Women in the Waiting Room

A few years ago, a colleague-turned-friend recommended her OBGYN to me.

Last year, we found ourselves walking parallel paths. We were both trying for our second babies, and unfortunately would both experience the quiet heartbreak of miscarriage.

When I saw two pink lines again last year, I returned to that OB to confirm my good news.

I sat in the waiting room, holding my breath. I wanted to protect this hope and I thought about texting my friend. Instead, they called my name quickly. I followed the nurse through the familiar hallway.

The ultrasound was first, and the technician smiled as she told me to go ahead and empty my bladder before starting. When I did, I saw blood.

Everything shifted. I knew what it meant before anyone said the words.

Through my tears and theirs, we did the ultrasound anyway, and a blood draw to confirm what my body had already begun to understand, which was that my pregnancy was ending.

The numbers were not rising. They were falling. And everything in me felt like it was falling too.

I couldn’t hold back tears at the checkout desk, clutching paperwork I didn’t want.

And that’s when I saw my friend, right there in the waiting room. Her husband sat beside her, my first indication of her good news. Eyes full of hope.

The same office. The same day. Just minutes apart.

I walked over, and we spoke, just briefly. She didn’t know what had happened, not yet.

But I did. I could feel the ending wrapped around me while she was still sitting in the beginning.

And that small moment, I was carrying the *fullness* of the same ache that she had once carried too.

Nothing prepares you for that kind of ache, for miscarrying in the same office your friend is beginning in.

For standing between two worlds at 10:00 a.m. on a Thursday.

For joy and sorrow brushing shoulders in the waiting room.

But what I’ve come to understand is that happiness and heartbreak are not opposites. They are companions.

They often live in the same places, in the same stories, the same silence, the same spaces where life begins and ends and yes, sometimes even in the same waiting room.

And they can only be held and honored when we talk about them and stop pretending that one must exist without the other.

Our joy deserves to be celebrated. Our grief deserves to be spoken. And both deserve care.

Sometimes the recommendation you get from a friend turns into space held for you and space held for them.

There is room for both, and room for every woman in the waiting room.😭💙🙏