I was going to do a post about my RANTS but life took the ugliest turn and there is only one rant I now have…

Last night was the most difficult night of our lives. My loving husband, David, held me for hours, as we sobbed over the loss of our son…

David and I hoped to make an exciting post for the New Year and welcome 2017 letting you all know that I was over 3 months pregnant and we were having a baby boy!

Life doesn’t always go how you plan. Life is full of twists and turns. Life sometimes feels like a sharp knife that decides to stab you in the heart and let you slowing bleed out from heartache. Life is often too short and merciless.

I have seen so many posts over this difficult year, telling 2016 to F*CK itself and I never could join in. Even though I still grieve that we had to lose Daddy Jim, David’s Dad this year. Even though my heart still feels broken from what occurred at Standing Rock. Even when I found myself in a ball of tears every time I saw, read or heard more about Aleppo. Even though this presidential election scared me, broke my loved ones, and continues to haunt my dreams. Even though…so much darkness. And yet, I knew we were pregnant and I couldn’t stay mad, sad or scared of anything. Our baby boy was growing, healthy, strong, active, beautiful, and perfectly inside me.

Our peanut…He decided to start his journey in late September. And just like one of my lines as Sylvia, from my most recent play “The Pride” at Theatre22…”I would pray with my whole body to feel it. The stirrings of it. A NEW life inside me. And I would KNOW the very night it happened” And I did! I knew it. I felt when he implanted. I told David, we are pregnant. And sure enough, days later, we took a test and we were.

So yes, this means I have been pregnant for months now, teaching at our studio, on set of films and most amazingly of all…I was pregnant during The Pride. This play was already such a powerful story I wanted to tell with Corey, Trevor, Andre and Doug. This play was already something I knew the community needed to remember, to be reminded and to relate. But to be carrying my own baby inside of me, while diving into a role of a woman who only wishes to have a child…it was magical.

David and I have already lost 2 babies. I had my first miscarriage over a year ago and I was 8 weeks along. All through the filming of The Cost of Things, my Director, and dearest friend, Tony Tibbetts, who knew I was miscarrying, he made it a point to take hourly breaks. I am sure the whole crew thought he was insane…but it was all for me…to go change my pads, as I lost our first child all day. My second miscarriage I wasn’t as far along but far enough. It was at the start of this year, 2016, while I was in Crimes of the Heart at Village Theatre. My understudy had just lost a family member, I didn’t want them to have her fly back for me, so the show must go on…and so did I. But not this time…this miscarriage, there was no film, no play, no Mama DiMarco making sure everyone else was alright first…this was just me, david and our baby.

Monday, December 26th, I started getting low abdominal pain, my OBGYN assured me this was round ligament pain and uterus growth. After two INCREDIBLE ultrasounds, of seeing our active baby boy, and healthy blood tests coming in every OBGYN visit, we had no worries. Now in this time of sorrow, I cherish the videos we have of our peanut waving at us, standing up, and that day we heard his heartbeat for the first time.
Then yesterday morning, after the lower pain had proceeded to get worse, I awoke to get up and pee, which you do a lot when you’re pregnant…and now I was bleeding…heavy. The next two hours that followed are something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. The physical pain…the amount of blood…and then…our baby boy…who fully released from my body…

Is that too graphic? Am I oversharing? Should I even be writing this? Why do I even need to ask these questions?! For any person, man and woman, trying to bring a life into this world, it is truly the most rewarding and challenging thing one can do. And yet, we are told to not talk about half of the journey, until such and such time, or not at all, because what if you lose the baby…exactly, what if YOU LOSE YOUR BABY. THIS is when we need people, loved ones, to know what we are going through, what we have done to get as far as we have and that this loss should NOT be alone. It’s like we are meant to feel ashamed that we cant have a child like “everyone else’…NO, there are SO MANY of us who can’t, who haven’t and who keep trying, even after multiple losses.

My mom drove 100 mph from Port Orchard to our house, getting pulled over by a State Patrolman, who then tried to console my inconsolable mother who explained she was just trying to get to her daughter who was losing her son. When she got here, Caleb, our son, was in my hand, I was still on the toilet, and David and Bruno were at my side. After what seemed like the worse part of it, we rushed to the ER. Hours hooked up to an IV, seeing an EMPTY abdominal and vaginal ultrasound, morphine, and blood tests and…I was sent home.

I started a Miscarriage Support Group, Ciao Bella, to gather woman together and share. This was after my first miscarriage. I wanted Ciao Bella, to be a place where we could say HELLO and GOODBYE to our babies here and gone. Because the journey of BEING pregnant is also not talked about enough. The pains, the changes, the do’s and dont’s. Yes, the internet is always there for you, to go insane with worry. But having actually HUMAN connection, sharing REAL experiences with those who care, THIS is what we all need in LIFE.

I can barely see the screen, as my eyes are so swollen from grieving for the past 24 hours. But I knew I was ready to share, to be open and to let you all know. I can tell you, our boy, Caleb DiMarco Hogan, is beautiful. I am so glad I got to hold him and when we all got back from the hospital, we buried him. I said a prayer, thanked him for the time we had with him, and now, here we are…

I am going to go back outside and sit with my son, even though I know that is just his “shell”, we know he is with us and that he is with Daddy Jim, my paternal grandparents, my maternal grandfather and my great grandma. We only hope he knows we love him and always will.

Caleb DiMarco Hogan 9/28/2016-12/30/2016