Personal story of a difficult pregnancyfrom @amandaaafowler

Themes

• Vulnerability
• Grief
• Intuition
• Motherhood
• Anxiety

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• Text Overlay
• Candid Photography
• Visual Storytelling

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*written June 2026. It’s been four–and–some–change–months since my miscarriage. I’m sitting at a bar drinking a glass of Malbec and writing bits and pieces of a book. Heart racing from reading this because it is both magic and cruel to be so intuitive. I am both right back on the toilet, and also aware of the many reparative days and nights between now & then. The art of being a woman, beauty and pain. Death and birth. Maybe the third baby sitting on my pelvis is this book. It feels so difficult to push out, but I know it will bring new life. Stumbled upon these words and wanted to share them for anyone who is going through a miscarriage right now. I hope they make you feel less alone. I hope my future book baby will bring you solace in whatever phase of mothering you’re in, too.

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  I am currently 7 weeks and 3 days pregnant and I am confident that this is going to end in a miscarriage. I’ve had a feeling since I got the positive test. I don’t know how or why, but I just felt it. This isn’t viable, rang through my body like anxiety. Everything about this pregnancy has felt off, different than my first two. A few days after getting that first positive test I had a dream that I miscarried. And I haven’t had a single dream about the pregnancy since. In my previous pregnancies, my dreams acted like an intuitive messenger. Not always telling me what I wanted to hear, but telling me what my body knew and my mind wondered. I’ve been nauseous. I’ve had tender breasts. But nothing has topped the anxiety I’ve been riddled with. Anxious that this isn’t viable. Anxious that it is. Anxious that it will be an Aquarius baby. Anxious that it won’t get the chance, too.

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  At 5 weeks a planned parenthood physician said that my sac looked low-lying in my uterus, which could lead to impending miscarriage. At 6ish weeks my midwife said there was a heartbeat, a fetal pole, and a yolk sac that looked a little too big for her liking. She said it didn’t have significant statistics to show what it might imply, but I looked it up. Genetic abnormalities which could lead to impending miscarriage. At 7 weeks I started spotting. Pink and brown presented themselves on my toilet paper like a child’s art project I couldn’t interpret, but knew it meant something. I went to have an ultrasound today, and there it was. A gummy bear with a heart rate of 140 bpm. And a gestational sac tracking two weeks behind. More brown discharge. More waiting to hear back from my midwife if my intuition is correct.

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  There’s no way this is viable. I don’t think I want it to be viable. It wasn’t supposed to go this way. My third pregnancy. My third baby. It wasn’t supposed to be an experience of fear, worry, heart-ache, and pain. And although it hurts, I’ve been trying to protect myself. Because I don’t want to feel it. I don’t want this experience. I am resistant to reality because it doesn’t reflect what I saw for myself.

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  How do I tell that girl who saw those two pink lines that this did not go the way she wanted it to? How do I tell her that it’s ok to feel and protect yourself at the same time? How do I tell my family that I was pregnant, I am pregnant, but I know it’s not going to last? How do I celebrate my son’s 4th birthday today knowing that there is a heart inside of me that may stop beating soon? Ironic, isn’t it? That the last time I bled on June 11th I was bringing Ellis into this world.

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  I don’t know what this means. I don’t know what any of this means. And I hate it. I want to sleep. I want it all to go away. I want to stay negative. I want to cry because it’s over. I want to cry because I don’t know if I can do this again. I have such a good life and good kids and a good husband and a good career. Why do I have to want another baby? I want another baby.