first time. You never want to go through it again. And of course, kelly, I know you've gone through it a few times, which we obviously already discussed and gone through. But the difficulty of going through that and the possibility of going through it again even though you have a child right, maybe that was my situation. We didn't have a miscarriage first, we had our child first. So when we tried again and went into it, there was no thought about it. Amber came back downstairs you know was pregnant showed me the little thing and all that kind of stuff. We were excited. But after that now, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:No, so let's, let's pause there, because that's the. That's what came to mind as I'm listening to you talk. When the miscarriage happens matters. What I mean by that is if it happens as your first experience, I think things go. There are certain, there are certain expectations that you now have as a result of this being your first experience. If you have a child first, there are certain level of expectations that you now have in trying for another child and just like, so the, the let's start with the latter. For you, you had little Chris first. Nowhere in your mind were you thinking, when we try again for another child, we're going to have a miscarriage like you had no reason to expect that Because your first example, your first, your first try, ended up working out great, right on, right on.
Speaker 1:I mean, there was no reason to doubt. Why doubt we had, like you said, we had a child already. It's just not a possibility. It's like whenever you want to go in and you're trying to do something in your life, you, even though there's the fear of failure, you know whether you're going for a job, you're taking a test, whatever. Yes, there's the feel of fear of failure, but you're going into it of a mindset that like, oh, I've studied, I've done everything I need to do, I've practiced, I've practiced interviewing or whatever, I'm going to be successful. And when you go in and you're successful the first time, you're confident. You're confident in yourself, you're confident in the process of whatever that process is. Yeah, but especially when it comes to having a child, yeah, of course. Why would you? Why would you consider that the next time if you've already had a child?
Speaker 2:And that's the thing, bro, like there is no reason for anyone who wants to have a child to go into it, expecting the worst. Because, to your point, there are risks, like we're all aware of the risks that are always involved in the things that we do, in the decisions that we make. Right, like every time we get, every time I get in my car in the morning to go to work, I assume the risk that I may get into an accident. But I'm not dwelling on the fact that I'm going to get into an accident, so that risk is so assumed that it just becomes something that I tuck in the back of my mind Because my, the, the, the thing that's at the forefront of my mind is I'm going to get to work without getting into an accident. You know what I mean? Like that's, that's the assumption.
Speaker 2:Similarly, when two people are going into trying for a child, we do assume that risk, the. I don't know if this is an issue or a problem. And and the reason why I'm saying that is because I empathize with going into having a child, wanting to have a child, with this set expectation that everything is going to go well. Because why wouldn't you, why would you expect something to not go well. I often, though, after my experience, so talking about the other side. For me, since that was my first experience, it left me wondering hold on, man. How come nobody ever told me about this to begin with?
Speaker 1:that that part, right there, as you were saying those things, I was literally thinking. Part of the problem is no one hold us, and it's not so much of telling us like, oh, there's a possibility that you could have a. You know, the pregnancy might not not stay, might not stick. So, you know, be prepared for that. You know, when you watch movies, you see some movies where it'll happen to miscarriage will happen. But it's a movie. It's a movie Even though you might be emotionally invested in the characters and the story and all that kind of stuff. If you've never had a miscarriage, you're not even thinking about that, right? Because, like you said, it's a movie, it's a story when it comes to your circle, your family and I can say this for me I've never had anyone in my family talk about having a miscarriage.
Speaker 2:You know what's interesting about that. So one of the feedbacks that we got, the person who wrote it said that while he and his wife were at the DNC or after the the the DNC procedure, his, his boy, called them and so checking in, right, and so he was telling his boy that, hey, this is what me and my wife are are experiencing right now. And he said it was then, and only then, that his boy, who he had known for a really long time, told them for the first time that he had experienced a miscarriage. To. The same is true for me and you. We've spoken about this before. Right, we've known each other since 2012 or 2013,. Whenever it was and it was not until last year, before the launch of this podcast Did you learn that I had experienced multiple miscarriages? Did I learn that you had experienced a miscarriage? So we're not exempt from what we're talking about in terms of the openness with which this conversation doesn't happen. Like there is no openness surrounding this conversation, not just in our social circles, but there's also the lack of pre education or education pre going into this process, and I often wonder, man, why is that the case? You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like I work in a hospital where there are times medical providers come to talk to a family about a procedure, a surgery that their child needs, and part of this conversation is to talk about hey, these are the expected outcomes. Like we've done this a million and one times. This is the number of success rate that that we have for this particular procedure. It's a teaching hospital, so there are times when you know we're doing they're doing like an experimental stuff, but there are procedures that have been developed by physicians at the hospital, used worldwide. So it's like this is our thing. Like we do this here. People come from all around the world to come and get this procedure here. So there's a certain level of certainty and confidence in this procedure that is being offered and discussed with this family. And also they have to talk about the risks of surgery, because it is surgery, and it's not until having this conversation now that I'm paying attention to the fact that I have heard every single doctor say those words we have to tell you about these risks because it is surgery.
Speaker 2:And, in a similar way, I'm wondering why isn't that part of the conversation when presenting the or when when educating a couple about going into attempting to have a child Listen, these are the numbers like there's a high success rate. And also we have to tell you about the possibility that a miscarriage may happen, a stillbirth may happen, the baby might be born and, as I've heard it put before, not be compatible with life. There's a million things that that could happen. Right, but we want to, we want to celebrate, we want to give you the assurance that this is what we hope will happen.
Speaker 2:The analogy breaks apart, and I'll stop talking after this. The analogy breaks apart because you can't necessarily give couples the same level of certainty as like doing this procedure, but then even for that for for people who have these procedures that are so routine in certain places, there is still that one that just doesn't make it out of the or. So there's a level of ambiguity and uncertainty and and all of this right. Nevertheless, the strong point is the conversation happens when it comes to these procedures and these surgeries, and I ask the question often why doesn't the conversation happen around? As you are pursuing to start a family, or even after you've had a healthy baby, there still remains the possibility that you may have a miscarriage, should you decide to try again.
Speaker 1:Man, with everything you were saying, I had a million and five thoughts. You know, because there is and I don't know. I don't know if it's an attempt to give more hope to the families, I don't know if it's just because this is how medicine has been practiced for X amount of years, so, as more people learn, this is just something that kind of fall into. But you're right, it's not like statistics for miscarriages don't exist. That's right. The problem is there's no way to pinpoint it. There's no way to determine exactly who's going to have a miscarriage or even to anticipate it.
Speaker 1:Right. Right, there's nothing you can do, it just happens. Now. I know there's a way. You know, in terms statistically, maybe if you're younger and healthier you have a greater chance of not having a miscarriage. I don't know the exact things. I know it's kind of a funny story Me and my wife, when we first had Chris, we were pushing 30. So because of that, amber had to go get checked up more than often. I can't remember the exact place, what they called it, but pretty much it was a place that she had to keep going to because she was, quote unquote, older and, quote unquote, overweight, right, and you know, amber, amber is not, she's not, she's not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but so we go. You know they're talking to us and come to find out Amber has fibroids, which of course can also add to the risk. Yeah, so we go. We sit down in the hospital room with this one doctor. This white guy turns down the lights like really low for some reason. I don't know why.
Speaker 1:I was like we're down like all right, I know right, like the lights are off, we're sitting in there. He's sitting behind his desk and the light isn't like over his head. It's like like right, like eye level, like just yellow light, like a dimly yellow light, right. And he's like well, you have a garden of fibroids.
Speaker 2:So very poetic.
Speaker 1:You're overweight and you're old Damn, so there's like a big possibility that this might not work.
Speaker 2:Damn.
Speaker 1:He said it like that bro Right Said it like that, said it just like like. I mean, I don't know if those are his exact words, but I can tell you that's exactly what it felt like. Like we got a new doctor after that and everything. We were like, nah, screw you, Screw you, bro, you know. And then we had Chris Right. So afterwards, you know, now we're getting ready to have what we are thinking is going to be our second child, and you know well, we've overcome these obstacles before, so we're not expecting obstacles now.
Speaker 1:And this one doesn't work, where there's statistics that might have shown that it was not going to work, possibly. But, like I said, there's statistics for everyone, for completely healthy people, for people that aren't healthy, for people that have diseases, for people that don't have diseases. And I think that there is a fear of being wrong when it comes to professionals, which has passed down, and I think that might be the thing on the medical side, because when it comes to science and all that kind of stuff, there is a fear of the unknown and I can't give you information if it's unknown. So, even with the statistics, I can show you who it's happened to, but I'm afraid to predict. And because I'm afraid to predict. I'll just, we'll just going to act like it's just going to work. It's just going to work. We're not really going to talk about it, of course, unless you're old, and by old I mean like close to 30.
Speaker 2:Yeah, advanced maternal age.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, right, yeah, that's what it was. Geriatric pregnancy, yeah, yeah, but it's just, I think, from that mindset. How do I tell someone as a medical professional, yeah, you might lose the baby. And if you ask the question, well, what are the factors in that? I don't know. You just might because you're a woman.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we went off into a bit of a tangent talking about that, but everything that you just said is so spot on, so let's.
Speaker 1:I mean I think, oh, sorry no no, go ahead. I was just saying. I think even with that tangent it plays into the fears of trying again. Yes, because now suddenly all of those things mean something.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yes, when you've had a child, it doesn't mean anything, because not only you were saying, even if before you've had a child, going into the process of having a child, you're already confident, but after you have your first child, that means you just throw those numbers out the window. Yeah, it doesn't matter anymore.
Speaker 2:I mean I shared this too, right? Yeah, after we had Juki, I thought for sure what the next time? Listen, man, we're done. Like that chapter is closed. That experience was just what it was, but we're never going to go through this again and obviously we ended up going through it another two times before we got eaten.
Speaker 2:But you're absolutely right. I mean, having that first child is such a vote of confidence, right. I mean, you have the awareness, especially in my case, you have the awareness of okay, we did have two losses prior to Juki, but we're done. In your case, you have Chris, so you don't even have any other experience to compare anything to right. Right, the experience that serves as the benchmark is the fact that you had a healthy child to begin with, so anything else can't top that. I mean, everything else at least has to be that right, and you're absolutely right. And just, it makes having the conversation challenging once you have had that experience. So here's the next question that I want to post to you when you started having that conversation with Amber, how much did guilt play into having that conversation? And by that I mean, am I doing the right thing? Is this a way to honor the baby that we lost. So I had some experience with that. But I want to hear about did guilt play any part in your conversation with Amber at all?
Speaker 1:First of all, our conversations weren't super long, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, talk about that I think, yeah, I mean, I think we were both in a place where, you know, you just kind of read each other without saying anything and I could, you could just kind of tell when we weren't really wanting to. You know, just being frank, sexual activity going down because of fear for both of us and that being kind of a mutual thing for a minute During that time in between having a miscarriage and then getting to a point where we're okay to try it again. There are still many conversations about what happened and I think it's through those conversations that we kind of knew when we were ready and got to a point where we both realized that we were ready. There was a little conversation about it. I didn't bring it up.
Speaker 1:Amber is normally the one that brings those things up, which is why I think it's important for us to have these conversations right, because as a man, it's just not something that you think you're supposed to do. But you know, and we just talked about it, you know, and got to a point where Amber was just like you know what? I think I'm ready to try again For me, I'm like okay, but, like you said, the guilt of moving on For me. At the time I didn't consider it too much because I was trying to push that thing out of my mind.
Speaker 1:I see, I was trying to escape and get away from that and being able to say, okay and I'll say this when we said, quote unquote, try again. We did not, and maybe that's a part of this too. I'm sorry for the kind of jumping back and forth here, but you know the things coming back in my brain we decided that we weren't going to try again. But if it happened, it happened, it happened, okay, if that makes sense, yeah, yeah, you know. So we were like, hey, you know, if God wants it to happen, it's going to happen. So, hey, we were like, hey, sex, no condom, whatever, we're just going to, we're just going to roll.
Speaker 1:If it happens, it has. And that was our conversation about being ready. And for us, that was us saying, yeah, we're ready to try again, but, like I said, for me not and this is me looking back on the state that I was, because at the time I wasn't thinking like, oh, yeah, I'm pushing this in the back of my mind, me now looking back on it yeah, I was ready to move on because that was a dark period and I was ready to get to a point where maybe there could be some light.
Speaker 2:You know, that's interesting you say that Go ahead, finish your thought.
Speaker 1:Now that I think about how I was thinking. Yeah, I feel guilty, like right now, you know, because of, like you said, they're not being a time where I honored my little one, and now I wish that I took some time to do that. I was busy dealing with my own emotions and, even though my child was gone, I did not take the time to, in a sense, say goodbye or take any time to really deal with that. And so, as we're talking now, looking back on it, I do feel a little bit of guilt for not doing that.
Speaker 2:Wow, obviously that was not my intent to.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, of course Right.
Speaker 2:But I appreciate you in the moment naming what you're feeling and how you're making those connections in reflection of what your experience was. What I wanted to say is this because you bring up a fascinating point, a nuance that I hadn't considered for me. I always try to understand the reasons why I do things, the reasons why people do things, so I'm constantly mindful of what's behind that, what is underneath the thing that you're feeling, the thing that you're saying, the thing that you want to do. And you brought up something that made me think could part of, could part of somebody wanting to try again after miscarriage be a means of escape, escaping the pain and the reality of loss? And what? What is the? What is the? What is the downside, what is the value of that? Because I want to be careful to not to not make any type of judgment claim.
Speaker 2:Right To deem something as good, to deem something as bad unless it is unhelpful and more ways than than it is helpful, right, but to me this is just fascinating. Like we, we know that there are ways we men, unhealthy ways that we men can get into in order to escape our hurt and our pain and our grief. Right, we could become workaholics, we can become alcoholics, we can turn to other substance abuse. We can do what I've done, which is just completely ignore and just shove it in the back burner and then just keep pushing it back, pushing it back and pretend like this thing is not there. So there are a million and one ways where we can not cope appropriately or in a healthy way when dealing with loss and grief, especially a loss to miscarriage.
Speaker 2:Could this be, could this be part of it too? Right? Someone who, someone who has experienced loss to miscarriage, perhaps hasn't allowed themselves to go through the process of feeling the weight of the loss and just wants to jump right into. We got to try again. We try to. We got to try again. My question would be what's behind that, what's underneath that?
Speaker 1:I think you hit it on the head, the nail in the head, man. I think it is a form of escapism, because losing a child is very hard to deal with. To be honest, and this is my personal opinion think that why we have the discussions that we have around abortion. In terms of life, we were taught when we were children and it holds true today, scientifically or whatever what life is. That's our life. We've learned that life has to do with pretty much growth and consumption. If it's something that can consume something and if it's something that grows, then it is therefore alive. So the argument of whether or not a human embryo that is developing into a baby is alive or not, that's not really a question. It's alive. The real conversation should be about consciousness. But what is growing inside of your spouse, your girlfriend, your significant other is alive Because it is alive and it has the potential to grow into a human. It's been alive. That means that for a moment, you had the potential to have a child, whether or not. Now, like I said, this is where the argument comes in about consciousness and all that kind of stuff, because, you know, was that little small embryo that was growing conscious to understand life. That's the argument, which is what I completely understand. But, regardless of that part of fact is that was a human life and that that had the potential to be a baby, that had the potential to be a child and you lost that. I don't mean you lost it like you lost a girlfriend and there was someone that you wanted to marry and you dreamed about having kids with, but I mean there was a being that was growing, that would have turned into a child that is now gone. That is very real and that hurts. And when you have to sit there and look at that deal with the fact that you had a child that is now gone, you had a human life that might have looked like you, a human life that might have acted like you, a human life that would have looked up to you, human life that would have wanted to be around you, a human life that not only would you love but would have wanted to receive your love and would choose to love you back. That hurts and you are going to want to do everything you can to distance yourself from the fact that that's what that was. That is hard, it's very hard, and it makes all the sense in the world that you would try to escape that reality by trying to have another child. And I'm not saying that to say that people should not try again. I'm not saying that to say, you know, I'm not judging anyone, because that was me, that was me. I am not judging anyone.
Speaker 1:There are times where I talk about Randall and I say he's my second child. Randall is my second child that was born, but he is not my second child. He is my third child. I lost my second child. That is hard to say without bursting into tears right now. I want to, even now as I'm saying it, I want to run away from that and slam the door of that fact. So when Randall came out, I was excited and it didn't. It's not that Randall, the child that came out, filled a void. It gave me the chance to ignore the void. Give me a chance to close the door on the void.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, wow, yeah, wow, yeah, bro, thank you for thank you for saying that, thank you for saying that. That resonates with me too, that so deeply resonates with me. Also, and just to just to strengthen your, your point this is not a matter of making anyone feel horrible about themselves for wanting to try again after a miscarriage. You and I, you and I did that Right. You say you that.
Speaker 2:That's why we have two kids, and and I guess what we're also saying or I'll say this way I think what's difficult about what we're saying is that the instinctual response to pain is not to embrace it, but it's to pull back from it.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Right. I mean that's instinctually something hurts, you're not going to go towards it, You're going to be moving away from it. I mean, I I it pains me to even say this, but I remember when, when my first born, when he was like a year old or something like that, and at that point I was I was still trying to figure out a whole lot of things about myself as a father and what have you. And I remember the one time that actually made physical contact with him by plucking him, and the, the look on his face when he pulled away from me Right At that moment he didn't want to embrace me, right, he didn't want to. He didn't feel safe with me at that moment.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's the same thing that we're talking about. When we experienced this, this loss, this pain, we don't want to embrace it, and so it is a no brainer that we will find any way to pull away from it, so that the more airspace there is between me and that thing that causes me pain, then the better I will feel. And what we're saying is, when it comes to at least this is what I'm saying, so you tell me if you corroborated or or if you have a difference of opinions. What I'm saying is loss to miscarriage hurts like hell, because when we find out, as dads, that we are going to become a dad, instinctually, immediately, without skipping a beat, we've already begun to feel that emotional connection to our unborn child. Scott Jensen, who you and I spoke with, made that very clear in the conversation that he had with us in one of our earlier episodes. We create that emotional attachment to them, and from that I've developed. The saying of that child is as real in the womb of our imagination as it is in the womb of our significant other. So we have this, we've architected this whole reality that we are anticipating would come to fruition once this child comes, and so when this pregnancy is no longer a viable pregnancy and we are in the midst of experiencing a miscarriage. That pain is a very, very intense pain and at that moment we don't want to run towards it and embrace it. And what I'm saying is that's exactly what we should do, because giving into it and allowing ourselves to, to go through that process of properly walking through what that pain means to me, what that pain means to you, is in itself the beginning of this lifelong healing process. Dude I am.
Speaker 2:I'm about to celebrate my, my son's first birthday in a couple of weeks. So, so excited. He started walking two weeks ago, bro. He started walking like. He started walking like two weeks ago, Two or three weeks ago, so. So it's exciting to see how, every day, he just feels more and more comfortable being on his legs and he just looks like. He looks like a little penguin, just kind of waddling around and you know what I mean Like he's the cutest thing, bro. Every time he stands up and walk. I'm just like man. I'm so proud of him. I am so proud of my son that he walked before his first birthday. So I say all that to say for as much joy as I have watching my oldest one, who, juki, is just brilliant. He comes back from school and he has all these things to talk about and he has a way of talking to me that catches me off guard every time, because he sounds so mature for his age and I'm just like I can't believe that's, that's my soon to be four year old. I can't believe this is my soon to be one year old. And I am enjoying them.
Speaker 2:In this phase.
Speaker 2:I am still hurt that I'll never have a daughter, and every once in a while, I feel the sting of that pain, knowing that one of the losses that we experienced, me and my wife, would have been my daughter.
Speaker 2:And so there are times that I'm still, while I'm hugging up on my sons and playing with them and doing all of that stuff In my mind, I'm saying quietly, man, I wish I had a daughter, you know. So it doesn't matter how far removed we are from from it, but I could not do this in a healthy way, chris, if I didn't allow myself, finally, to the best of my ability, to embrace as much as possible the fact that I lost my daughter, who would have been my daughter, and that's not something that, again, to go back to to the analogy is not something that I want to embrace, but there's so much value in embracing the pain and the grief and actually letting the pain and the grief work on me to help me become a healthier and a better person, which I think would have been different had I kept running from it, because, god knows, I did run from from my pain the multiple times that it happened.
Speaker 1:Kelly, I think I thought that that was going to be a girl for me too, and I feel the exact same way you do, because I wanted a girl so bad. Her name was going to be Anika Ray, as like her first name, because Amber's middle name is Onika and, as you know, amber's first name, full first name, is Amber Dawn, so that's why we were going to call her Anika Ray. You know part of Amber's name, and then Amber is the dawn and she's like the Ray sunshine.
Speaker 1:And I wonder the same thing sometimes if that would have been my baby girl and we thought Randall came, we thought Randall was going to be a girl and it wasn't. And it was funny with Randall's name. It was kind of a name we threw together just in case, but we just I was, this is going to be the girl and obviously I'm not disappointed and you're not saying that you're disappointed.
Speaker 2:Not at all.
Speaker 1:It's just no right. But, like you said, losing your child, the creation of your child in your mind and the womb of your mind, and that's what was created in both of our minds and in both of our minds, that's what we lost For all the girl dads out there. You know I would never want you to imagine losing your daughter Never. But that's how it feels. And as men, we look at our sons and we know that we must also teach them to be men. But when we have daughters it's different, no-transcript. We want to hold on to them and protect them and be there, everything in a way that no other man can be and, if we can help it, a way no other man will be. And we couldn't, yeah, we couldn't do it, we couldn't do it. And maybe there are some dads out there that have daughters that wanted sons, and you couldn't do it.
Speaker 1:Because of the same reason, don't, like Kelly is saying, run away from that. And, like Kelly has also said, let's not act like we're not running Acts, you know, because we all are. Don't do it, run towards it, run towards it. Like you said, man, run towards it because we have to grieve. Yeah, we have to grief, grief. It's so important, so important because we have to move on. You know, I don't know if I've told this. Have I talked about Batman and main on here?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Same thing and bring that same thing up again. Just go back to wherever that was. I have seen an episode 72.
Speaker 2:I can't remember, yeah, but like yeah, I forget who we were talking to where you brought that up, I think it might have been in our conversation with Scott.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, oh, same thing. Everyone has a breaking point. Sometimes it's those things that you let linger that can break you later on. Take care now. Take care of it now. Take your time now. This has been a conversation today, bro, yeah.
Speaker 2:Trying to respond to those questions really took us to a place I didn't think I anticipated I would get to. I surely didn't. But this is the beauty and the magic of having these conversations and having you to have this conversation with. I don't think that there is a way to wrap up, you know, to put a bow on it, and that's not what we're trying to do. Certainly so, if you were to, as we come to a close for this part of the conversation so far, if you were to, if you were approached by someone who asked you this question, just this matter question, obviously, in the way that we've been treating it, it shows that it's not as simple as do this, do this, do that? There are layers to.
Speaker 2:You know what's behind the asking of this question, but let's just treat it as surface level. Somebody came to you, I came to you, hey, Chris, my wife and I we are seven weeks removed from the DNC. I'm starting to get NC about wanting to try again. What would you say? What would you recommend? What kind of questions could you shoot back my way to make me think about my reasons for wanting to have this conversation?
Speaker 1:Man, that's a tough one and, like you said, it's because it's such a nuanced thing. Each person is different, obviously, and I don't mean each person is different, each couple is different.
Speaker 2:Yes, a couple is different dynamic. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I think it's important. First of all, and maybe this is the first question I would ask have you all talked about the miscarriage itself, talking about having a child again, but have you talked about the miscarriage Bro spot on? Yeah, yeah, how do you, how can you move on from something that you haven't even talked about yet, you haven't made real yet?
Speaker 2:That, right, there is spot on, because I would be curious about the same thing too. Have you talked about it? What has your conversation been? What has your feelings about the miscarriage been Right, particularly the dad? Have you even gotten to a point of working through how this has impacted you? You're obviously feeling sad. You're obviously feeling emotional. You're probably feeling unmoored, unanchored. You know you're drifting. You're probably feeling all of those things, and identifying and knowing those feelings are super important. Now have you gone a step further to explore what is the implication, what are the implications of you feeling this way? What impact is it having on you? Heck, why does it hurt so bad? Like, I know it's a loss. What did that loss mean? What else did you lose? It's not just the child that you lost. What else did you lose? You know like I would want to know those questions and I know I sound really like therapist, like right now, but those questions are important questions, I think.
Speaker 2:Very much so, very much so, very much so I want to approach the environment for having the conversation of trying again, because what's not said and you said this beautifully earlier after a loss, you could have a million other kids, none of them, none of them.
Speaker 2:You could put all million of them, lump them up in the same place. None of them are going to fill the hole that you have due to the absence of this child who was here and is no longer here. And, in our case, this ideal, this expectation, this reality, this emotional connection that we had to a child who we didn't even see yet, we saw him, we saw her in our imagination. We imagine what they might look like, what they might sound like, what they might do, what they might say, the sound of their voice. We imagine all of that. None of it was concrete, none of it became concrete, none of it will ever again be concrete as it pertains to that potential life or that potential child. Rather, so yeah, are you, I guess, to ask the question more directly that you and I would be asking is are you running from the pain or are you running towards it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, right on.
Speaker 2:Which direction are you going? Are you running towards it or are you running from it? Because if you're running from it, then there is work to be done before I think, before someone should begin having that conversation about trying again.
Speaker 1:Like you said, in between there there's that hole that will never be filled and there's no door big enough in your mind, no matter how much you think, to cover it. So I don't mean to say this in a, but I'll let you guys take how you take it. Embrace the hole, embrace it. Embrace the hole. Yeah, it's there, don't ignore it. You can build things on the other side of it, but that hole is there, embrace it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a part of you now.
Speaker 2:The tools that you need for rebuilding are in there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The tools that you need for rebuilding. They're in there. Hmmm, yeah, man. So obviously we're going to keep this conversation rolling. The next time We'll explore other aspects of this bigger question of having the conversation with your partner, spouse, girlfriend after loss to miscarriage how can you have it, what is an appropriate timeframe, how to even approach beginning this type of conversation. We'll have plenty of conversations exploring these types of questions and also others that may arise. So, again, we encourage you to send us your feedback from this episode, in particular, based off of what was said just now.
Speaker 2:If this sparks any new questions, new ideas, new thoughts in your mind, we want to hear what you guys are thinking, what you are feeling, what resonated, what you disagree with. We would love to hear what you disagree with and share your perspective for why you would do or approach a situation in a different way. All of it I mean, chris I say this seriously, bro All of it is so important because it is in those moments of seemingly conflicting perspectives that we can learn something new. We can have in a hot moment and we can grow and we can take from each other, even if we disagree with each other. I might take something that I do agree with. You might take something that you do agree with from our opposing point of views, and we can make and work for each other. So we want to hear your questions.
Speaker 2:If you have any more questions surrounding this topic, send it to us at themiscarriagedadcom. And again, you can find our Instagram account at themiscarriagedads, on Instagram, and send it a. Send us a direct message, a DM. Slide into the DMs. Let us know what you're thinking, let us know what you're feeling, let us know what resonates.
Speaker 2:And once again, from my part, I said this to Chris before we got on air. He used the word success and I said to him if we are measuring success by the engagement and the responses and the testimonials that we've received so far from people who value this podcast, we are more than successful. So thank you so much for your belief in this. Thank you because you continue to support this. If you are new to this podcast and you have recently discovered this podcast, I send my heart out to you, because that means you have experienced a loss or you are rediscovering the pain following a loss. So I send you my heart, I send you my support, I send you all of the positive and good vibes, to let you know that you are not alone in this process of grief and pain and your moment of loss.
