We went in for an ultrasound when I was eight weeks pregnant. It was hard to know what we were looking at on the screen, but we could see the tiny grain of something that we were told was the baby. We were so excited. It had been almost a year since my first miscarriage and ER visit. We were in the middle of final preparations for the Appalachian Trail, where we hoped that our baby would spend its first trimester on its first big adventure. Then the ultrasound tech measured the speck and typed two words: No heartbeat.
