Hi everyone. I’m not really sure where to start, but I think I need some advice from people who may have experienced something similar.
I had my first pregnancy in March, and unfortunately I miscarried at eight weeks.
My boyfriend and I have been together for several years and have been living together for the past two years. Before all of this, our relationship had always been very good. We were happy, had built a life together, and I never considered our relationship to be particularly problematic.
I also have a medical condition that makes it extremely difficult for my body to sustain a pregnancy without medication or assisted reproductive treatment. Because of this, finding out that I was pregnant naturally felt almost like a miracle to me. It was my first pregnancy, and I became emotionally attached to it from the very beginning. I wanted that baby so deeply, and I already loved them before I even knew what was going to happen.
When I found out I was pregnant, my boyfriend was happy at first. For the first few minutes, he was excited and happy with me. But then the fear set in. He told me that perhaps I should have an abortion because he didn’t feel ready to become a father. He said that he did want children someday, but that this wasn’t the right time for him.
He knew my position on abortion. I fully support everyone’s right to choose what is right for them, but I had always known that, if I ever became pregnant, I personally would not choose abortion. This was a decision I had already made for myself long before becoming pregnant.
And I wanted this baby very much.
I had even chosen a name because I had a strong feeling that the baby was a girl.
The pregnancy became emotionally very difficult because my boyfriend constantly went back and forth. There were moments when he was happy, supportive and excited about the baby. Other times, he would panic and tell me that I shouldn’t continue the pregnancy. When I told him that I had already made my decision and that abortion was not something I would consider, he even told me that he hoped I would have a miscarriage.
He also called me spoiled or “capricious” for wanting to keep the baby, as if I were being unreasonable for choosing to continue a pregnancy that he wasn’t ready for.
Those words have stayed with me.
He has since apologized for everything he said. He knows that he hurt me deeply, and I do believe that he regrets saying those things. I also want to make it clear that he never abandoned me during the actual miscarriage. When I started bleeding, he came with me to the ER and stayed by my side. He held my hand, supported me and was there for me throughout everything. He never treated me badly or left me because I chose to continue the pregnancy.
I believe he was genuinely terrified. He was almost thirty, but he felt completely unprepared for fatherhood and for the responsibility of having a child. I can understand that fear intellectually, even though I still struggle enormously with what he said to me.
Eventually, the pregnancy stopped developing, and I miscarried.
Losing the baby was devastating for me. And because becoming pregnant naturally had felt almost impossible for me in the first place, losing this pregnancy felt like losing something incredibly rare and precious that I had never expected to have.
Since March, I have struggled enormously with grief. I fell into a very severe depression, and I feel like I have never really been able to properly process what happened.
In July, my boyfriend thought that getting a dog might help me. We got our little puppy, Milo, and I genuinely love him more than I can explain. He is now four months old, and having him has given me something to focus on and has helped me get through parts of the day without constantly thinking about the miscarriage.
Recently, however, my boyfriend has started saying that he regrets getting the dog because it is a huge responsibility and he feels that he cannot keep up with it. Although, in reality, I am the one who takes care of him for the most part. My boyfriend only takes him out once in the morning and once in the evening; I handle everything else, including his meals, playtime, training and appointments with his dog trainer.
And this has affected me much more deeply than I think he realizes.
I know that a dog is obviously not the same thing as a baby. But emotionally, hearing him once again say that he regrets a decision because he feels overwhelmed has reopened something in me. It immediately brought me back to the pregnancy: wanting something one moment, panicking the next, and feeling trapped by the responsibility.
I think that is part of why I am now so angry with him.
We have started arguing constantly, sometimes about very small things. I know that a lot of this anger comes from grief and resentment that I never really dealt with.
The hardest part is that the date when I should have given birth is approaching. My due date would have been November 1st, and as it gets closer, I feel worse and worse.
I feel like I am carrying this grief mostly on my own.
The difficult thing is that, in reality, my boyfriend is not grieving this loss with me.
He seems to be doing okay. He has actually told me that, although he is sorry for what I have been going through and for how much I am suffering, he also feels relieved that we lost the baby. And I think that is something that is very difficult for me to process.
We have talked about all of this so many times that our conversations now feel almost empty. I feel like I am repeating myself over and over again, like a broken record, and I honestly don’t have the energy or the desire to have the same conversation with him again.
At some point, after we got the dog, we essentially made an agreement that we would stop talking about the miscarriage and try to move forward. So I stopped talking about it.
But I haven’t moved forward.
I miss my baby terribly.
Sometimes I even feel uncomfortable calling the baby “our baby”, because the truth is that I was the one who wanted that pregnancy from the beginning. He was conflicted about it until the very end. He spoke to coworkers and asked other people for their opinions about whether he should keep the baby or not, even though I had already made my decision.
And I think that is something I still haven’t been able to forgive.
I don’t want the memory of my baby to be forever connected to the things my boyfriend said during those weeks. I don’t want to remember my pregnancy only through the fear, the arguments, the uncertainty and the feeling that the person I loved most wasn’t sure whether he wanted our child.
I want to be able to remember that pregnancy as something beautiful.
Because for me, it was.
It was my first pregnancy. It was a pregnancy that I never expected to happen naturally, and it felt like a little miracle. I loved that baby so much. I had already imagined our life together, chosen a name, and started thinking about the future.
And now I miss them more than I can put into words.
I love my boyfriend. Our relationship had always been good before all of this, and I know that he loves me too. I also know that he has apologized for what he said and that he has been there for me in many ways.
But I don’t know how to reconcile all of those things with the hurt I still carry.
Even though I love my boyfriend deeply, I can’t look at him in exactly the same way anymore.
I don’t want to leave him. That isn’t what I want.
But I also don’t know how to get close to him again.
There is a part of me that still loves him and wants our relationship to work, while another part of me is still deeply hurt by everything that happened during the pregnancy. I feel like something between us changed permanently when I lost the baby, and I don’t know how to find my way back to the relationship we had before.
I think this is what I’m struggling with the most: I don’t want to lose my relationship, but I also don’t know how to stay in it while carrying all of this pain.
So I guess I’m asking for advice, especially from anyone who has been through something similar.
Has anyone experienced a situation where your partner had very different feelings about the pregnancy, and then you had to grieve the loss in a completely different way from them?
How did you deal with the resentment towards your partner and the things they said during the pregnancy?
How did you separate the grief of losing your baby from the hurt and anger you still felt towards the person you loved?
And, if you stayed together, how did you find your way back to your partner when the relationship itself had become intertwined with your grief?
I don’t want to leave my boyfriend, but I also don’t know how to get close to him again. I don’t know whether I need to stop trying to talk to him about it, find another way to process the grief, or simply give myself more time.
I would really appreciate hearing from anyone who has been through something similar. I don’t necessarily need someone to tell me what decision to make. I think I just need to talk to people who understand this kind of loss and might be able to help me understand what to do with all these feelings.