Getting this out days before the holidays seems cruel but also comforting. What better time to admit sorrow than when knee-deep in the mulled cheer and the two-month timeframe when it feels like all the people lose all of their people?
I had a miscarriage at 12-weeks pregnant. It was on a Monday, a day I oddly remembered as the birthday of one of my high school boyfriends (I can barely remember where I left my pants yesterday, but yeah). The only sunny day on the stretch of vacation I had in Florida with my parents. Life is strange.
Succumbed to the Floridian healthcare circuit (I was a bit fascinated to take this on), I carried my slump of a soul into the Emergency Room and stated factually, “I think I’m having a miscarriage.” But first, they had to recheck my insurance. But really, hats off to that hospital for their slick work. I was impressed and thankful for the care.
Before getting a room and an IV, I walked the halls doing my patterned breathing, wishing for an epidural, experiencing contraction-like pangs likened to when I almost birthed my second child in the car, I knew life was changing on a dime. My mother sat in the lobby, puffing out clouds of pervasive positivity, pulling from her past experience of losing a babe at 14-weeks pregnant, recalling my grandmother’s losses of rainbow babies, and nurturing the line she cultivated in me like a tiny threaded seed in the early ages which has grown into a mighty oak – “It could always be worse.”
And it could have been much worse. At a less opportune time, in a less-comfortable place, amongst piles of family members, in an airplane, on a boat, with a goat, in a moat. Much worse, and it wasn’t.
Regardless, it was still bad, and sad, and it made me a little mad, and I felt a tad plaid, like I couldn’t get my colors right.
But then I looked around and saw it all – everything I had worked towards, my blood, sweat, tears, bad temper, nonstop need to go, and antsy mind. I saw my girls, I saw my husband, my dogs, my life. And it kept me going and continues to as I pull the puddly, gooey version of myself out of the sewer grates it slipped into and the body who keeps trying to run and hide like Forky going for the trashcan.
I might be a pliable, putty-like representation of a person right now, but I am regaining strength, and most importantly my left hand never let go of the leather tether that was ferociously controlling my wildling pets who go by the names of Hopes and Dreams. I’m never letting those mad dogs go no matter what happens.
I find it therapeutic and extraordinary to both share and revel in my story, similar to and different from other stories of miscarrying. Oddly enough, three days after my body “expelled” the failed pregnancy, the girls and I flew back home to connect with my husband, our dad, our rock. I had a wild west sputter of a cough and felt something leave my body like a cork coming out of a wine bottle. The baby had waited until we got back to Colorado to say goodbye, to leave my body – a miracle (and weird event) I will never be able to explain but will remember until kingdom come.
When I miscarried, wisps of guilt and blame did cross my chessboard, but only for a blip of time. From what I can read, hear, and observe, miscarriages happen to almost 20% of women. It is the body’s way of ridding of a pregnancy gone wrong, which I can certainly appreciate as we all long for “healthy babies” at the end of the grueling nine months.
I once read about a “scientist” purposefully overdosing on cocaine and journaling his experience as his body shut down forever. This both spooked and intrigued me, and instead of taking a drug I have abstained from for fear I will love it, I decided to apply the method to my miscarriage and document my feelings as they were occurring, from the moment I felt blood and cramps to days after the disaster. My heart and eyes are working on editing and compiling this into a precious memory for myself (and my blog), but until then I’ll share words of encouragement and raise awareness to this frequent and sad situation.
Back in the day, women were made to believe these instances were faults of their actions – bad genes, not enough exercise, poor dieting, not enough connection with the child, little to no baby Pilates, you didn’t sing to it so it left you, so on and so forth.
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