< Video Transcription below, lightly edited for readability >

Hey guys, what’s up this is Nick. I apologize for being a sweaty mess.

I don’t really know where I’m going to go with this video. I like to go for walks or runs to clear my head. I love my doing my workouts at home but a lot of times I like to add a little bit of a walk, get my heart rate going, gets my mind spinning. I tend to have some of my best thoughts when I’m running – I guess some people have it when they go in the shower or whatever but I normally have them when I’m outside in nature, kind of just heels on the ground, feeling the earth, smelling the air, hearing the birds chirp, listening to some music or maybe something personal growth related.

My wife Kathi had a miscarriage with our pregnancy about a week ago at around the six week mark. Just a little bit of a backstory that was Kathi’s 5th pregnancy. The very first one we had was a missed miscarriage so the baby was a lot older, we had heard the heartbeat. The baby was around 13 weeks old or so when we went in for the ultrasound and they couldn’t hear a heartbeat. And I’ll never forget that moment we were both crying. With the most recent miscarriage, Kathi made a post about it and it got a lot of feedback but one of the things that occurs to me is that you don’t really hear guys talk about it ever or how it affects them.

In my mind I can already imagine some eye rolling because I’m not growing a baby and honestly as any guys knows your part in this is really minor – it’s really your heart and soul that gets put into it, not any kind of physical effort. You know having a baby and being a dad is an expression of love – you don’t have to push a grapefruit out of a hose so to speak. If that was crude, I apologize. But anyway – so the first one was a missed miscarriage. Then we got pregnant – she got pregnant again with Landon – and my mom passed away when she was six months pregnant and you know it was one of those things where you can’t help but think to yourself if that first baby had taken or gone through the whole way, maybe my mom would have been able to meet a grandkid – she never got to become a grandparent.

But we were blessed and thankful for Landon, he is an amazing little boy, and then you know a couple months later we had Kiersten – 18 months apart – Irish Twins I guess they say – and she is just the sweetest little girl. And we were so blessed and grateful for our children – we love them more than anything on the face of the earth – they make me smile and laugh every day – sometimes they make me pull my hair out – but I wouldn’t trade one second of it. I wish I could bottle it up and keep it forever.

A couple years went by and we were settling in and we decided we wanted to continue to expand our family, so Kathi got pregnant again last November, and at the end of December, that baby was miscarried at about 6 weeks. And then just now she went through it again and I don’t know – from a guys perspective the thing is that I feel really helpless about the whole situation.

I wish I could take away Kathi’s pain. I feel pain and sorrow too but I have a lot more empathy for Kathi because I can’t imagine – or any women really that has to go through it – the heartbreak and pain when it’s something that is growing inside of you. I can’t help but think what kind of life could that baby have had.

Kathi made a good video talking about the ways to work through it emotionally – I think the biggest thing is that you have to stay positive and grateful for what you do have. We are so fortunate to have 2 kids already and a lot of people I know struggle even with that so – we are incredibly grateful for what we already do have and honestly I don’t want for anything more. I mean, we’d like to have more kids – but we are happy with the two we have now. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t want to be spoiled because I’m already blessed beyond belief.

And so, again from a guy’s perspective – I don’t really know where I’m going with – if you are guy – it’s not easy to process this because we are not we are not growing the babies – they are not inside of us. They are a part of us – I’m the dad to this baby as well even though it’s not going to be with us in our lives. It’s hard to get empathy or sympathy for it – and I’m not looking for it to be honest – that’s not what this video is about – it’s just about letting the guys know that you are being thought of too.

The women have to go through the bulk of it – I wish I could take it away from them – but I can’t. But a guy it takes your toll too so make sure you can process that and go through it because it’s not easy – it’s not easy to lose the potential of what could have been.It’s heartbreaking, really is what it is. So we are hopeful for the future.

I wake up every morning and the first thing I think of is how thankful I am for the life that I’ve got and the kids that I have so me and Kathi are going to get through this, but as a guy I also have to process that emotion of going through it. Anyway – that’s my whole video for today. I hope that it helped or struck a chord with someone out there.

(for Kathi’s video on dealing with miscarriage, click here)