Pregnancy and Infant Loss: Remembering the Baby I Never Got to Meet

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In honor of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, one Miami mom shares her story of love, loss and the baby she never got to meet.

Pregnancy and Infant Loss: Remembering the Baby I Never Got to Meet Miami Moms Blog Becky Salgado Contributor

The office was empty and unbearably cold when we arrived. We sat in silence waiting for them to see us. My heart raced as they called us in. Saying a quick prayer, I climbed onto the examination table, and they began the ultrasound. I searched the technician’s face. Then the screen. I got a silent, deadpan stare from both. I’d half expected her to smile and say, “Ah, here’s the heartbeat. See, that bleeding you experienced was nothing.” But instead, she stood with a solemn look on her face and said she needed to speak to the doctor. Eddie and I sat in silence until she returned and checked again. Still, nothing. The steady “thump thump thump thump” we’d heard just the week before was replaced with an excruciatingly loud silence.

I felt my face get hot. I was scared to look at Eddie, afraid the pain in his face would confirm what I knew.

The technician then escorted us to another room to speak to the doctor. I felt my face scrunch up into the ugly cry before she could even open her mouth. I just stared at the floor, tears pouring over my cheeks as she spoke. As my face grew hotter, the buzzing in my ears grew louder, but I still managed to pick up a few things she said. “You’re over 8 weeks, but the baby is only measuring 6 weeks 4 days… You’ll go to the hospital on Monday for a D & C to remove it.” It was really all a blur. I don’t remember the walk down the hall or the elevator ride. I just remember standing at the passenger door of Eddie’s red Mustang and crying.

And just as I was climbing into the car, I felt it. God’s voice saying, “It’s going to be okay.” And though the ache still burned in my chest, deep down inside I believed it.

Pregnancy and Infant Loss: Remembering the Baby I Never Got to Meet Miami Moms Blog Becky Salgado
The photo my husband sent my friends after waking up from the D & C.

While it was one of the hardest times of my life, I thank God every day for that baby.

I learned so much about myself, about love. It pushed me to be a better person. It brought Eddie and me closer than we’d ever been. And it taught me about God’s peace, and what it means. At that moment when I felt God telling me it was going to be okay, I felt the peace that passes all understanding. Something I’d heard all my life but never fully understood until then. I learned it’s not that peace cancels out the pain. It’s that peace exists in spite of it. It reigns you back in when the sadness feels like it will take over. It’s the firm bed of rock over which the tumultuous river of emotions rushes. Who would’ve thought that little life, no matter how brief, could teach its momma all of that?

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month

We are remembering the babies we never got to meet and those whose time with us was cut short. If you’d like a place to pay tribute to your baby, we’d be honored to add them to the Miami Moms Blog Forever Loved Wall

6 COMMENTS

  1. Becky, such a beautiful and vulnerable post. Thank you for sharing this. Grateful to know you! You’re such an amazing Mom!

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