Miscarriage

Miscarriage

They say it in hushed tones,
in whispers,
in shaking heads and biting lips
and eyes cast to the ground.

Like...don't ask.
Like she's trying to remember who she told so she can untell.
Like it's not her fault but she still feels guilty.

And they told her not to tell because this could happen.
To keep it to herself just in case.

But now the doctor's lips are moving and I nod as he confirms what I already know.
He says these things happen.
That 1 in 5 pregnancies ends this way.

So if you were to line up 100 pregnant women 20 of them will go through this.
Yet miscarriage is still said in hushed tones,
in whispers,
in shaking heads and biting lips
and awkward silence.

Like...don't ask.
Like the world just stopped spinning,
Like I'm too sad to cry.
Like it's not my fault but I still feel guilty.

But I try to listen as he says we can try again.
He says if I were pregnant enough times that this would happen eventually and it just happened on my first.
That my odds haven't changed and I'm young and healthy so I shouldn't worry.

And I nod some more and make jokes with the nurses and smile shaky smiles and wonder how the fuck I'm going to get through another day.

The next morning I have my first ultrasound.

But there is no blurry print-out to show my friends,
no "do you want to know the sex?"

Just notes scribbled down and the news that I'll have to have surgery.
That there's still some "tissue" left inside of me.

And I hold it all in until my mom comes to visit, when the damn that's been holding back these tears breaks and she holds me and we cry.

She brings me a necklace from the gift shop that is just the accessory this hospital gown was missing and a teddy bear that has the word angel stitched on its foot despite having no wings.

But right now that seems pretty appropriate because right now these nurses are the closest things to angels I've got because they're the ones with the morphine. The shots that sting but leave my arms and legs feeling as heavy as my heart and lets me sleep.

We call it a mis-carriage.
Like a mis-take.
Like I carried wrong.
The medical term is spontaneous abortion.
Which starts off sounding like fun like "oh, we were feeling crazy so we thought we'd take a spontaneous trip!" and ends with...abortion. Like I didn't want this baby I wanted more than anything. Like...it wasn't a good time, or like I was 14 or...like...an abortion...

So right now this doesn't really have an end.

I could go on and tell you about the surgery or the pain afterward or how I couldn't walk to the bathroom without passing out or how 2 days after I got out of the hospital I looked after 2 babies under the age of 2 for a week and how this is the hardest thing I've ever been through.

But really, I just needed to speak the word miscarriage out loud. To talk about this experience that so many women have been through but that you never hear about...except in hushed tones and whispers and... nobody does this when a child dies! Nobody tries to say it without saying it and no one feels bad when they can't stop crying and no one tells you you can just make another one. Because at 12 weeks pregnant my baby is still considered negative 28 weeks old. But at 12 weeks pregnant my baby was as real to me as you are. And a lot of women out there have been through this too. Have had their expectancy turn so quickly to disappointment and found themselves helpless against this loss. They could do nothing about it. I could do nothing about it. And I hope that one day women will be supported through this loss. That there will be no shame. That we can one day share our grief, share our love, share our loss. But it has to start somewhere so I start by sharing my story.

We had picked out names and made plans but bought only one tiny sleeper.
It was periwinkle blue and read "Bon Nuit mon petit etoile!"
Goodnight my little star.
Goodnight.

Rest in Peace.

I spent last night awake in bed, crying. My sobs shook the bed but Davis slept through them so I wept alone. And so far this all feels so fucking cliché that I might as well start describing the saltiness of my tears except here’s the part where I tell you that I was crying because a dog I never met died yesterday.

The story goes a little something like this from what I can gather from second hand information from a brief phone call with my mother: Katie, my baby sister, had gone out for the night leaving her husband caring for their 2 year old daughter. At some point in the evening when his back was turned little Sophia threw Bella down the stairs and the puppy’s heart stopped pounding on impact. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even in the same city. But the story has my mind flooded with images. This little puppy laying still, a confused toddler wondering why the doggy won’t play with her anymore, a father who can blame no one but himself, pounding on the chest of this lifeless body trying to revive a silent heartbeat.


Katie blames herself for going out. Then there’s my brother who had been watching Bella until a few days previous thinking she was too young to be around the house with a small child yet but went against his gut instinct and left her there. He told himself he was just getting too attached and had to face the facts that he had gotten the dog as a gift for my sister’s family.

So I cry. I cry not only for the loss of this puppy but for the tragedy of what if. The inevitable place we all resort to when bad things happen. The circular track I know my sister, her husband, my brother and yes, perhaps even my young niece are likely running laps on. This is a painful place to be. What if I had done this, what if I hadn’t done that. Things would be different. If only I could do it again.

But we can’t undo death no matter how hard we try. We are left with the confrontation of how frail this thing we call life really is. Sometimes it feels like God is a toddler with chubby fingers just waiting to throw us down some stairs. So we hold our breath and pray. And that’s all I’m able to do tonight. Just pray for them because I can’t be there and I can’t tell them it’s ok and it wasn’t their fault and that they had no way of knowing. I can just send a message out into what often feels like an empty void to something, somewhere, this God I still somehow believe in against all odds…please hold them. Please, be the comforter they need. I don’t know what else to do. There is nothing else to do. I don’t understand this and I know it has caused so much pain. This may not be well-written, beautiful or eloquent but it is raw truth. Because all I am learning from these experiences in life is that I don't have a fucking clue about anything. So I cry, and pray, and write. This is all I have, brokenness and hope and a need to share that. In this I find the continuing paradox of hope in despair, of strength in weakness, of realizing how tiny I am. This is the beautiful terrible mystery of life.

Manifesto

"I've got to get out of this smoky bar." she sighed. "Smoke gets in my eyes, in my hair. I'll smell like this for weeks. I need to breathe."

He downed his scotch, took a drag of his cigarette, "You obviously live in the woods etching your manifestos on tree bark hoping passing deer will read and understand. Missy, what you don't understand is deer DON'T CARE. They only want to raise their young, live in their McMansions, drive their soccer deer hummers to yoga class, maybe grab some sushi and a Booster Juice and get some rest before another long day at work."

But she was already gone.

Save the Tigers

The girl who lives next door is probably ten or eleven. She often comes around on some sort of project. One time it was an offer of $2 to sweep the area around our condo's door. (We took her up on it.) Another time it was selling chocolates. (They were milk chocolate so I had to decline) Today she came to my door with a clipboard.

"Would you like to help save the tigers?"

"What do they need saving from?"

"Poaching. There's only 5000 of them left in the wild."

"How can I help save them?"

"You just sign here."

She holds out her blue clipboard which is covered in soccerball stickers. It has a piece of lined paper clipped to it and in her neatest ten year old penmanship it reads "Sighn if you Care" and then there are squares she has drawn one of which says "Name". I obliged and she gave Caleb a pet while I did so.

"Is this a chihuahua?"

"Yes."

"My friend Stephanie has one."

"Cool."

Every time she sees Caleb she asks me if he's a chihuahua and then tells me that Stephanie has one too. I thanked her for letting me help save the tigers and off she went. She kind of reminds me of myself around the same age and it made me laugh. I used to go around selling flowers to the neighbours which I had probably taken from their yards. I used to make lilac potpourri by microwaving lilacs and try to get people to buy it and I'm sure if I had heard that the tigers were disappearing I'd have gone around to my neighbours trying to get them to sign a piece of paper and hoping that if everyone cared enough just their vote to save the tigers would somehow save the tigers. I love the simplicity of this idea. I think I may just go around and get people to sign to end world hunger and stop the wars. I don't have to send them anywhere or do anything with it. Just the fact that people care will be enough for me. And while I'm at it I might offer to do some sweeping for cash, that seems like a win-win for everyone.