Today would have been a special day. Today is a birthday that will never happen.
Today (or at least around this day) I would have given birth to a little boy or a girl, I'm not sure which. The baby died when it was only 6 weeks in to it's development.
Only six weeks. That's not very long. Up close it would have looked like a little alien, with a giant forehead and a tail.
From the ultrasound, however, it looked vaguely baby-ish, like a little peanut. I will never forget how tiny it looked on that vast black screen. It had no heartbeat. It would never have a heartbeat.
It was the technician who told me that my baby should have been bigger. It was supposed to be the size of a ten-week-old fetus at the time. Instead, it was the size of a 6-week-old embryo. I had been carrying a dead baby around in my uterus for a month without even realizing it. I entered that office full of excitement and hope; I left crushed and shrunken, my heart breaking into a million pieces.
The actual miscarriage, the symptoms that you always hear about, came about two days later. It started by behaving like a normal period: some light bleeding, some menstrual cramps, nothing serious. To be honest, I was relieved at first that it was happening so soon after our unpleasant discovery; I was going to get it over and done with, and then I could move on and try again.
They warned me to take Advil. They warned me I would see some tissues and clots among the blood. They warned that I would be surprised how much blood would come out. I didn't fully understand what they meant at the time.
Until later that night.
That night, August 23rd to August 24th, became a night that I'll never be able to forget. The cramps became steadily worse, to the point that even after having taken 3 Advil ("I guess I don't have to worry about taking ibuprofen anymore"), I was still curled up in a ball from the cramping pain. The bleeding got heavier as I was eventually able to doze off for about twenty minutes.
It was the uncomfortable feeling that woke me at midnight. That feeling you get when you sit in a puddle of water and the seat of your pants is completely soaked. I got off the bed and went to the bathroom to sit on the toilet.
And that's when the horror of the situation really kicked in.
I ended up waking up my husband because I was too terrified to sit through it all alone in the dark. There was so much blood! It was as if a slasher film became a reality in my bathroom. My leggings and underwear were completely drenched. The pad I had used to soak up the blood ("it's like a very heavy period" they had said) had clearly not been up to the task. It wasn't even white anymore. The toilet seat had red stains all around it, and the bowl had so much blood in it, that the red had turned almost black.
There were tissues in there as well. Well, tissue is a polite, friendly way of describing what was getting squeezed out of me. It felt slimy and gelatinous, like Jell-O that was starting to melt a little. I couldn't look at it for very long, because there was a horrified, screaming part of me that knew that my dead baby was in one of those clumps, and that I was going to have to flush it away. Like trash.
And then, to top off the madness, there was the pain. Every few minutes it felt as though the villain Freddy Krueger was inside of me, wringing my uterus out like a sponge. Then the pain would end briefly, and another piece of tissue would plop out a minute later. There was nothing I could do to make it stop, nothing I could do to make myself feel better. I was experiencing labor pains for a dead child and I had no clue what to do. I felt completely defenseless. And then there was my husband, my poor husband, who could only sit on the edge of the bathtub while all this is happening, unable to do more than grab a glass of water, or a few towels, and rub my back helplessly as I bent over in agony from the next contraction.
The worst of it lasted a few hours. Then it began to die down bit by bit. The contractions of pain became more and more tolerable, the tissues that did come out became smaller and smaller, and the blood flow slowed down to drips, rather than a steady trickle. I slept fitfully on a pile of towels on the bathroom floor that night, covered in my husband's bathrobe. Every time I felt a contraction, I would heave myself off the ground to sit on the toilet seat again, and wait for the clump to come out. That night was one of the longest, most traumatizing nights of my life.
My body kept on bleeding for a time after that. It was essentially a month-long period, a constant reminder that something had failed, and I was no longer going to be a mom.
There's this feeling that you get when you miscarry, this feeling that you're somehow to blame, that you inadvertently did something that caused the miscarriage to happen. They tell you it's not your fault, that these things happen to 1 in 5 pregnant women, maybe even 1 in 4 women. They tell you'll very likely get pregnant again later on, and that that next pregnancy will produce a healthy baby. These things happens, and you can easily start over again.
What they say helps. A little.
But you still failed anyway.
At first I was confident. The minute my periods came back, I was determined to try again, to become a pregnant woman again. I wanted, and still want, so desperately to become a mother. I'm still young, sure, I still have time. But I'm ready now. I've been more than ready for over a year.
I thought I was coping. I was doing fine, it seemed. I could talk about it without crying. I was reveling in the fact that I could eat sushi and drink beer again. I thought I was being my "naturally happy" self; able to adapt and march determinedly onwards....
...But I didn't feel comfortable looking at pictures of newborn babies in the baby aisles, or watching diaper commercials. And whenever I saw a pregnant woman out in public, I looked away.
It was a few months later that I realized I wasn't doing as well as I had thought. A few months in and I was still not pregnant again. Dave and I went to a friendly dinner at a friend's house. It was a small crowd of people, a really great, fun night overall, really......
....but I was the only woman in that house who was not pregnant, or at least with a child. To make matters worse, one of them had a due date that was only a few weeks away from what mine should have been, and I could see how big her belly was, how big my belly was supposed to be. It hurt to look at it. I did my best to ignore the conversations the expectant mothers were having about their doctor visits, but I still heard them. I heard about the blood tests and the gender guessing. I don't blame them or anything; they didn't know I had miscarried some months back, and that I was just now discovering how much I was still grieving for the loss of my child; I think I hid the grief pretty well from everyone there. But I ended up bursting into tears in the car afterwards, and crying the rest of the way home.
From that point onwards, I could no longer lie to myself and say I was doing ok. I was not ok. Not at all ok.
People kept saying "you'll be fine. You'll get pregnant again, and this time it'll be fine. Just be patient."
The optimism made me want to scream in frustration. I wanted to say "but I'm not fine now. I can't say I'm able to move past my miscarriage because I'm still not pregnant. Right now, I'm a failure. Right now, I'm in pain."
Every month I would ovulate and we would try again. Every month there was that week of waiting, of wondering if it took this time, a week of getting my hopes up and thinking that maybe, just maybe, I'm finally pregnant again.
But then that test would be negative and my period would start a few days later, the flow of blood crushing my hopes and reminding me that I have failed yet again to make a child.
Some days I went so far as to wonder if it was really worth it to continue, if it was worth getting my heart broken month after month. But I kept going anyway. One day at a time.
But then I had a breakthrough, a way to get the sense of peace that had been eluding me for months. I went to my annual appointment with my OB/GYN a few weeks back, and confessed my fears to her. She then explained the odds; I could do everything right, time everything just right, but there's still only a 15-20% chance of conception when I ovulate.
Hearing how small the odds actually were was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment. It made me finally realize that I was fine and that it was going to take a long while to get pregnant. It was perfectly natural to have many misses before it would finally hit. The relief that came from this realization was extreme. I was finally able to honestly say, "I'm not pregnant yet, but that's okay. It'll happen eventually". And I was able to believe it. So when I ovulated again this month, I felt at peace. That week of waiting to take the test wasn't nearly so desperate; I was able to tell myself "I'm fine if it's negative," which I wasn't able to do before. Not being able to announce a pregnancy today is no longer the end of the world. I'm finally able to live my life again. I'm at peace.
I'm still grieving a little for that child that will never be, but I feel like I finally have closure on that front. I'm moving on with my not-pregnant life. Hope is finally and truly here, and it won't get crushed anymore. My time will come someday. Will it happen this year? There's still some time left; I guess we'll just have to wait and see. But at least now I can say:
"Happy birthday to the child that will never be. You'll forever be in my heart, but now it's time to say good-bye. Good-bye little one. It's time to move on now."
Here's to hoping.
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