I keep coming back here where everything slipped

It’s been two months since my partially-formed, 12-week baby was ejected from my vagina through a strong cough while living in there for three days and traveling 1000 miles to say “bon voyage” to my husband who is and was also grieving the loss of a life without ever begin given the opportunity to touch, smell, feel, and cherish little groping hands and soft baby skin.

Before we start this show, shout out to the dads out there who have been through a miscarriage. I don’t think you get enough props or attention, and from my husband’s POV, I am not quite sure if anyone really did ask you if you were okay before, during, and after. They asked us ladies, but they probably forgot about you, and for that we are sorry.

I will be gone, but not forever

Two long months of dragging my fifty-pound feet around the house in search of something that will shake the confetti loose from the cannon. The confetti that will zoom together and reform what was my persona before this weird, unfair, nonsensical, and outrageous thing happened to me (and many other aspiring mothers).

Trying to put a finger on this feeling, my longtime, lovely friend versed it to me this way – “Sometimes you feels like you are out in the water, no land in sight, and you are just paddling. Paddling, paddling, paddling. You aren’t sure what you will see, where you are going, or what really is happening, but you know one day you will find something and eventually reach somewhere, but when or how that will happen is not up to you, nor can you do anything about it. So you just keep paddling.”

What is moving will be still, what has gathered will disperse

The miscarriage plunged me into international waters where anything goes. I, an extreme feeler and emotional nutbag, began feeling the intense magnetic pull of “Nothing.” Before I lost a baby, Nothing was a stranger to me. My emotions were strong, outward, and my appreciations ranged from the complex to the mundane; I lavished in what life had to offer. But after the loss, Nothing walked broke down the front door to be the first person to greet me each morning, noon, and night.

I’ve tried flicking Nothing away, giving it the Finger, whooshing it out with the bitch-slap I’ve been saving up for someone or something for years. I tried dousing it with vices and coloring over it with new interests. They say you can clean stains by fighting it with similar ingredients, but doing nothing wasn’t wiping out Nothing. Nothing was working on Nothing; Nothing was winning.

Hiding in my room, safe within my womb, I touch no one and no one touches me

These days I still do feel, but now it’s a bit dulled compared to the vibrant colors I once knew (and will know again). I shelled up into a hermit hole (more than my introverted self already does), bathing in Grief’s lesson plans and following it’s steps to a twisted version of enlightenment. I cried a little, not much, mostly because the sadness I felt for the kid dissipated when I met the fetus and realized it had never developed into what we would consider a viable human (it was more like a bustle of tissue and blood; like a cancerous tumor growth; like it got confused in the fourth or fifth week and just kept making skin instead of the organs required for being a badass person). Yesterday I dreamed about the little bundle of skin, and when it unfolded itself in my dreams, it, too, turned out to be Nothing.

I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes, and just for that one moment I could be you

People warned me about the loneliness miscarrying bring, they willingly shared their vivid yet horrific stories. Each event was different, each as terrible and heartbreaking as the next, all of us feeling the burn of loss.

“I had one too.”
“I had several.”
“I had two before I even had kids.”
“I had one before kids and one in between.”
“I had an ectopic and then a miscarriage.”
“I went to the doctor for a check-up and the heartbeat wasn’t there.”
“Me too.”

Never once had I heard miscarriage talk amongst a group of people. I don’t think I ever will.

When I counted up my demons, saw there was one for every day, but with the good ones on my shoulders I drove the other ones away

I don’t know if there is a safe way to ask someone if they need a hug, but it could be worth it to ping your friends to see if they’ve ever lost someone so special to them without ever meeting them.

Next time you are in a conversation, and it does turn to pregnancy loss, instead of avoiding the topic with stories of people training their dogs to carry cases of beer to them or squirrels waterskiing, try to be a part of the talk, say the words out loud as if they aren’t a cup of fresh, yellow vomit, “Miscarriage.” Say it loud, say it proud, because it happens to us, a lot, and we need someone to acknowledge it, help us feel real about it, and make us feel we are not alone.

My Scary Miscarry (Captured at the time the war began.)

I think I’m miscarrying,
or rather, I know I’m miscarrying.
The cramping hurts
and the blood keeps coming.

I prepped myself for this day for years,
Knowing, chances are, it would probably happen
I had had two kids already without any hitches.

After the eighth week of pregnancy,
I forgot about miscarrying.
I complained about the first trimester symptoms instead.
I let the nausea and food aversions cloud over my fear of loss.

And then on week 12,
It hit me like a ton of bricks.
It started with a little blood, a little cramping.
I thought I had lifted a little too much weight earlier that morning.
I had read somewhere that hard work-outs caused spotting.
No problem here.
And then the blood kept coming,
And coming.
And it got stronger.
It disturbed me on a night out with my mom and daughter at the theater,
I grinned while the tap dancers grazed the stage,
While my mind wandered to the blood I had found during intermission.

Could it be I made it this far, and something decided to go wrong?
Why did it wait this long?
Wasn’t everything in order?
How did we get all the way here and it decided something was wrong?

Was it that 25 pound weight I lifted the other day?
Was it the crunches and burpees?

Is it my fault?
It feels like my fault.
It feels like I let everyone down.

But I know I can get pregnant.
I’m luckier than many in that I can get pregnant fast.
And I’ve done it twice,
Hell, three times,
And it’s worked.
I can do it again.

But what will happen next time?
Will it not work?
Why should I have to wait?
Why is this happening to me?
It’s not supposed to happen this late.

If I stop thinking about it, can I will it to stop?
Can I wish for this to stop?
Can I make it go away?
Why me?

I want another baby, I won’t stop trying.
But I don’t want the other thing to happen to me.

But would I want it to happen to someone else?

Would I take one for the team and let it happen to me
so it wouldn’t have to happen to someone else?

I would.
I did.
I hope I did.

The nurse on the phone said another expecting mom
was going home for the holidays
They were having problems too.
I hope she doesn’t have it happen to her.

Can it happen to me instead so it doesn’t happen to her?

Why is it happening to any of us?
Why do we go through this?
Haven’t we been through enough?
Why doesn’t it just stop?

I want it to stop.
Not the heartbeat, but the cramping.
It keeps getting worse even though I told it not to.
Why did it happen to me?

But it will happen to me.
And it will be ok if it happens to me.
And there will be a kid, just not one in June.
Maybe later. Maybe it will be in June but the year after.
Maybe this will be my time.
My time to take to reprocess, to recreate, to become something else.
To grow.
To learn.
To love even stronger than I have before.
Maybe this is a lesson.
Maybe this is all bullshit, but maybe it’s supposed to show me something.
Why me?
Poor me.
Lucky me?
Me.

The Day After the War Came

My belly is flatter this morning.
Some people dream of waking up to a smaller stomach overnight.
I lost a best friend in order to get it.

Things are different now.
Instead of a prenatal, it’s a painkiller.
Instead of waking to empty a weighted bladder
being pressured by a growing uterus,
I woke up at 3am to pee blood

The baby left me like an eager kid going off to their first day of preschool.
Disappeared like a charcuterie plate at my house.
Gone without even waving goodbye.
I hope wherever they went they are having fun
I miss them already.
Maybe they were scared of our boisterous family.
Maybe we were too much for them.

The pain seems to linger but mostly in my heart
Like a bad break up you try to psyche yourself out of.
“It’s ok, who needed them anyway.”
“They were abusive, mean, uncaring.”
“They made me sick and took my energy.”
“That no good, street rat, coming into my uterus,
Taking my land, time, precious walls of a house.
Who do they think they are?”

It was fun while it lasted even though it was hard.

Pain makes you wilder than a caged animal
Would I have considered giving up my baby to make the cramping and contractions stop?
Truth is I did.

I miscarried, but it wasn’t my mistake.
But it feels like I made it happen
It seems like I could have done differently.
I roll the tapes back in my mind constantly.
What if I had rested more here?
Eaten less bad stuff there?
Not lifted in this part?
Been more careful, less active, increasingly mindful?
Would it have been different?

When did they leave?

I miss my little friend.

All I ask for is a hand up.
Not a sorry.
Stop saying “I’m sorry.”
What are you sorry about?
Life is one big lesson,
not something to feel sorry for.
Stuff your sorries in a sack
Bring me love and encouragement.
Tell me I looked great as a pregnant woman.
Tell me my kids are already wonderful.
Tell me the next time is going to be even more beautiful than this.
Tell me I’m not too old to try again.
Fill my cup with pushes and nudges.
Send me higher.
And save your sorries for the crocodiles that hover in the moat.
Feed your bloody sorries to them instead.

Now I can help my kids knowing what I went through.
Now I can empathize more with others
Knowing I’ve been in these shoes.
These shoes gave me blisters
and I puked on them, but they were cute when I wore them.
And I loved them all the same.

After a house fire destroys your possessions,
Do you rebuild in the same way?
Or do you remove the barriers that held you back
And build the living room to be more spacious?
Replace that pesky wall in the kitchen with a line of new cabinets?
Design that office you always dreamed of?

Someday the shapes will shuffle.
And turn into something even more glamorous than before.
Until then I will snuggle my girls
And remember that life has no score.
Rather it is like a twisting mountain of swirlie ice cream
With no straight lines, no beginning, no end.
A beautiful, messy, pile of sweetness, sticky hands,
Drooling streams of milky goodness, and the occasional brain freeze.
Overall it is beyond delicious,
I will taste it until it asks me to leave.

If life were perfect it would be boring as hell.