Please be aware that I will not be responding to any messages, asks, or replies at this time, or for the foreseeable future. Please respect our privacy and need to grieve. Thank you.
This is not an easy post. Our journey does not have a happy ending.
At 2:08PM on Saturday, April 13, 2019, our beautiful Camryn Rose made a very early debut into the world. She died in my arms at 2:13PM without ever taking a single breath.
Camryn Rose was born a full 21 weeks early. They don’t even call it a live birth at that point. Even though her heart was still beating until they cut the cord, it’s considered a second trimester miscarriage.
Regardless of what they call it, I call it heartbreak. I call it impossible.
I call it agony.
Camryn Rose. She was a girl. I don’t think I had even publicly announced that yet on Tumblr. Only a select few knew that detail. Only a select few knew I was experiencing complications. To those few, I am eternally grateful for your positivity and being there when I needed you. Especially @randomgirlusername. You were definitely my virtual rock when I needed to be completely honest with where my head was as we were playing that torturous waiting game, and in the weeks since.
To others, I need to tell my story. I know I don’t owe it to anyone, and I have a right to keep it private, but writing it out has been cathartic, and I want you all who have been so supportive and encouraging to know.
So, here’s my story.
WARNING: This story contains frank, graphic descriptions of a second trimester miscarriage. I can’t sugarcoat any of the details. If you’re at all squeamish, this may be hard for you to read. Proceed at your own risk.
Please be aware that I will not be responding to any messages, asks, or replies at this time, or for the foreseeable future. Please respect our privacy and need to grieve. Thank you.
This is not an easy post. Our journey does not have a happy ending.
At 2:08PM on Saturday, April 13, 2019, our beautiful Camryn Rose made a very early debut into the world. She died in my arms at 2:13PM without ever taking a single breath.
Camryn Rose was born a full 21 weeks early. They don’t even call it a live birth at that point. Even though her heart was still beating until they cut the cord, it’s considered a second trimester miscarriage.
Regardless of what they call it, I call it heartbreak. I call it impossible.
I call it agony.
Camryn Rose. She was a girl. I don’t think I had even publicly announced that yet on Tumblr. Only a select few knew that detail. Only a select few knew I was experiencing complications. To those few, I am eternally grateful for your positivity and being there when I needed you. Especially @randomgirlusername. You were definitely my virtual rock when I needed to be completely honest with where my head was as we were playing that torturous waiting game, and in the weeks since.
To others, I need to tell my story. I know I don’t owe it to anyone, and I have a right to keep it private, but writing it out has been cathartic, and I want you all who have been so supportive and encouraging to know.
So, here’s my story.
WARNING: This story contains frank, graphic descriptions of a second trimester miscarriage. I can’t sugarcoat any of the details. If you’re at all squeamish, this may be hard for you to read. Proceed at your own risk.
On Thursday (April 11), I stayed home from work because I was feeling a bit off. But I’d been having trouble sleeping because of my asthma and allergies (both made worse by the pregnancy), so I figured I just needed a day or two to rest and catch up on my sleep. The morning was pretty smooth, just some mild discomfort that wasn’t usual for me. Mostly lower back pain that I typically attribute to the weight of my chest. I’ve felt that pain since my teenage years, so it wasn’t unusual.
Claire was still home. She’d cancelled her late morning office hours, but was still planning on heading to work for her two afternoon classes. We’d planned on ordering Chinese food for lunch and watching Lost Girl on Netflix.
Around noon, I began feeling a bit worse. My lower back pain had morphed into what felt very similar to bad period cramps. When I went to pee, there was spotting. Spotting during pregnancy isn’t unusual, but combined with the lower abdominal cramps that were continuing to worsen, we made the decision to call my OB and see about getting a same-day appointment to get everything checked out. The receptionist told us to hold for a moment, then she was back on the line in two minutes and told us to go straight to the emergency room as quick as we could. Claire drove like a mad woman and got us there in under fifteen minutes.
I was admitted fairly quickly and they did a pelvic exam where it was discovered that my cervix was extremely short. An incompetent cervix is the technical term. A normal cervix length at 17.5 weeks is about 3.5cm, but it can vary for each pregnancy. Anything less than 2.2cm is considered in the danger zone. My cervix was 1.1cm upon admittance. Essentially, my body was preparing for labor. I was only 17 weeks and 4 days. The earliest viability for a fetus is 22 weeks, and survival rates at that point are still incredibly low. There was zero chance she’d make it if they didn’t stop it.
I was given IV medication to try and stop active labor, but it didn’t work and by the following morning, my cervix was 0.8cm long. The next step was a cervical cerclage, which is a procedure where they literally sew your cervix shut with a thick suture. It sounds painful because it is. I was given an epidural to numb me, but when that wore off, I was in so much pain that I passed out from it a few times. I could only receive so much pain medication to help because of the baby. But it was worth it, all the pain and agony was worth it, to save our baby.
But it didn’t work. I developed a pretty nasty infection quickly (expected with this procedure) and it was being resistant to antibiotics. And then, at just past noon on April 13, 2019, my body gave up and my water broke. The force of it ripped the stitch from my cervix, and it felt like a red hot poker was being pushed out of my vagina. I’ve never felt anything more painful in my entire life. Physically, at least. What happened next was easily the single most painful experience, physical or emotional, I’ve ever had to endure.
There was nothing more to do to stop my body from labor. They gave me another epidural to numb me, then they delivered sweet little Camryn Rose. She was so tiny; I didn’t even have to push. She was already crowning. She weighed just over 6.5 ounces and was only 5.4 inches long. I held her as I cried. As Claire cried with me.
In all the years I’ve known Claire, I’ve only seen her cry from sadness two other times. Once was when her mother died last summer, the other when the grad student she was mentoring died in a horrific car accident several years ago. It seems death is the common denominator here. Claire is a solitary crier. I know she’s had more moments than I’ve been privy to than just what I’ve seen. It’s not that she doesn’t want me to see her break down. Or, well, that’s exactly what it is, actually. She’s stoic and a protector. She feels the need to be my rock, so she has to always be strong.
But she was crying freely as she held me the entire time, uncaring that all the medical personnel could see her. That my mom could see her. (My mother had flown out as soon as I’d been admitted to the hospital the day before.) She didn’t care, and for that I am grateful. I needed her to be vulnerable in that moment, just as she needed herself to be vulnerable.
My heart hurts for the loss of our baby, but it hurts even more for the pain it causes my incredible wife. She’s been through so much and I just don’t understand how she can keep going after all of it. But she does, and for that I am so utterly grateful and in complete awe.
Camryn Rose. We decided on the name as I held her. “We should pick a name.” Claire spoke those words as she brushed a finger across our daughter’s paper-thin cheek. We’d discussed a few names, but Camryn really stuck out in that moment. She felt like a Camryn. And Rose in honor of Mama Rocío, Claire’s mother’s, memory.
After we said our goodbyes, I had to be taken to the OR for a cervical repair. It’s as nasty as it sounds. They stitched my cervix back into place, but only after they had to perform a D&C (where they remove the placenta). I was thankfully still numb from the epidural, but after that wore off, it was more pain.
The physical pain, as bad as it was, was nothing compared to the emotional pain I felt. The emotional pain I still feel, and will for a long, long time.
I can’t become pregnant again. There was too much damage to my cervix. I’d never be able to carry a baby to term, no matter how much precaution was taken. That’s something I have to make peace with, but that’s also going to take a long, long time.
The mental trauma of this miscarriage has left me raw and sensitive. The smallest thing can set me off into a sobbing mess. The thing that gets me most right now? Mirrors. Yes, mirrors. Or photographs of myself. Because, even 3+ weeks later, I still look pregnant. The body doesn’t magically morph back to its pre-pregnancy state after miscarriage. I still have the rounded belly (not quite as much now, but still there) and puffy cheeks. That will take a while to go away. So for now, mirrors/pictures of myself are the sworn enemy.
Claire is incredible. She’s grieving as much as I am, yet she’s been my rock this entire time. Her and my mother. And my dog. Sasha the GSD has not left my side since I returned home from the hospital. Dogs are incredible, and we don’t deserve them.
Therapy has been a godsend. I’m nowhere near okay or ‘back to normal,’ but I can function day-to-day, and that’s a huge improvement for me compared to two weeks ago. It seems like it’s been so much longer than just over two weeks. It seems like it’s been a lifetime. Getting through the next days, weeks, months, years… seems impossible at times.
My saving grace is my support system. In particular, five people. Claire, my mom, Sarah, my therapist, and @randomgirlusername (seriously, y’all, if you didn’t know how incredible she is, take my word for it--she’s been a literal life-saver and I cannot thank her enough). I have my bad days and I have my good days. All days are emotionally trying, but some are less painful than others. Those good days are all because of this support system that I have.
And on the bad days, my support system knows exactly how to help me cope. And for them, I’m eternally grateful. I don’t know where I’d be, mentally, without them.
I’m okay. Or, I will be, at least. Even though this is the most difficult thing I’ve ever gone through, I have the support system to get through it. And because of that, I know I’ll be okay. I know there will be hard days and not-so-hard days. I know it won’t be all rainbows and sunshine, but it also won’t be all stormy weather. I remind myself in those bad times that it won’t remain like this. I will feel joy and happiness again.
It will just take time to heal, physically and emotionally.
Clarke is still out of breath from rushing home after she got off work early when she turns the key to open the door to her apartment. A few months ago, she would have rejected the offer to take the rest of the night off when the bar was having a slow night. She would’ve kept working or stuck around to join her friends on the other side of the bar until closing time. That all changed when her new roommate Lexa moved in at the start of the year.
Tonight she made a hasty exit when her boss told her she could handle the bar on her own until closing time on the off chance that she could spend some time with Lexa. Their schedules rarely line up, and it’s made Clarke desperate to be home whenever Lexa is there. She had somehow become the world’s biggest cliche, memorizing her gorgeous roommate’s schedule in an effort to indulge her massive crush.
Disappointment dampens her mood when she lets herself in and finds that the apartment is dark save for the small light in the kitchen and the hallway that leads to their bedrooms and shared bathroom. She figures Lexa is probably hanging out with her cousin or some of the pretty girls on her soccer team.
Dejected, she takes off her jacket, slings her bag from her shoulder and kicks off her shoes. She lets out a long sigh, standing in the kitchen and contemplating what to do with the rest of her night now that her plan fell through. A bath seems like the best option under the circumstances. She had gotten cold on the way home, soaking in the tub will warm her up while also allowing her to wallow in her feelings about Lexa.
She walks into the hallway, longingly looking at Lexa’s door as she walks past it, dreaming about what they could have done if Lexa were here. She would have suggested they watch a movie and Clarke would’ve tried to get closer to Lexa this time, instead of chickening out like her previous attempts. She’s still thinking up ways in which she could’ve been suave and confidently sidle her way up to Lexa when suddenly, she hears a noise.
Clarke stops and listens with bated breath. She could have sworn she just heard Lexa’s muffled voice from the other side of the door, but no other sounds are forthcoming. She shakes her head and chastises herself for being so thirsty for her roommate that she’s starting to imagine things that aren’t there. But then she freezes when she can hear Lexa call her name from the other side of the door.
“Clarke.”
This time she hears it clearly. Her mind isn’t playing tricks on her. She walks to Lexa’s bedroom door and puts her ear against it. Concentrating with all her might, she can very faintly hear Lexa mumble something unintelligible, followed by a distinct ‘Clarke, please’.
Her heart pounds against her ribcage. Lexa sounds distressed. She could be sad, she could be sick, she could even be hurt. Lexa needs her, and she needs to get to her right now. Without waiting a second longer, Clarke opens Lexa’s bedroom door, only to be met with darkness. When she calls Lexa’s name there is no answer, only a soft whimper.
She clumsily navigates her way to Lexa’s bedside in the low light coming from the hallway lamp. She manages to find the switch of the light on Lexa’s nightstand and flicks it on. The first thing she notices is that Lexa is asleep. The second is that Lexa is covered in a fine sheen of sweat. Her brows are scrunched up and she looks in pain. Clarke reaches out without thinking, putting her hand on Lexa’s forehead to stroke a few strands of hair from her face.
“Clarke,” Lexa moans.
“It’s me. I’m here, tell me what you need.” When there’s no response she tries again, a little louder this time.
“Lexa?”
With a start, Lexa opens her eyes, rousing from her slumber. When Lexa’s eyes settle on her face, they widen in panic and her cheeks flush crimson. Clarke spends a few seconds in complete confusion until her eyes travel down Lexa’s form under the covers and she suddenly understands what’s going on.
“Oh,” is all she manages to say.
Lexa quickly hides herself by rolling onto her side, facing away from Clarke. Clarke is still speechless, unable to form the words she wants to say to Lexa. In the end, it’s Lexa who speaks first.
“I’m sorry, can we please pretend this never happened?”
Clarke swallows, her brain is finally catching up. She realizes this is her chance to tell Lexa how she feels.
“We could do that… or I could tell you I’ve had similar dreams about you.”
Lexa slowly turns her head to face her, eyes wide in shock, just like her mouth. “You have?”
Clarke nods, a smirk pulling at the corner of her mouth. “Many times.” She bites her bottom lip and looks at Lexa through her lashes. “Sometimes while I’m awake.”
When all Lexa does is gape at her, she reaches out to stroke Lexa’s bare upper arm with the tips of her fingers.
Clarke has been in love with her best friend, Lexa, for three years. But she never said anything because Lexa was with Costia. She wasn’t a home wrecker. So she kept it to herself.
Lexa and Costia split up and, though it’s amicable and for the best, Lexa is heartbroken. So Clarke invites her over for a girls night in with Raven and Octavia and a few bottles of Lexa’s favorite wine.
But Raven has to cancel because she’s stressing about a project for grad school and Octavia calls it an early night because she has to be up at 5 for work. So it’s just the two of them and two and a half bottles of wine. Lexa savors the wine, sipping it like it should be enjoyed, humming at the pleasantly aromatic experience. (Y’all, I know almost nothing about wine, so forgive me it that was a load of pure bullshit… I would research more were I actually writing this fic lol.) Clarke, on the other hand, isn’t really a wine connoisseur and just gulps it, grimacing at the taste, but liking the buzz it’s giving her.
Before she knows it, Clarke has downed an entire bottle of wine on her own while Lexa is still on her second glass. Lexa is sitting there, looking so pretty and sad and she just wants to cheer her best friend up and she just loves her so much and ugh!
Only, she doens’t realize that she’s said alllll of that aloud until Lexa looks at her with a wide-eyed expression and turns bright red. But she graciously allows Clarke to pretend it never happened and they return to relatively normalcy.
Kinda.
Clarke can’t stop thinking about her best friend and wants to tell her that she wasn’t just spewing drunk nonsense and that she meant every single word, but she also knows Lexa is still hurting from her breakup with Costia and she needs her best friend now more than anything. She’s not about to ruin that for her own selfish needs. So she silently pines as she offers her shoulder to cry on.
Lexa has never thought of Clarke in ‘that way’ because she’s fiercely loyal and monogamous and only allowed herself to think about Costia. But even fresh off her breakup, Clarke’s drunken confession sends her spiraling. And has her looking at her best friend in a whole new light. She knows Clarke meant what she said, and the fact that she’s willing to out her own feelings aside to be a good friend makes her really see Clarke in a way she’d never seen her before. Of course she's always known how kind and gorgeous Clarke was, but now it’s as if a light switch went off in her head.
They don’t immediately get together. Lexa still needs time to heal even after admitting to herself that she’s attracted to Clarke in a romantic way. But she makes it known to Clarke without explicitly telling her that when she’s ready to move on, she wants to do so with her.
Eventually, they go on a date, kiss, feel one another up, confess their love (soberly), and they bang.
Survival/wilderness and Awful First Meeting. "Oh thank God someone came to help." "...I... Don't actually know how to get out of here either." "......well what the fuck good are you, then?!"
LOL okay, so I’m going to go all Shondaland on this one, okay? They’re two of five passengers on a small charter flight. Strangers, of course. Plane crashes in somewhere in the Ozarks, but like, in the middle of nowhere with no sign of human life in sight. They are the only mobile survivors--they’re the only surviving passengers and the pilot can’t move his legs. They drag him to safety in case the plane’s fuel tank explodes and set out to find help. But, like I said, middle of fucking nowhere.
They bicker about which way is the best way to travel (Law student Lexa says head west so they have as much daylight as possible, EMT Clarke says head south because they should be just north of a small town if she recalls correctly from the guidance map just before they lost power.)
They keep bickering, almost get eaten by a bear, Lexa saves Clarke from falling off a cliff, Clarke tends to a wound on Lexa’s thigh with her medical training, they bicker some more, they share an intense moment when they have to spend the night in a cold, damp cave and huddle together for warmth, then they fucking bicker even more the next morning, then they kiss, bicker some more, and keep searching for help. They finally come across a road and pray for a passerby. Two cars drive by them without even stopping before Clarke says fuck this and stands in the middle of the fucking road when the next car comes along so they have to stop. They finally find help and save the day.
Wow okay. Um. I had to really think about this one. But here we go.
High school AU. Lexa is a player who seems to get around A LOT. Every week she has a new girl on her arm. Clarke HATES her. Like really hates her. Except she totally has a crush on her. But she refuses to admit that to anyone.
No one really knows Lexa aside from her best and only friend, Anya. Other than the fact that she’s intelligent and a raging lesbian flirt, she’s a mystery.
Clarke is working at the hospital after school and on weekends to help out because they’re short-staffed and Abby has this thing about Clarke appreciating the value of a dollar rather than being handed everything she wants. Clarke doesn’t mind it. She likes the people she works with and it’s not that hard since she only does a couple hours at a time. She does some filing here and there, makes some calls, and sometimes helps clean exam rooms. Even though she’s not technically supposed to interact with patients or their families, she has a penchant for being a calming presence.
One evening, player Lexa is brought in with some injury (broken arm or something equally serious, but not life-threatening). Clarke just rolls her eyes when she sees Lexa sitting in the waiting room with a homemade splint on whatever she broke (let’s just as it’s her right arm/wrist/hand because I can use that later on). But inwardly, she’s concerned.
Abby recognizes Lexa as a kid from Clarke’s school and when she sees in her paperwork that’s she’s emancipated, she suggests that Clarke keep her company in the exam room. (Again probably against hospital protocol but idgaf.) Clarke ends up reluctantly agreeing and is surprised when Lexa seems happy to see her. She’d been given some morphine or some pain killer that medically makes sense in this story that I’d have to research because my medical knowledge begins and ends with what I saw on Grey’s Anatomy. So she’s flying kind of high.
They sit in awkward silence for a few minutes before high!Lexa tries to make small talk. Clarke makes a quip about how a broken arm/wrist/hand will make it difficult for her to please all the girls hanging off her arm. When Lexa blushes, Clarke is confused but they’re interrupted by the doctor before she can ask about it.
Later, once Lexa is x-rayed and, yep, it’s broken, she’s waiting to be casted up when Clarke rejoins her and asks why she blushed. Lexa admits that’s she’s actually a virgin and at first Clarke doesn’t believe her and laughs at the joke, but when Lexa doesn’t laugh in return, Clarke is stunned.
Lexa, still high as a fucking kite, admits she uses the player front as a coping mechanism to not allow anyone, especially Clarke, to get too close. Clarke is stunned. Why especially her? She asked Lexa that. Lexa admits she’d had a crush on her since 7th grade but was too afraid to act on it because her parents were raging homophobes and she didn’t want to admit she was gay. (Clarke was apparently her gaywakening.) Even after admitting to her parents that she’s gay and them disowning her which led to her emancipation, she stuck with a player front to avoid her real feelings because, ew ~feelings~.
Long story short, Clarke confronts Lexa once she’s sober and they talk, they kiss, and then they bang.
Honestly, I’d do a The Proposal AU where Lexa is an outwardly stone cold CEO of Polis Tek Group and Clarke is her assistant trying to work her way up in the business but Lexa never seems to take her seriously. When Lexa’s visa expires (she’s an Australian native, of course), she blurts out that she and Clarke are engaged in an effort to stay in the country.
Clarke is flabbergasted but the promise Lexa makes of sitting down with her to discuss moving up in the company and the promise of a persona recommendation is so appealing that she can’t say no. So she agrees to the cockamamie scheme and they end up traveling to the town of Arkadia which is in the ass fuck middle of nowhere for Abby’s wedding to Marcus Kane.
Of course Abby is surprised that Clarke never mentioned a girlfriend before but Clarke has also been distant since she told her she was engaged to Marcus. So when Clarke announces that they’re getting married, well, she just goes with it because she’s just glad that Clarke decided to even come to the wedding at all.
They end up having to share a bed because Abby isn’t so old fashioned so as to believe that an engaged couple wouldn’t want to share a room. The first night Clarke sleeps on the floor but has crippling back pain the next day and refuses to do it again so they share the next night.
The naked smooshed bodies scene happens and it’s awkward but also arousing for them both.
More bed sharing. How this differs from The Propsal is that they actually bang and fall in love before being interrogated by ICE and they live happily ever after.
Lexa is a florist and having a panic attack because the order for the biggest social event of the season (the wedding of a prominent diplomat’s daughter) was a wreck. She’d promised one thousand hand-picked pink amaryllis flowers, but the shipment of fresh flowers had 500 pink and 500 white. The wedding was in 36 hours.
She was freaking out. She couldn’t let this wedding be a disaster because of the flowers. She just couldn’t! It would ruin her reputation. She’d never have large orders again. She’d go out if business and—
It was Clarke who saved the day. “Hello Senator. I’m calling in regards to the flower order for tomorrow’s big day.” Clarke waves Lexa off as she speaks into the phone. She convinces the senator and his daughter that only pink flowers would be too much and “not the best backdrop for photos. You wouldn’t want garish photos of the most important day of your life, would you? I mean, these photos are going to end up all over the internet.”
They agree that 500 pink and 500 white would be just perfect.
Lexa thanks her girlfriend for saving the day by giving her a mind blowing orgasm. Or four.
College Roommate AU. They’re hiding their relationship from their friends because, well, they know they’re just going to ask them a million questions and it will make things weird and they just want to savor being in a new relationship for as long as they can without their nosy friends all up in their business. Lexa knows Anya will give her that shit eating grin and I told you so look. Clarke knows Raven and Octavia will persistently ask her about the sex.
They just want to be for now.
It’s when they’re being fired upon that they’re found out. All because Clarke had to blurt out her feelings when they thought they were alone.
I just need you to know that I love you and that whatever happens, that won’t change.
It was Raven who busted them, taking Lexa’s moment of stupor to take aim and...
“We win! And you two are so busted!”
Lexa looks down at the bright yellow splatter of paint on her chest. They’d lost the paintball match.
Lexa is a time traveling warlord from Gallifrey who has just saved the city of Arkadia from a rogue band of misfit daleks (those pesky daleks!). Clarke is an artist minding her own business when the fight to save the day ended up destroying her art gallery that she worked so hard to open on her own.
Lexa offers to help the pretty girl in distress and uses her charm to make things better.
Do you have any advice for meeting people on tumblr/the internet? I'm a long time lurker and introvert and don't have many LGBT friends IRL. There seems to be loads of lovely people in the clexa fandom but I don't really know how to start!
Sorry this took so long to respond to!
I’m super introverted irl and that definitely rolls over into socials like tumblr. So I’m not the best at starting communications. But the best advice I can give when it comes to making tumblr friends is to engage! Whether it’s adding commentary to a reblog of a fic you love or a social awareness post, offer your thoughts (respectfully!!). I was fortunate in that I’m a writer and was able to make friends with people who commented a lot or offered insight into my own fics. So that could be a place to start! Interact with writers, artists, list makers, etc. I love when someone asks about my fics. Simple things like asking what a character’s motivations were or asking about headcanons I have for my AU worlds, etc. Maybe start there? But don’t be pushy either! There is no guarantee that if you contact a writer/artist/etc. that you’ll become besties. Just let it happen if it does and move on if it doesn’t.
I hope something I said helped. Like I said, I got lucky since I’m a writer. :)
Ummmmm the moment you finally admit to yourself you were in love with a friend, but you never see anymore.....how do you get over it without getting under somebody?? bc that’s never happening,, I don’t go out.... time hasn’t helped much (do t you want some drunk thoughts while you can’t)
Drunk thoughts are fun, friend.
Time will probably be the only thing to help. But you don’t have to go out to meet someone! Work, school (idk how old you are so idk if you’re in college or work or whatever lol), INTERNET! Seriously, the internet is an introvert’s best friend when it comes to meeting people!
