Yesterday, I had a miscarriage. Maybe it’s still happening. If so, my physical symptoms are minor. In fact, throughout the whole ordeal, I’ve only required about 5 Tylenol. The fact that only 5 Tylenol and about a day separate me from being an expecting mother baffles me in the same way I was baffled two years ago after flying down to Arkansas to visit my hospitalized father, realizing he’d died while I was en route, visiting his deceased body in a funeral home that same night, and making funeral arrangements for him the next day. In fact, that was the first time in my life that I’d become baffled in a way that I (still) can’t really shake. Since then, I’ve had trouble processing a lot of things…my life with my boyfriend, general happiness (read: the absence of problems), a wonderful home, a promotion, and most recently, our pregnancy. However, no sooner had we settled into the idea of becoming new parents (and oh, the novelty! This Libra season, he’s turning 40 and I’m turning 35—what a wonderful birthday gift for both of us!) than I found myself passing what appeared to be my mucus plug after a night of severe cramping in the lower, right side of my belly. There was the tiniest hint of pink when I wiped, and surprisingly, actual mucus. That was Wednesday. It freaked us both out.
Thursday passed uneventfully, with me vowing to walk slower, be calmer, take it easier…
Friday, yesterday, at about 4am, after one of my many nightly trips to the toilet, I wiped and saw bright red blood. I think I died then. Called out, “Ba-aabe…there’s BLOOD!” He almost broke something, himself or the bed, stumbling in his sleep to the bathroom. I just stood there looking at the tissue, wondering why my little baby wouldn’t just stay in there for another 26 weeks, and not worry us to death like this. I asked him to get me a pad, but I hadn’t had a period for so long, I had trouble telling him where to find one. When he came back, I got up, he hugged me tightly, and asked, “What should we do?” I had no idea. But I never want to rush out to the ER, which was what he usually suggested whenever I indicated something didn’t feel right during the pregnancy. Plus, blood wasn’t actually flowing out of me and I wasn’t cramping, so I decided we should go back to bed, get the kid to school in the morning, and see what happens later. We went back to bed and as soon as we settled in, I started crying. I think I decided to then call the doctor, who we were in the process of firing because her bedside manner SUCKS. Over the phone at 4am, she was no better than she was in the office. I hated her. She was the opposite of comforting. Cold, clinical, and bizarrely, indecisive. I hung up on her before she was done talking. The last thing I heard her say was, “Hang in there.” Fuck you, I thought. Click. While he and I lay there in the dark discussing her, I felt my anger rising about her incompetence, and with it, my uterus began to open up in a massive cramp. I started to get out of bed, thinking/saying, “I need to use the bathr—” Before I could walk the two steps into our bathroom, a huge gush of hot liquid had rushed out of me. I felt it soaking my panties, running down my legs, and slowing to a trickle just as I managed to drop my butt on the toilet. To my utter disbelief, the pad I had put on not 10 minutes ago, was completely soaked, but not in blood. It looked like it had been soaked in dishwater, and when I looked at the puddle I’d made on the floor around my feet, all I saw was water. Where was the blood? What the fuck was all of this? Slowly, the thought formed that my water had actually broken.
At 14 weeks.
Just two weeks after thinking we had finally made it to a safer place in the pregnancy. My problems with the antinuclear antibodies had subsided. The 5000 IUs of Vitamin D I’d been taking every day had finally paid off. My prenatal vitamins had restored my daily strength and after several rounds of extensive blood work and several years of it being low, my white blood cell count was even up. At my 12-week-appointment, we had just received a clean bill of health for me and our baby. Why, then, had my water just broken at 14 weeks? Ask your God. Because He’s never told me anything I could understand.
With shaking hands, we cleaned up everything. Got a new pad, and got back in the bed. I guess if I had to reconstruct the whole thing, I could summarize it like this: Cramping, bleeding, resting, repeat. And at some point, I felt my baby pass through me. S/he just fell right out. By then, I could no longer cry. I was too shocked. I just kept peeing, wiping, changing pads, methodically, robotically, getting in and out of bed.
Around 7am, it was time for him to take the kid to school. Unfortunately, shit hit the fan when he left. No more large pieces of productpassed, but suddenly the cramps (or contractions, as they were) became completely unbearable and I found myself writhing in pain on the toilet, screaming and bawling into the phone for him to hurry and come help me, take me to the hospital because clearly I was dying. By the time he got back to the house, about 10 minutes later, I had crawled back into bed, weak as if I had just delivered a full-term baby. I could no more put on clothes to go to the hospital than I could wipe the sweat off my own forehead. I fell into a deep sleep, interrupted hours later by the bitch downstairs (yeah, she was a bitch as well as my doctor during all of this), blasting the likes of Drake and 2 Chainz. Since sleep was impossible, we thought it a good time to go to the hospital, so ever so slowly, we pulled it together and made it to the car.
Stepping into the sunshine, fumbling for my shades, I wondered how I could be here in this same body, but be so different, so quickly? My baby was gone. My breasts were deflating. My stomach felt empty. My feet barely filled my shoes, so stretched out just a couple of weeks ago by my pregnancy-swollen ankles. Just the other night, I’d texted a pic of me in maternity pants to friends, my belly abnormally large for 3.5 months. I’d been so happy to discover that H&M had maternity clothes because I was sick to death of Target and Liz Lange’s maternity collection. I was working overtime on hiding my pregnancy at work, and now, here I was, stepping into the sunshine, without my little baby. Wasn’t I just coming to terms with having children 14 years apart? Choosing dates for a baby shower? Flattered that his mom and family were already planning a Thanksgiving shower for us? Bookmarking baby blogs and product links? Telling a friend she couldn’t come stay with us because we were getting ready to build our nursery? Lining up childcare for when I went back to work? Plotting a strategy for NOT going back to work? Swimming in Arizona, free as a bird, my pregnant belly fully exposed in an turquoise bikini? Dozing on my friends’ couch in Manhattan absolutely stuffed on Thai food and a Turtle sundae? Weren’t we just spooning, his hands perpetually on my belly, snuggled deep into the night and dreams of our new life with this baby?
Why did this happen?
And from where does the immediate resolve to try again come when the embattled beginnings of this one lost are still so fresh in our minds? We know full well how and why it came, cannot wrap our heads around why we lost, but are immediately and unflinchingly resolved to try again. Bound, now, we are, I feel, by this tragedy. And there is no man I’d rather share my life with than the one with whom I’ve loved and lost. As my hormones subside, and my almost 14-year-old daughter progresses with her life, that much sparkles crystal clear.
I wondered aloud, to him, at some point during, if my lack of belief in God might have caused this. Maybe I should have been more prayerful, I wondered. No, he affirmed, he (always) had us covered, “and it still didn’t matter.” So I still feel blessed…blessed to be taken care of, by him and by my daughter—my small and perfect family. Blessed to be supported in crisis and to be showered with love at all times. I am deeply saddened by the loss of our little one, but not broken.
Perhaps because s/he was due to be a Pisces, s/he left us peacefully? I did not get a D&C and I’ve been reading about natural miscarriage all morning. I am so thankful that this whole ordeal seems to be passing gracefully. It is only a day later and I am not in pain. I had a pelvic exam in the emergency room and the doctor said my cervix is already closed, which means everything is pretty much done. My body performed exactly as it should. It hurt my heart when the doctor told me that based on my HCG levels, the baby had probably died a little more than a week ago. The events of the last 48 hours are just my body working to expel the deceased. Knowing the approximate date of death hurt me deeply and I wonder(ed) what I could have done differently and why it happened, but I’m accepting that the answer is “maybe nothing,” and “no reason.”
I have no choice but to move on. It still hurts. Everyone that knows me knows how I feel about babies. I was so looking forward to inhaling the scent of our child, holding him/her in my arms, kissing those tiny little fingers and toes. But you know what? Despite one of my greatest fears coming true, or perhaps because of it, I am no longer afraid of having a child later in my 30s. I will be 35 next month and I am perfectly fine with giving birth next year or the year after. Maybe that was the point of all of this? To get me over my age in my mind and deeper down into my body, where everything that matters is taking place anyway. I feel the need to get deeper into my vitamin and yoga game, and that this is a chance for me to really get the DHA and folic acid and anything else I needed pre-conception last time around. Hell, maybe we’ll even get married before conceiving next time. Just saying.
I’ve miscarried, but I’m not broken. My love and commitment to my partner has only deepened and my convictions about motherhood have only been enhanced. I may have postponed my roles as model, artist, and writer, choosing instead to focus on my supporting role as editor, so that I might play my biggest role, mother, to the absolute best of my abilities. Motherhood, in all its forms, is truly the greatest gift life has given me. I am affirmed when I look at my daughter, and I am strengthened and motivated by the privilege to try it again.
Nonfiction Woman 