One Georgia photographer is helping six women tell their stories of love and loss in a new photo series called, "I am 1 in 4," denoting the oft-repeated rate of women who suffer miscarriages or infant loss.
Professional photographer Nikita Razo said she released the photo series, in which women who have suffered a miscarriage or infant loss hold up a white balloon to signify the number of losses they've endured, in October as it's Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.
Razo, 29, said the photo series was "near and dear to my heart because I myself have suffered a miscarriage."
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The mother of two explained that she and her military husband lost their baby at 12 weeks; just days before they were going to reveal to their family and friends that they were expecting what would've have been their second child.
"It was just super exciting. We had been planning on going home for Thanksgiving to Illinois and because we weren't going to be home for Christmas ... we decided our gift to everyone was going to be announcing our pregnancy," Razo said.
Razo said during a routine checkup in November 2012, her doctor, and later an ultrasound technician, couldn't find her baby's heartbeat.
"I waited an hour and a half in the waiting room, knowing that something was wrong for them to finally flag down a doctor, any doctor, to come and tell me that I had lost the baby," she recalled.
It wasn't until she was pregnant again August 2013 that she was comfortable sharing her story in church, she said.
"It took me almost a year to talk about it," Razo recalled, adding that after sharing her story two women, whom she had been friends with, revealed that they had gone through the same thing.
"You shouldn't feel ashamed to talk about it. And you shouldn't feel that there's something wrong with you or that you're less of a woman ... because you're struggling with some kind of infertility," Razo said. "It's something that should be talked about openly."
That's why she photographed six women, helping them share their own stories.
To read each of their stories, click here.