Help Julianna raise money

In 2021, my first ever pregnancy resulted in an early miscarriage. Reassured by doctors that this is normal but unfortunate, I immediately went into my next pregnancy. This resulted in traumatic 12 week miscarriage. Since this was my second miscarriage and it was over 10 weeks, my doctor sent me to the recurrent pregnancy loss clinic. Of course, all of my results were normal in preliminary testing, so I went into my third pregnancy with minimal treatment. This pregnancy resulted in the traumatic second trimester loss of our son, Spencer. At this point, I basically felt like my entire life was over. And yet, I continued to push for testing. After a year of testing, septum removal, and basically creating my own care plan while doctors looked at me with sad eyes, I went into my fourth pregnancy. This pregnancy resulted in another early miscarriage.

At the same time, my family was going through the traumatic death of my Uncle (Ken). In our last conversation, he said to me: “I know your life has been hard and unfair, but this isn’t the end of your life.” From that point on, I’ve been trying to live the life that I have without spending all of my time wishing for something else.

Based on all of my test results, doctors are hopeful. But what does it mean to be hopeful when you have no control over the outcome? Instead of leaning on hope, and what is considered to be a “good” prognosis, we've been focusing on truly healing and living our lives. 

People always want to ask: “have they figured out what’s wrong? Is there a cure? what about your next pregnancy?” these are all good questions, but they do not have an answer. We could leave every stone unturned and heal every possible part of me, and the outcome could still be the same. 

The butterfly run connected me to my therapist back in 2021, and I don’t think I would be in the place that I am today without her. This kind of pain changes your life forever. It’s not something you can understand unless you’ve gone through it. It is uniquely isolating - the world is surrounded by people with children. You just don’t expect that yours will not make it. And nobody ever knows what to say. This is why peer support is so important.