Let me tell you about my miscarriage.
When my pregnancy should have been about nine weeks along, my husband
and I headed into the doctor's office for my first ultrasound. It was a
Tuesday, Christmas Eve. We were looking forward to seeing an amorphous
gray blob on the screen and trying earnestly to see in it our future
baby boy or girl; we were eager to hear a heartbeat. But the image that
popped up on the monitor was far less encouraging: a dense black patch
containing no tiny pulsating heart, no cryptic but exhilarating gray
squiggles.
Here’s the primary thing they never tell you about miscarriage: When
used by medical professionals, the word refers to the entirety of a
nonviable early pregnancy, a period that can span weeks. It starts when
cell division in the embryo grinds quietly to a halt; the blood and the
passing of tissue that we think of as “a miscarriage” are but the final
phase. It is a lingering process. For a full week I was in a sort of
gestational limbo, feeling neither pregnant nor truly unpregnant.
This ambiguity left me painfully confused about the most mundane of
situations. Hours after the ultrasound disappointment, my sister was
ordering sushi for our family and I nearly cried when she asked what I
wanted. There was no longer any real need to restrict myself to cucumber
rolls and spider maki, but a spicy tuna roll—raw and potentially
mercury-laced—just felt inappropriate, callous. Before Christmas dinner
the next night I actually did shed tears trying to decide whether a
glass of sauvignon blanc would help me relax or, after more than a month
of temperance, simply throw my situation into painful relief.
Confusion was just one emotion. There has been the sadness, of
course, like a mineshaft boring down behind my ribcage. There have been
understandable, if unfounded, pinpricks of guilt as I wonder whether I
could have done something differently to stop this from happening. These
feelings are well covered by the baby blogs.
There have also, however, been unexpected and pervasive feeling of
foolishness, the sense that I was being stupidly naive whenever I
daydreamed about my future child. It is almost embarrassing to remember
the light-hearted conversations about baby names, the nursery decoration
ideas I saved on a secret Pinterest board called “Baby Rooms.” It seems
that when I told my best friend, “I’m pregnant!” I already wasn't, not
really, and I feel ridiculous and slightly ashamed whenever I think of
that cheerful declaration.
At the same time, however, I can't help but wonder if I have grieved
enough. On pregnancy websites and discussion boards, I read stories of
women who cried for days and mourned for months after their
miscarriages. That has not been me. I have cried and might again (a rack
of onesies in Target the other day pushed some emotional buttons), but I
confess it didn't take me long to begin healing. It took less than a
week to start re-adjusting my expectations for the coming months so that
they no longer included watching my belly slowly swell and feeling the
kick of new life. Today, my lost pregnancy is a bittersweet
might-have-been, not a gaping hole.
Occasionally, I even feel a bit relieved, though I know I’m not
supposed to admit such a thing. My husband and I dearly wanted this
almost-child, but we also worried whether we were ready, financially and
emotionally, to expand our family. So, threaded through the heavy
curtain of our mourning are a few silver threads of comfort. At least we
no longer have to plan an expensive move. At least we’ll have less debt
by the next pregnancy.
Among this whole assortment of emotions, however, the most burning
feeling was anticipation. I found myself eagerly awaiting the one thing
most pregnant women fear: the pain and the blood. I did not get the
quick cut to post-miscarriage grieving. I started bleeding ever so
slightly on a Thursday, two days after we received the crushing news.
From that point on, I made every trip to the bathroom with a vigilant
eye, assessing whether there was more blood this time than the last
time. Every appointment I put in my calendar for the following week had a
mental asterisk next to it: *as long as I am not curled up in bed,
wracked with cramps.
Still, I wanted the worst to come. I wanted out of the confounding
state of neither-nor, out of knowing the end was inevitable but still
carrying within me some genetic fragment of my previous dreams. I wanted
something physical and visible to give shape to the formless fog of
unhappiness around me, something I could point to and say, “That. That
is why, sometimes, out of the blue my hand starts shaking a little and
why the tears pop up at the strangest of times.”
On Sunday, the slow trickle of blood escalated into the painful
cramping and heavy bleeding that finally ushered the nonviable tissue
from my body. I laid on the couch and watched football and crime dramas
while my husband fetched pizza and made me hot chocolate. I was quiet
and somber, but I did not cry. Over the following days, the bleeding
ebbed, though it did not disappear completely for nearly a week. My body
was still wrapping things up, putting the final touches on my brief
brush with pregnancy.
Exactly one week after that first, sad ultrasound, I called the
doctor's office to update her, as instructed, on the progress of my
miscarriage. When my doctor was unavailable, the receptionist tried to
determine where to route my call.
“Are you pregnant?” she asked.
“No,” I answered. “I am not.”"
While I didn't write the words above, like I said, they were so eerily close to what I have experienced it. Sarah's words were so perfect I wanted to share them with you.
