My Husband’s April Fools’ Joke Made Me Lose Our Baby.

“Oh my god, you should see your face. I got you so good. Did you really think I was divorcing you?” he asked.

His friend Trevor came out from the hallway holding his phone. He’d been filming the whole thing.

It was a prank, and they’d been filming my reaction. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and couldn’t process what he was saying.

April Fools. This was a joke.

He’d had fake divorce papers created and served to me at work in front of all my colleagues. He used reasons that shredded every insecurity I had about my pregnancy, about my body, and about whether I was good enough for him.

And it was a joke. Trevor was still filming, getting close-ups of my face.

Nathaniel was still laughing, wiping tears from his eyes.

“This is going to be hilarious when we post it,” Trevor said.

“The reactions are always the best part,” he added.

Something twisted in my chest, a physical pain, sharp and sudden, like someone had reached in and grabbed my heart. I gasped and doubled over.

The pain spread across my abdomen, radiating out in waves. Nathaniel’s laughter stopped.

“Liv?” His voice changed, concern replacing amusement.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

I tried to answer, but another wave of pain hit me and I couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t normal; this wasn’t stress or panic.

This was something wrong, something deeply, terribly wrong. I looked down and saw blood running down my leg, soaking through my pants and pooling on our kitchen floor.

Nathaniel’s face went white. He dropped the sandwich he’d been holding.

Trevor stopped filming.

“Oh my god,” Nathaniel said.

“Oh my god, Liv,” he cried.

“Call 911,” I managed to say.

The pain was getting worse, sharper, like knives inside me.

“Call 911 right now,” I said.

Nathaniel was frozen, staring at the blood. Trevor was the one who pulled out his phone and made the call.

I sank to the floor, my back against the kitchen cabinets. My hands went to my stomach instinctively, trying to protect Lily and trying to keep her safe.

I already knew that something terrible was happening. The paramedics arrived in 8 minutes and found me on the kitchen floor.

Nathaniel was holding my hand; both of us were covered in blood. They asked questions I couldn’t focus on.

They asked how far along I was and when the bleeding started. They asked if there was any pain or any cramping.

“Yes,” I whispered.

I whispered yes to all of it. They loaded me onto a stretcher and carried me out to the ambulance.

I could see our neighbors watching from their yards. Mrs. Chen from next door had her hand over her mouth.

The ambulance doors closed, and we were moving, sirens wailing. Nathaniel was sitting beside me, looking like he might throw up.

At the hospital, everything happened too fast and too slow at the same time. Nurses were rushing around and machines were beeping.

Someone was putting an IV in my arm. A doctor with kind eyes told me they needed to do an ultrasound to see what was happening.

I already knew what was happening; I could feel it. The emptiness and the absence were there.

The place where Lily had been growing, where her heart had been beating, was silent now. The ultrasound confirmed it.

“I’m so sorry,” the doctor said.

“There’s no heartbeat. We need to take you into surgery right away. You’re experiencing a placental abruption; it’s very serious,” the doctor explained.

I turned my head to look at Nathaniel. He was crying real tears this time, not the fake ones from laughing at his prank.

“I’m sorry,” he kept saying.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t think. I’m so sorry,” he sobbed.

The nurses were wheeling me toward the operating room. A different doctor was explaining the procedure, the risks, and the recovery.

I wasn’t listening. All I could think about was Lily, our daughter who we’d never meet.

Our daughter would never sleep in the yellow nursery. Our daughter would never take her first steps or say her first words.

She would never graduate from high school or get married. All of that was gone because of a prank.

Seeking Accountability

The surgery took 2 hours. When I woke up, the first thing I felt was emptiness.

There was physical emptiness where Lily had been and emotional emptiness where my future had been. I looked down at my stomach, still rounded from pregnancy but now just an empty shell.

My mother was sitting beside the bed holding my hand. She’d been crying.

“Where’s Nathaniel?” I asked.

My voice was hoarse from the breathing tube they’d used during surgery. She hesitated.

“He’s in the waiting room. Do you want to see him?” she asked.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t know what I wanted; I didn’t know anything anymore.

The doctor came in an hour later. She was young, maybe in her early 30s, with dark hair pulled back in a bun.

She explained that the placental abruption had been severe. They’d had to perform a D&C to remove the remaining tissue.

I’d lost a significant amount of blood, and I was lucky to be alive.

“Lucky,” the word felt obscene.

There was nothing lucky about any of this. I had just one question.

“Could stress have caused this? Could a severe emotional shock have triggered the abruption?” I asked.

She chose her words carefully.

“Extreme stress can be a contributing factor. In combination with other risk factors, yes, it’s possible,” she said.

I asked to see Nathaniel. My mother went to get him and returned a moment later with my husband.

He looked like he’d aged 10 years in the last 6 hours. His eyes were red and swollen, and his shirt was still stained with my blood.

He stood at the foot of my bed, not coming closer, like he was afraid I’d break if he touched me.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again.

“Liv, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know this would happen. I thought you’d just be mad for a minute and then we’d laugh about it. I thought it would be funny,” he explained.

The words hung in the air between us, inadequate and pathetic. I stared at him.

This was the man I’d loved for seven years and the man I’d married. This was the man I’d created a child with, who thought my devastation would be entertaining content.

“Did you really think,” I said slowly,

“that telling me you regretted our baby would be funny? That making me believe you wanted a divorce would make me laugh?” I asked.

“What part of that sounds funny to you?” I continued.

He had no answer. He just stood there crying silently.

My mother was watching him with an expression I’d never seen on her face before: pure hatred.

“Get out,” she said.

Her voice was low and dangerous.

“Get out of this room right now,” she ordered.

He left. I asked my mother to bring me my phone.

She hesitated, like she wanted to protect me from whatever I was about to do, but she brought it anyway. I had 47 missed calls.\