Content warning: mention of miscarriage
“It’s not caused by anything you did and it’s not your fault.”
No, shit, but I really really needed to hear it as I struggled to keep my tears from falling. She silently passed me some tissues and continued with listing my options.
I could feel my husband sitting behind me and would turn a little bit to ask for his opinion and his thoughts, but it wasn’t our abortion we were discussing or our miscarriage. I wanted it to be ours, but he didn’t have a clue of what it was like to be in my body. No anxious feelings or thoughts eating away at any sense of peace, no frantic googling of symptoms or lack of symptoms, no edge of shame at gaining weight in the face of not carrying any new life inside him.
Afterwards we went to get ice cream, usually my husband would dissuade such an indulgence. Too much sugar and fat without nutrition. Today he readily agreed and ate it with me. Grieving in his own quiet ways and supporting my quest for any serotonin I can find.
I almost cried, not after picking up my prescribed pills, but after biting into the $1.50 Costco hotdog and sipping on my caffeinated soda. Two things I had avoided to protect the baby that wasn’t there. I had imagined that I would indulge in things I missed with a bundle of joy bouncing on my knee, not feeling empty at the edge of a parking lot.
It was a silly thought when it came, but the 3 medications I was prescribed to make this easier and harder at the same time cost less than my ADHD medication. My anti-capitalist ideals spark for a micro-second to say, “Abortions would be more widely accepted and legal if they could figure out how to monetize them.” If suffering generates money, then let there be suffering. That’s the world we live in.
The silver lining in all of this is that I don’t think my body is ready. A week ago my back gave out, poor posture, soft bedding, hormones? A perfect storm that made my spine feel like a crushed can and each turn or step felt like the sharp ridges were cutting into my back. I stretched and laid and stretched and laid and took steps like a newborn deer, buckling and shaking. I think it was all the stress I had built up into my flesh, convincing myself that the fetus was alive and dead, alive and dead, alive and dead. The truth is what we perceive it to be and I was scared that I might convince myself of the wrong thing, that I would add another line to my health records.
As I lay on my white sheets, waiting for something to happen, I’m scared. I’m scared of what I might feel or see. I have to remind myself that I’m not special and in being completely ordinary, I am not alone. Countless women have this experience. They are rocketed by their aspirations of motherhood into a seemingly certain and special future. A future that still awaits me, I know, but a future that feels infinitely further away at this moment.
I’m reminded of finding out my dad had early onset dementia, something that had never entered the scope of my life’s reality until that moment. Something that felt closer to fiction and fantasy than reality. I think that’s how the subsequent loss and grief I felt were like then, and how this missed miscarriage feels like now. A hazy dream, hazier than the vivid dreams brought on by pregnancy. Feeling both final and unreal at the same time.
I want to say that maybe I was foolish and brash, in the face of the real and frightening difficulties of motherhood. That I was too eager to tell everyone and anyone the tremendous, joyous, good news. But no, it would have been someone else wearing this skin and these bones experiencing my life.
It was my joy and excitement to feel, my secret to not keep, and my sadness to now hold in a public way, because I know no other. I think secrets make the world smaller, lonely, and isolated. I write so others may have a greater sense of the world, of the joys and dangers that lurk beyond our understanding or experience. I write this now so that I, years from now, with a beautiful child or two, will know this was not a dream and that it happened. And because it happened so will our blessings be infinitely greater than we can ever imagine. We can rapidly become disillusioned with the gifts life gives us, waiting for the next big adventure, large bonus or promotion, new house, anything to up the ante. But it is in this moment that I find my gratitude that there is a tomorrow to try again and there is a yesterday to love today.
I’m publishing these words four months after one of the most physically and emotionally painful days I’ve experienced in my life. It would have also been okay to never let this see the light of day, but it is because it felt so true and real when it happened that I feel a sense of duty to share this words. When I experienced my dad’s decline to dementia and his death, nothing made me feel like myself, like a person, than connecting with others and their experiences. I hope that in publishing these words that someone out there feels less alone, that eases their pain, and that they can look forward with hope, too. Four months ago I opted to use some medication that would initiate the process of the miscarriage, it resulted in 6 hrs of excruciating pain, I think next time I would opt to do an in-clinic procedure or wait. I say “next time”, not because I expect this to happen again, but because I know this is a surprisingly common part of this journey I have chosen to embark on.
Much love,
Melisa
Illustrated by Meli 