No? Can't take another day of gushing? Okay, I understand. But they are. And I love them. And I do have to add that one of my friends has the greatest Christmas list I've ever heard of and it just rocks: She has two items: 1) a chainsaw 2) a teakettle. And if there is a Santa, he won't be able to resist giving her both.
One of my friends' relatives had a miscarriage. All miscarriages are horrible, but hers was especially grueling. I barely got through my own and I did not have to endure what she did. I don't know her, but I send to her all that is good in order to get through this. People do not talk about miscarriages until you've had one and then suddenly they come out of the woodwork with their own loss. But why is this so? Are we trained to not acknowledge the loss? Is it because people handle the news so poorly? Is it somehow shameful because we as women want so desperately to make sense of the death that we turn our reasoning inward, no matter how irrational, and seek to find something we did so that we have somewhere to place the blame?
I was so devastated when I had a miscarriage. I refused to accept it, right up to the moment I was fading under the anesthesia. I thought that surely they would wake me up and tell me they found the baby's heartbeat after all. And then I went through grief beyond grief. Suddenly the world was populated with nothing but round pregnant bellies and babies in slings and carriers and chubby toddling infants and all store window displayed tiny perfect outfits. And then I was angry. Furious. Hateful. I took a semester off school. I went to Florida. I went to Italy. I lit candles across that country in every beautiful cathedral we toured.
I was tired of pretending this hadn't happened to me; I was tired of the shame or stigma or secrecy. When people asked me when we were going to have children, I started replying we had tried and just lost one.
People don't do well with miscarriages. If I may, please never say to someone who has had a miscarriage any of the following phrases:
It was God's will.
It was for the best.
You can have another one.
Better it happen now than later.
It is a death. Please don't ignore it. Just say "I'm sorry," as you would with any death.
When I was "allowed" to try again, I trained for the possibility of pregnancy like I was training for a marathon. I completely changed the way I ate and approached food. I exercised constantly. I took-up yoga. I was determined to build a body that could house a child. I was in the best shape of my life. I read everything I could on miscarriages and getting pregnant. I joined on-line groups of women who had miscarried and gone on to have successful pregnancies and healthy children.
I got pregnant again. And experienced the exact same thing that had occurred during the first three months of my previous pregnancy. I was told not to lift anything. Not to exercise. I was positive I was losing this baby, too. Every time we went to the doctor and heard a heartbeat, I still refused to allow myself to believe or get attached. I knew it wouldn't last. I rented a doppler and checked for the heartbeat every day until one day I saw a small E.T. like finger rise from the middle of my stomach. It was the most surreal experience of my life. I called for my husband to come and look at this strange little alien inside me moving around and making my skin rise and fall independent of my own motions.
I had an easy pregnancy. I did yoga. Everything that went into my mouth was treated as though I was feeding the baby. My one indulgence was nachos at our favorite, now defunct Mexican restaurant on Friday nights. Because we were such devoted regulars, the cooks would humor me with my special request of putting broccoli and spinach on my nachos so that the baby could find nutrients in the meal.
The doctors were assholes. They told me my baby wasn't growing correctly, that I was measuring too small. They would stand outside the door reading my chart aloud and make horrible comments regarding my health and the health of my child, to which my husband and I would yell "We can hear you! It's not a soundproof door!" They sent me for needless ultrasounds, only to be unable to read them. They told me they couldn't tell if the baby's head was down or if it was breech. They told me if I was lucky, it would be 5 pounds at best. They made me a mother fucking nervous wreck. I tried to switch to another practice, but no one was taking on new patients.
My baby was 8 lbs. 2 oz. and 21 inches long. He was perfectly healthy, if a little jaundiced. He latched right on.
And I no longer feel any pain at the thought of my miscarriage. Not because I have a child. But because it is my belief that the child I have is the child I miscarried. He just didn't have the right body to house him the first time around. The second time he was conceived, he had a strong and healthy body which would carry him into the world. But I know that it was him both times. And because of that, I never have to look back in sadness at the baby I never had, because I do have him.
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