A little over four weeks ago, Paolo and I were out having dinner and a glass of wine. On our way home, it suddenly dawned on me that I was three days late. So we stopped off at the pharmacy on our way home and got a box of pregnancy tests. I peed on one, and two little stripes showed up. When I finally shut my gaping maw, I took out all the other sticks and peed on every one of them, too. The result?
Preggos.
A great deal of shouting and excitement followed. Phonecalls to the parental units wherein my mother made very clear that she did NOT want to be called nanna or noni like all the other Indian grandmothers. It would be GRANNY for her, thank you very much. Then, a month of waiting for our first OB appointment. Did you know they won’t even see you until you’re at least two months pregnant? I didn’t know. But yep, you have a whole month to figure out the murky waters of prenatal vitamins, diet and wrap your head around the fact that HOLY FUCKING SHIT, I’M HAVING A BABY! You start packing on the pounds, crying about potatoes (obviously, potatoes are sad), and your boobs grow two cup sizes. We planned our delayed honeymoon with the quickness (probably Barbados - no big trad climbing trips with baby on board - probably this April) since this would be our last shot at one with just the two of us. My mom and a couple of friends sent us baby books.
And the day finally came. This past Wednesday. We went to the OB. She stuck a bunch of instruments up my vagina and I peed on a few more sticks, all of which said THIS LADY IS PREGNANT. We got smiles and congratulations from about five nurses and two doctors, a stack of prenatal literature and appointments for Lamaze classes and we scheduled our first ultrasound for Friday morning.
Thursday evening, Paolo came home from work with the pair of UGGS I’ve been crying about wanting for months. And a bouquet. And a card that said “Congratulations mommy, love daddy”. And despite my huge, painful breasts and because of my little prodruding belly, everything was perfect.
Friday morning, we were handed another bunch of literature and ushered into a room with a tech who rubbed a bunch of warm goop on my belly. I put my hands above my head while Pnut held them in his hands, and we held our breaths and waited with fascination to see the little critter in my belly. The tech made a bunch of measurements with her little computer pointer, then told me to get dressed, we’d just hop across the hall to the other machine. On our way across the hall, we saw the nurse who gave us all the literature. She stopped in her tracks and asked the tech where we were going. Then, both women ushered us into the vaginal ultrasound room. This time, they put a condom over an instrument that looked exactly like a dildo… with a very long cord. And after adding goop, they stuck that in my vagina. You know on ER when they do ultrasounds and you hear that disturbingly gross whoosh, whoosh sound and the little flickering and beeping where the baby is? The nurse pointed that stuff out to us by saying “This is where you would normally see…” and “and over here is where you would usually see”. And I knew something was horribly wrong. My mind was blank with shock, but my body went stiff. And finally, she told us that our baby was dead. Or rather, that “the fetus is not viable, I’m sorry to say you’ve miscarried”.
And back to the OB we went, to hear one option more grisly than the next. Here are your options when you miscarry: 1. wait to pass the fetus at home (could take a couple of weeks) 2. take a pill to help you cramp and bleed and pass the fetus at home. In case you’re wondering, and I did, and I asked, if you do this then flushing everything down the toilet is the standard operating procedure. I didn’t have the stomach for these options. I understand that medically and technically all I would be “passing” would be a “bunch of tissue” (as my doctor friend also reminded me on the phone yesterday). I respect any woman’s right to choose how she feels about that mass of tissue. But I chose for two months to think of that mass of tissue as my baby. And I nurtured it, and fed it, and protected it and planned an amazing life for it. And I would not be able to sleep ever again if I thought it was sitting in the septic tank in my front yard.
So we scheduled option 3. A D&C. That’s the polite way to say abortion. And Saturday morning, we went back to the hospital. I saw, through my teary fish-eye lens vision, the other pregnant women in the waiting room, reading pregnancy and parenting books and smiling with their partners. I was torn between wanting to burst out crying and wanting to punch them all in their happy pregnant faces.
The nice thing about a Catholic hospital (believe me, I never thought I’d think that, let alone write it down) is that every time the admitting staff, the nurses, or anybody else says D&C at the top of their lungs, you know that nobody thinks you’re there because you want to be. Everybody knows that your baby is already dead. Or not viable. Or whatever you prefer to say that makes you feel better. And most people are thusly kind and gentle to your grief.
We walked into that hospital on Friday as excited new parents. Shocked and terrified, but excited. And we walked out of that hospital on Saturday empty. At least, that’s how it felt. My breasts are still enormous and aching, my belly still sticks out a bit, but now I’m just a busty fat chick who can’t put anything near her vagina for two months (”pelvic rest” is the polite way to say that). They say my body should go back to normal in a couple of months.
And here’s what you find out when you have a miscarriage - everybody else you know has had one. People come out of the woodwork and tell you about their DNC’s, their bloody underwear at work, their heartache. And you wonder, after all the guilt and crying and grief, why you never knew this before: one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage. The number is probably closer to one in four, but many women miscarry before knowing they were pregnant. You think about the women you know, and the number of kids they have, and that’s a lot of miscarriages. So WHY doesn’t anybody talk about it? WHY do women have to feel like they’re the only person on earth to suffer like this when it happens? WHY does everybody tell you “wow, you told us early” when you tell them you’re pregnant? “So many things go wrong in the first trimester, we think you told us too soon”. Like if something goes wrong, they don’t want to know about it. Like you should handle your dirty secret miscarriage alone. Well what’s the point in having friends and family if they can’t help you make it through something like this? And how can they do that if they don’t know what you’re going through?
Sigh.
I know I’ll wake up one morning soon and know that it’s not the end of the world. I will wake up ready to try again. This one was a surprise, but a welcomed and much loved surprise. Now we know for sure that, though we are as unready as anybody for parenthood, it is something that we want. In the meantime, I am not going to hide this experience. And if I get pregnant again, I won’t do anything different- no skulking about for months in fear of telling anybody. I will still call my best friends and family, excited. And if I miscarry again, I will want to talk about that too.
This whole experience has also resolved my feelings once again about nursing as opposed to doctoring. Because, I find, it is the difference between somebody taking the time to sit with you, stroking your arm when the IV medicine burns and handing you a tissue versus informing you with one sentence that they are sorry but you will pass the mass of tissue. It’s the difference between treating the human being like a grieving mother and treating the slab of warm meat like a car that needs repairing. I want the skills to heal, but I also want the time to use them. I want to heal people, not just bodies.
One last thing- folks should give more thought and attention to fathers going through this experience. It’s my body, but it was P’s baby too. He is grieving as much as I am. And not a single person yet has offered a kind word just for him during this experience.
