H.

My older cousin got pregnant at 29 after years of saying she wasn’t sure she even wanted kids. When she finally decided she did, it felt intentional. Thought out. Safe. At 14 weeks she developed intense itching on her hands and feet. She mentioned it at her appointment. The nurse said pregnancy does weird things to skin. She went home with lotion samples. The itching got worse. She couldn’t sleep. She called again. They told her it was probably hormones. At 28 weeks she noticed the baby wasn’t moving as much. At the hospital they found no heartbeat. They called it “one of those unexplained stillbirths.” She drowned in that word. Unexplained. Her marriage didn’t survive the silence that followed. He wanted to try again immediately. She was terrified. They divorced two years later. At 45 she was reading about intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy and felt sick. The symptoms matched exactly. She requested her old labs. Her bile acid levels had been elevated. The result was flagged. No one had followed up. No medication. No monitoring plan. Just lotion. It wasn’t random. It was missed. She spent years thinking her body failed quietly. It turns out it had been asking for help the whole time.