[Heads up: This blog is intensely personal and just a bit graphic. If you need to sit this one out, no hard feelings].

It started three nights ago, the night of January 6th. I had just worked all day on getting ready to launch my new giveaway: meeting with my coach, composing a peppy email, polishing a blog post, finessing Rafflecopter, Facebook and other social media to announce the excitement I was feeling about my latest promo. There was a lively discussion on my personal Facebook page about the local schools closing due to cold – a good discussion amongst friends always gets my adrenalin pumping. Plus, I had several phone meetings scheduled for the next day to discuss some exciting new projects involving my books.

That night in the bathroom, however, all that excitement and energy began to fade into white noise as I stared at the tiny trace of pink on the toilet paper that was all-too familiar. And the pain in my abdomen I’d been hoping all day was just indigestion announced loudly how wrong those hopes had been.

I always hated the word “miscarriage” when I was younger. I pick some random times to be really feminist and righteous about things that don’t matter, and that word always stuck in my craw. To say that when a woman loses a pregnancy, she has “mis-carried” implies just that: if you lose a baby it’s because you ‘carried’ it wrong. But if you’re one of the millions upon millions of women who have had a miscarriage (or two, in my case) you understand something my youthful feminist self did not: when you lose a baby, no matter how tiny, the first thing you think is what you did wrong. Was it the glass of wine I had before I was sure? Was it because it took me a couple of weeks to wean down to mostly decaf? Was it that workout where my heart rate got to 130 bpm before I could slow down? Is it my stress level? Picking up my super-heavy toddler (how can I not)? And the worst, most vicious thought of all: Am I being punished by G-d for being a terrible mother?

Logically, I know that last one is not it. There are moments where I really do think I’m a terrible mom, especially with the hormones of early pregnancy raging through me. Sometimes I yell when I should teach; sometimes I even scream when I should leave the room altogether and calm down. I grew up in a volatile household and I have been only moderately successful at unlearning all that anger, despite working damn hard at it. But I love my children just as fiercely as any Mama Bear could, and for every flare of the temper I regret, I know in my heart I give my children ten times as many hugs, kisses, cuddles and words of encouragement. As a friend of mine said to me recently, a mom who is constantly trying to figure out how to be a better mom cannot be a terrible mom. Imperfect? Absofrigginlutely. Undeserving? No.

At least, this is what I tell myself. But when we are confronted with loss, it’s human nature to try to figure out why. In the absence of any solid information to cling to, the most logical target of the blame becomes… ourselves. If I had a friend in this position, I would tell her (as I have) that she did absolutely nothing wrong, that pregnancy is a mystery and a miracle, and we have to believe that Mother Nature knows what she is doing when a pregnancy turns out not to be viable. I am 38 and have two beautiful, healthy children. We’ve tried twice to add a third to our roster and both times have ended the same way. Time for graceful acceptance and moving on.

But that night I slept restlessly, painful cramps waking me every few minutes and visions of the names we’d been toying with haunting my sleep. I also thought about everything that would be happening the next day. What I wanted to do was ignore all of it, curl up in a painful little ball and hide from the world. But the boys needed to go to preschool and I needed to work. It was too late to cancel at least one of my phone meetings – I would have been shooting myself in the foot professionally. I thought about pulling the giveaway announcements, because it felt weird to me that my ‘online self’ was going to be posting perky notes about Valentine’s Day while the real me was curled up in a chair, bleeding. But really, what good would it have done to crawl in a cave? I wasn’t ready, then, to pour my heart out to everyone within reading distance – so should I just disappear? I called my doctor, put my feet up and put on comfortable clothes: what more could be done?

The show must go on. Life must go on.

I know there are many, many strong men out there who deal with pain and loss with grace and swagger. But I do think there is something uniquely feminine about the ability to weather the grief of unfulfilled motherhood. When we got pregnant with our first son, it was after two years of trying and several rounds of fertility treatments.  My body felt like a science experiment, robbed of the mystique of natural conception, and I didn’t care one little damn about any of that as soon as I saw the positive pregnancy test. Hearing his tiny heartbeat for the first time remains one of the peak moments of my life, and he and his little brother will always be my greatest treasures. Having been through the experience of bringing children into the world makes it both easier and harder to bear when that little heartbeat doesn’t sound when it should. You have your healthy kids to console you – many, many blessings to count – and yet, you know exactly what you’re missing, too.

Miscarriage is not the only way to experience this loss, either. I know friends who have been trying to adopt for years, several times coming very close, only to have something not work out at the last minute. I imagine that feels very similar to a miscarriage in some ways. I say to myself: you can rebound from this – you can pick up and move on and even be very, very happy. But you will never be exactly the same.

We had decided before this pregnancy that this would be our last shot at adding another biological child to our family. With my age, our kids’ ages, and a summer miscarriage all in the list of factors, we decided to roll the dice one last time. Whether we stick to that remains to be seen. How do you decide you’re done having children, that your family is complete? Some people seem to know from the minute they find their life partner exactly what they want their family to look like and how many years apart everyone should be. Sometimes it even works out that way. Others make the decision slowly, over time – or even delay until time makes the decision for them. Maybe my body has made the decision for us. Whatever we decide, I know it will be enough.

I will take some time to grieve. I will find a moment or two in which I can safely retreat to the proverbial cave, curl up in a ball and feel sorry for myself. Just for a minute. Maybe with ice cream and old movies. And then like every other woman I know who’s been through this, I will stand up again. My body will heal. My spirit will triumph. I will look around me and see the love that is abundant, not the parents and children who I cannot hold in my arms. I will count my blessings and scaffold my patience and focus on raising my boys, writing my books. Telling my story, because no matter how hard it gets in the middle, mine is going to be a happy ending.

Early in the morning of January 7th, after I’d writhed in blood and pain all night, our two little guys both eventually made their way to our bed, as they almost always do. I lay there, looking at the ceiling, abdomen aching, wondering how I was going to get out of bed and make the day work. On my left, my sweet four-year-old was snoring softly, curled into me for warmth. On my right, our little two year old had wiggled and wriggled on my arm in his footie pajamas until I thought he might have fallen back asleep. I sneezed. This hurt, of course, and brought fresh tears to my eyes.

Then I heard it, a tiny whisper in my right ear from the lips of my two-year-old. “Bless you, Mommy.”

Yeah. You know what? I really am.

MJ Pullen

M.J. Pullen is a distracted writer and the mom of two boys in Roswell, Georgia, where she is absolutely late for something important right now. Her books include quirky romantic comedies and playful women's fiction. She blogs erratically with writing advice, random observations, and reflections on raising very loud kids and dogs. Join her Distracted Readers newsletter list for updates, free content, giveaways and more.