"...because you're pregnant."
Then the dogs barked at a neighborly cat and I caught the reflection of my bed-head, waking me to the fact that this truly was just Wednesday morning and not a dream at all. It did snow a little last night. And I'm totally pregnant.
- Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Well, I was.
I soared through Christmas while pregnant and New Year's Eve. I started this year bright and excited while pregnant. I bunkered down through a blizzard while pregnant. I made it hopeful and terrified to just three days before crossing the line into the second trimester, after receiving worrisome news a week before, when the pain started while pregnant. This weekend was going to be when we announced it. Officially 12 weeks (LMP) on the last Sunday of January, as we believed it was "safer" to keep it a secret until now. But instead of bouncing out of bed with excitement to craft the perfect front page news of my life, I wake up sadly to the searing daily pain of miscarriage.
I know that there are women who have made harder goodbyes. I have known strong, resilient women who lost their babies right before birth. They referred to their baby by name, painted the baby's room, started a college fund, allowed their own bodies to change and ache with pregnancy, just to lose that life before they could ever meet. I have known powerful and transcendent women who even then had to deliver that child knowing there was no life to be had, no first touches, no first cries, no real goodbyes. And many of us, too, have known women who have lost children years later. Children that provided them with love and memories and heartache and headaches and joy. I do believe that there is no harder or truer pain than outliving your own child.
But until this point in my life, "miscarriage" was a word said under your breath, quickly, and then erased from memory. There is no mention of its possibility at your first OB/Midwife appointment, just discussion of the bubbles and sunshine of the life you are sure to create and bring in to this world 9 months later. As a woman, I was aware of the possibility simple because it is the horror that "happens to other women." It is the scary story we tell ourselves to make sure we stop drinking coffee and alcohol, and start eating better and sign up for our first prenatal yoga class. If we do that, obviously, we won't miscarry. There is no measured and factual speech that 80% of miscarriages happen within the first 12 weeks, and that 10-20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. This doesn't even include those that miscarry before they know they are pregnant. First pregnancies are precariously predisposed to miscarriage, but SSSSSHHHHH!!! We cannot openly give women this information so that they can calmly and sanely prepare for this possible outcome. Instead we buy baby books and eat ice cream and pick names. And that of course, is wonderful. It's amazing. Getting to have a baby is magnanimous. Preparing for a baby (at least the fun parts) is like making every day your birthday. Thus, a loss pulls you down from your highest heights into a deep, dark hole of lonely sadness, guilt, and confusion.
We had a week of blind worry after my first ultrasound. I had planned to go surprise my mother afterwards with that first darling "photo," the print out they supposedly give you that you can put on your refrigerator or blast on social media. I had made up some bogus errands I needed to do in Jersey and told my little mama to meet me. It was freezing cold that morning and I paid $5 in quarters to park as I arrived a half hour early. The ultrasound was absolutely nothing as I suspected. I didn't wait long, but the imaging process itself was silent and cold except for the beeping of the machine and the intense tapping of the tech's fingers on the keys. She finished the abdominal ultrasound and I wasn't shown the screen or told anything except she would be back to also perform a transvaginal imaging. That process was also silent and distant. On the day I expected to see my 10 week, 3 day old baby, I am shown nothing and told, "yeah...this looks more like 6 weeks. We're all done here. Your doctor will call you."
A quick conversation leads to 3 blood draws leading to another ultrasound a week later, and just overwhelming, soul-crushing fear. Oh, and a blizzard. Scott actually refers to this as the weekend of "Google Hell." When the snow trapped us in a world of not-knowing, we both got lost in the one thing you shouldn't do: Googling for Answers. It was an honest to god nightmare. Then when the weekend and snow passed, Monday morning started the results. All news we received in the next 3 days was bad, but we were never counseled in preparation for miscarriage. Just "let's wait and hope." So Wednesday rolls around and my love and I wait in the darkened ultrasound room, as another tech silently performs the ultrasound. Scott can see the screen, but really who knows what they are looking at? I am shown and told nothing. She prepares to just leave the room, just repeating the pain of a week before, but Scott pulls it out of her, "So no heartbeat?"
"No heartbeat."
This story is not new. Couples have received more difficult news. But the way my heart broke that morning still laying on that table was astronomical. It was a loss of love that I have never experienced in my entire life. The minutes, hours, days after have only been waves of grief that range from quick silent tears to unstoppable, blood boiling anger. The lack of knowledge of what lay ahead for us was absurd. Not knowing how long it would truly take. Miscarriage is not a "whoopsie." It's not that one moment you are pregnant, and the next you're not. It is a long process of waiting and worry and pain. The process, the discomfort, the grief, the body aches, the moments of love and planning and attempting to move on; then searing, awful, back-breaking agony that ends you in the Emergency Room.
Well, at least that was me. That was yesterday. I will spare you the agony of yesterday. However, I promise, this is not me skirting the subject or sparing the details. Obviously, I will share, I will teach, I will warn, while providing comfort and knowledge and hope for the future--but it doesn't have to be here. The only thing I have to say about yesterday, 7.5 hours in the ER, is this:
I suggest starting here. A friend from long ago wrote a moving article on her own loss and a year in reading. She herself is an amazing writer, author of Vivian Apple at the End of the World , Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle; and her short fiction has won the Pushcart Prize and been featured in Best American Non-Required Reading. This article is based in her world of vivid and beautiful words through this hardship, plus the books that got her through it.
- Wednesday, January 13, 2016
***
Well, I was.
I soared through Christmas while pregnant and New Year's Eve. I started this year bright and excited while pregnant. I bunkered down through a blizzard while pregnant. I made it hopeful and terrified to just three days before crossing the line into the second trimester, after receiving worrisome news a week before, when the pain started while pregnant. This weekend was going to be when we announced it. Officially 12 weeks (LMP) on the last Sunday of January, as we believed it was "safer" to keep it a secret until now. But instead of bouncing out of bed with excitement to craft the perfect front page news of my life, I wake up sadly to the searing daily pain of miscarriage.
I know that there are women who have made harder goodbyes. I have known strong, resilient women who lost their babies right before birth. They referred to their baby by name, painted the baby's room, started a college fund, allowed their own bodies to change and ache with pregnancy, just to lose that life before they could ever meet. I have known powerful and transcendent women who even then had to deliver that child knowing there was no life to be had, no first touches, no first cries, no real goodbyes. And many of us, too, have known women who have lost children years later. Children that provided them with love and memories and heartache and headaches and joy. I do believe that there is no harder or truer pain than outliving your own child.
But until this point in my life, "miscarriage" was a word said under your breath, quickly, and then erased from memory. There is no mention of its possibility at your first OB/Midwife appointment, just discussion of the bubbles and sunshine of the life you are sure to create and bring in to this world 9 months later. As a woman, I was aware of the possibility simple because it is the horror that "happens to other women." It is the scary story we tell ourselves to make sure we stop drinking coffee and alcohol, and start eating better and sign up for our first prenatal yoga class. If we do that, obviously, we won't miscarry. There is no measured and factual speech that 80% of miscarriages happen within the first 12 weeks, and that 10-20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. This doesn't even include those that miscarry before they know they are pregnant. First pregnancies are precariously predisposed to miscarriage, but SSSSSHHHHH!!! We cannot openly give women this information so that they can calmly and sanely prepare for this possible outcome. Instead we buy baby books and eat ice cream and pick names. And that of course, is wonderful. It's amazing. Getting to have a baby is magnanimous. Preparing for a baby (at least the fun parts) is like making every day your birthday. Thus, a loss pulls you down from your highest heights into a deep, dark hole of lonely sadness, guilt, and confusion.
We had a week of blind worry after my first ultrasound. I had planned to go surprise my mother afterwards with that first darling "photo," the print out they supposedly give you that you can put on your refrigerator or blast on social media. I had made up some bogus errands I needed to do in Jersey and told my little mama to meet me. It was freezing cold that morning and I paid $5 in quarters to park as I arrived a half hour early. The ultrasound was absolutely nothing as I suspected. I didn't wait long, but the imaging process itself was silent and cold except for the beeping of the machine and the intense tapping of the tech's fingers on the keys. She finished the abdominal ultrasound and I wasn't shown the screen or told anything except she would be back to also perform a transvaginal imaging. That process was also silent and distant. On the day I expected to see my 10 week, 3 day old baby, I am shown nothing and told, "yeah...this looks more like 6 weeks. We're all done here. Your doctor will call you."
A quick conversation leads to 3 blood draws leading to another ultrasound a week later, and just overwhelming, soul-crushing fear. Oh, and a blizzard. Scott actually refers to this as the weekend of "Google Hell." When the snow trapped us in a world of not-knowing, we both got lost in the one thing you shouldn't do: Googling for Answers. It was an honest to god nightmare. Then when the weekend and snow passed, Monday morning started the results. All news we received in the next 3 days was bad, but we were never counseled in preparation for miscarriage. Just "let's wait and hope." So Wednesday rolls around and my love and I wait in the darkened ultrasound room, as another tech silently performs the ultrasound. Scott can see the screen, but really who knows what they are looking at? I am shown and told nothing. She prepares to just leave the room, just repeating the pain of a week before, but Scott pulls it out of her, "So no heartbeat?"
"No heartbeat."
This story is not new. Couples have received more difficult news. But the way my heart broke that morning still laying on that table was astronomical. It was a loss of love that I have never experienced in my entire life. The minutes, hours, days after have only been waves of grief that range from quick silent tears to unstoppable, blood boiling anger. The lack of knowledge of what lay ahead for us was absurd. Not knowing how long it would truly take. Miscarriage is not a "whoopsie." It's not that one moment you are pregnant, and the next you're not. It is a long process of waiting and worry and pain. The process, the discomfort, the grief, the body aches, the moments of love and planning and attempting to move on; then searing, awful, back-breaking agony that ends you in the Emergency Room.
Well, at least that was me. That was yesterday. I will spare you the agony of yesterday. However, I promise, this is not me skirting the subject or sparing the details. Obviously, I will share, I will teach, I will warn, while providing comfort and knowledge and hope for the future--but it doesn't have to be here. The only thing I have to say about yesterday, 7.5 hours in the ER, is this:
There is no part of me that could have made it through that day without the love, support, hand-holding, joke-making, and kindness of my partner-in-crime, the father of the child we lost, my best friend and the love of my life.
He was and continues to be the hero that has helped me through all of this chaos. In fact, he's sitting next to me right now still making me laugh.
***
As I have said, this story is not new. But the fact is, it's true. It happens and we don't talk about it. You don't hear from couples, women, family, friends that they have suffered through the pain of miscarriage until you yourself are boiling in the sadness and confusion. Miscarriage is a dirty evil word that we dare not speak before or during pregnancy. "If you say it, it'll happen." Miscarriage is the curse. Women will feel remorse for you, but we cannot share in the details or discuss the possibilities...not if we want to have our own kids, or more kids, or if we want our kids to have kids. "We can't...or it will happen to us. Possibly again. But you wouldn't know, because we never told anyone."
We intend to have children. We will have a family. And yes, I did miscarry. And I will talk about it to anyone who has questions, is worried, or would simply like to prepare for the fact that miscarriage is extremely common, can be painful both mentally and physically, but can surely be overcome. You will learn more about yourself, your partner, and your heart-driven plans for the future through pregnancy. Whether is lasts 12 weeks or 40. Whether you get to hold that little baby in your arms, or simply remember the sweet little Grizzly Bear you lost.
 |
| In honor of our Grizzly. |
I suggest starting here. A friend from long ago wrote a moving article on her own loss and a year in reading. She herself is an amazing writer, author of Vivian Apple at the End of the World , Vivian Apple Needs a Miracle; and her short fiction has won the Pushcart Prize and been featured in Best American Non-Required Reading. This article is based in her world of vivid and beautiful words through this hardship, plus the books that got her through it.
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