The following is my experience over the last 3 months in losing my pregnancy.
I’ve repeatedly been told how common it is to have this happen-
and yet again, I find myself in a “common” place with such a minimal amount of context for it.
Grasping for hands to hold in this hushed common ground has been critical,
I hope my voice becomes a hand you’ll never need to hold.
The ground no longer feels capable of holding the weight of me.
It feels like my whole life is a thin rug floating midair
just waiting to be ripped out from under me at any moment.
There is a switch that flips in me when I go through something difficult.
I feel this undeniable urge to share it.
The scarier it feels, the more pressing the need.
I can’t explain it.
Nor can I really explain any of the most important things-
those are the things that are both unsayable and also specifically worth the excavation.
It feels like a subconscious knowing that if I don’t let it move in whatever way- it will turn to poison. Like the way stagnant water become dangerous if it doesn’t flow.
Or vomit that is coming up whether you like it or not.
Sometimes explaining things like this seems frowned upon.
Like a low brow, too literal attempt to communicate something somehow cheapens it.
As if it’s only allowed to be talked about conceptually with poetic or elusive language or visual art.
But just in the same way there are things that can only be expressed/
experienced in art,
there are things that demand cold hard colorless words.
it’s hard to name something that doesn’t look pretty or feel palatable.
as if just saying my plain truth is crude or offensive or less than.
but ironically, sometimes the lack of considered approach feels more like art to me than anything else.
The deciding factor between the two? you.
your own internal need.
honor it.
respect it.
so today, for me—
I don’t want this to be open for interpretation.
in fact, right now I cannot stand one more open ended thing.
I want to be bound to specificity.
I need to name.
I need to not feel fucking helpless in one area of my life.
It feels impossible to exist in the space I’m in now,
both the liminal and the aftermath of losing a baby.
I’ve found that some women feel shy or shamed about the extent of their pain for their loss because of how early in the pregnancy it happened or knowing others who have had “worse”.
"It’s so common, 1 in 4."
Every loss is as different, significant, and intimate as the person bearing it.
From the second you see that pink line, everything changes.
A love is born without needing birth.
Biologically, emotionally, physically, spiritually.
At this time I am almost 2 weeks post the procedure I didn’t want to have to have.
I was around 3 months pregnant.
The only thing that has helped me in this process is a few woman who have shared intimate details of their experience with me.
I am forever grateful for their love, honesty, specificity, and transparency.
And most of all, their willingness to recall some of their darkest hours to help light mine.
When it felt like all of the air
was sucked out of the sky
and stillness felt violent,
silence- impenetrable,
the knowing of their hard truths was a hand to hold,
a hand to squeeze in the dark.
Here’s my hand-
In early February I found out I was pregnant.
An absolute shock, unplanned, and I was so very happy.
It was even more shocking for my partner who doesn’t have the hormones and biological predisposition to more quickly acclimate to the reality.
Right out of the gate, the complexity of holding my own joy and my partner’s struggle felt like an intense experience but one that awakened me to the importance of holding my truth sacred- a heightened awareness in not making my love and compassion for someone else mean sacrifice to myself.
All it took was that pink line to change everything.
(well- many pink lines because I took A LOT of tests.)
I didn’t know if we would have a third child but I always knew there was another.
I have always said that it just feels like there is another.
It’s not that I have this over abundance of energy and patience and bandwidth for the two I have now (lol) it just always felt like there was a presence making space for itself before even being here.
In the eternity before first seeing the doctor for my first ultrasound, I had a lot of time to think about this new season.
One of the things I felt most strongly about was the idea that this was my chance to be in a pregnancy without being consumed with fear and worry. This was my chance to feel grounded and at peace during this experience.
I was absolutely horrified in both of my previous pregnancies.
The first, because it was my first.
The second because there was some scary test results that led to us having to see many specialists and learning about very scary possibilities only to find out in the end once he was finally born that he was totally fine.
I’m such a different person now then I was 6 and 4 years ago.
I know so much more.
I am so much more connected to myself.
Now is my chance to live this experience in a new way.
We told our parents within a week or so of finding out.
I feel very uncomfortable when something significant is happening and the prominent people in my life don’t know about it.
I have no poker face and I feel most comfortable with transparency.
Going into my first appointment I knew it was going to be hit or miss in being able to see the baby. “It’s still so early.”
But regardless of how common it is to not be able to see it yet, I had to be classified with “unknown viability”.
I cried as soon as the doctor left the room.
Immediate fear.
"But no, this time I want to be different", I told myself.
I had so many weird pregnancy symptoms.
I rested in the discomfort with the hope that those must be positive signs.
I had to wait 11 days for the viability confirmation ultrasound.
i waited for 11 long days to lay on this paper
you moved the wand inside of me
you saw my insides on a screen
did you think you knew more than I about me and mine?
i wait
your straight face makes me sick
i wait
i unfairly hate you more and more each minute
your silence glows grim in that dark room- worse than anything you could ever say.
and still i must wait.
and you walked in the room after
a disrespectful wait and yet i wish you’d never come.
i flinched as your words assaulted me
your blank eyes seemed perfectly fine
with letting me twist in pain
as you pulled life from mine.
and while i wait
those closest to me innocently compete
to say the worst possible words.
their version of comfort-
so much more their reality and nothing of mine.
wait, and
“prepare for the worst”
will it somehow hurt less if i tell myself to hurt sooner?
will those words feel easier if i sit inside them longer?
wait, and then
“you can try again”
as if the life inside of me here and now can be there and then.
wait and see, but
“this is likely an early loss”
the data makes me sick.
averages and statistics meant to predict the outcome
of a once in a lifetime, one of a kind you.
i wait.
ER
golf ball
clots
filling pads
front to back
side to side
“any questions?”
i want to run away from my own body so badly
and also not at all because there’s a baby in there,
my baby is there.
you are there.
so I must wait.
wait
wait
wait
11 days.
2 weeks.
8 weeks.
wait and see.
wait to bleed.
wait and bleed.
how can this be meant to be?
against all odds and gone with odds
i wait.
i lay here scared to pee
afraid of what i will or won’t see
wait.
i go to work.
through tears and cramps
i count the drawer
5
10
15
20
25
30
eyes squeeze shut
35
40
45
50
trembling chin
55
60
65
shuttering breath.
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squeaks of pain try to escape but they can’t be here.
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maybe that’s why I’m here.
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i’m afraid to not be here
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relieved that i’m not allowed to feel here.
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feelings don’t have permission under the fluorescent lights here
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are you still here?
i love you i love you i’ll love you forever
please stay
.25
.50
.75
$1.00
i’ll stay
i wont even drink water.
will that help you stay?
.25
.50
.75
$1.00
then can you stay?
10
20
30
40
50
i wish even my mother had the right thing to say
i was born of her-
somehow meant to be
why can’t you be born to me?
“it’s not my fault” but somehow easier if it would be
something to point to
something to know
something to see
but there’s nothing to point to
nothing to know
evaporated lines and dreams and memories and what feels like what’s left of me
and still i wait.
was it always going to happen like this?
i just couldn’t see?
and the weight of the color pink brings me to my knees
in the bathroom
in the bedroom
in the laundry room
i plead.
brought to my knees because the wait was over and it was here and now
but here and now is now 3 days later and still just pink here and there
again I wait.
holding breath as if it holds you here.
i wait in the quiet before the storm everyone tells me is coming
but each day red doesn’t come
begs me to wonder if you’re okay
did you change your mind?
did you decide to stay?
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is this denial or is it faith?
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i want to say i trust what’s meant to be will be
but I know I only mean it if it gets you here to me.
After that horrific appointment I had convinced myself that so many other things could be at play.
The timeline could be messed up.
It could be so many other things.
Things, any thing other than the worst thing.
A few days later I started to bleed and I didn’t even recognize the sound of the howl that came out of me as my own.
I knew.
It could still be normal by technical rationale, but I knew.
I was brought to my knees in almost every corner of my home.
The laundry room, the kitchen, the bedroom, my kids room.
Brought to my knees without warning each time the knowing blew through me.
I continued to bleed.
At my next scan they were able to hear a heartbeat- less than half the rate it should have been and 2 weeks smaller than expected in measurement.
Nothing to do but wait.
Nothing.
Weeks of drowning in a nightmare I could not wake up from.
The rage I have felt in the last couple months has been more than ever before in my life.
Rage for my baby.
Rage for my family.
Rage for myself.
Rage for my body.
and rage for how many women I know and love and don’t know and still love that know what this impossible pain feels like.
During the time I was unsure for how much longer I would be pregnant, I desperately tried to find some form of resolution- some form of knowing or understanding I could rest on in order to find peace. Not for myself, but so that I could be a nice place to be for her. (i don’t know the gender but i feel like it was a her.) She deserved to rest in a place of peace and not total and utter grief and rage.
But the more I tried to force an understanding the more I spiraled. Anything that even remotely sounded comforting just ended up making me angry and I ripped it away from myself and scolded myself for “just trying to make myself feel better.”
I even looked up soul contracts.
Somehow I could deal with the fact that there is something I have to learn in life through this experience but I could not deal with the thought of a baby- my baby- not getting a chance at life.
A friend of mine offered that perhaps she came to give me something and it’s not about what I can or can’t give her.
I don’t know.
I feel so spiritually ungrounded I cannot fathom anything at this point.
I’ve been living and breathing a level of helplessness and despair for what seems like so long (yet only a couple months) I can’t make sense of anything anymore.
It feels like I can’t remember life before this.
Indestructible love born of the faintest line
A lifetime born in that single line
A pain that takes your breath away
your words, away
an impossible silence that cannot stay
scream your lungs out of the same mouth gasping for reason
an unreasonable ask
an unreasonable season
To bear the weight of a loss so big
you can’t remember who you were without it
Too real to be called a hope or a dream
An ache of a memory never made
One that never took place
never took its place
on the physical plane
a miracle taken-
a womb forsaken
How could it?
Why can’t it?
Why won’t it?
How dare it?
Unconditional love imprisoned by physical conditions
Silence shaky salty air
Sit with me
See with me
Stay with me
Where?
I see you in moments you’ll never be
Like the saddest ghost story I deeply believe
Will this searing anger ever turn to peace?
What is it that makes a memory?
It needn’t ever be
it isn’t something you need to see
It’s both active and passive in who you be.
It’s in the breath I breathe
A lifetime already lived in a single short line
Your lifetime with me
I see it at dinner at bath time and bedtime
In leaves
and water
and sun
I see it in places and spaces
Traces of love.
Your memory doesn’t need permission to live
Unbound by condition
Or vision
Or reason.
This season
won’t pass
I refuse
But, we will move
In every leaf
And raindrop
And ray of sunshine
When I eat
And clean and sleep and cry.
A memory so deep
it never needed to be made.
Unconditional love
rejects conditions of the physical plane.
With every breath I breathe,
You will always be.
While I cannot say that I have made even an inch of progress in making sense or peace of this experience, I am undeniably, forever changed.
I now need to relearn my insides.
And to be changed by something that pierces the deepest core of your being and not be able to understand or come to any sort of terms with it is a special kind of abyss.
A throb that doesn’t let up.
It makes me question everything else in my life.
It makes life all together feel too fragile.
It reminds me of the hard edge of our time here.
It feels like that notion is supposed to be a gift but right now it just feels like hell.
It feels like a reason to vilify remembering over forgetting.
A short word on my choice of SSRI support-
When I found out I was pregnant I weaned off zoloft.
I first started taking it after a scary period of postpartum anxiety and depression with my first born.
I tried to wean during my second pregnancy but with the intensity of the baby’s health in question, I wasn’t able to.
I was surprised at how easy it was to get off it with this pregnancy.
I didn’t even notice a difference.
Getting back on it felt like a difficult decision- one that I resisted until I knew I had to get the d&c procedure.
Ultimately, I knew the importance of that type of support in going through hard times from the first time.
More so than any feeling of relief, what I remember most once the fog started to thin was the disturbing realization of how bad it really was in looking back on my resistance to seek help.
I would go outside in the cold San Francisco nights in a tank top just to feel something. I felt like a baby deer staring at headlights about to be hit but frozen in place.
This time around my resistance felt different.
It felt like some warped loyalty.
A pledge to feel ev-er-y-thing.
As if seeking relief or help was a betrayal to my baby or meant that I refused to feel what was happening.
But night after night the boogie man came and closing my eyes felt even scarier than being awake.
At the end of the day, I was a complete hollow shell of a human and in that place, not only could I not honor my baby that couldn’t stay, but I was taking a whole mother, partner, daughter, friend and any other identity I have away from myself and those I love.
Being back on zoloft has put night lights around my mind.
Before I go,
I need to talk about the pictures,
the lack of pictures,
the seeing of the unseen,
& looking away.
I looked away.
At the moment it mattered most,
I looked away.
When I went in for that viability ultrasound and the technician was doing the scan, after 2 minutes (or a lifetime) of her searching for measurements, I couldn’t take it anymore. I looked away.
I looked at Ben still looking at the screen.
I needed and kneaded his hand.
I couldn’t look directly at the source so I was searching for reassurance through his eyes. His gaze stayed steady for a while.
But when he looked away, I instantly flung my arm up over my eyes and squeezed them shut tighter than ever in my life.
She said nothing until the very end when she asked, “is it possible you mistook the date of your last period?”
I could barely whisper no.
"The doctor will be with you shortly."
When she left I crumbled into a ball on the loud paper table and sobbed.
The only thing I could utter was, “She didn’t print a picture. she didn’t print a picture.”
A few days later when I started to bleed the only thing I could do was call the hospital and find someone to access the archived image of my ultrasound appointment from that day.
I needed that picture.
I desperately needed that picture.
I didn’t even want to look at that picture,
but I needed that picture.
They printed it on a disk and mailed it to me.
After that appointment I had other scans and was more proactive in requesting the prints in the moment. I learned my lesson. (perhaps they assume when things aren’t well, you don’t want the pictures.)
But the image on the disk?
I don’t even have plans to look at it, honestly.
I just feel relieved to know it’s there.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how all the pictures I take aren’t the point.
The immense satisfaction I feel when I make an image that feels right is so fleeting.
Everything and nothing at the flip of a coin.
But when you are on the ledge of this or nothing,
no more opportunities to see, let alone pictures to take…
the pictures take on a haunting magnitude.
the picture becomes a life itself,
because it has to-
because it has no choice.
Now the very images I flinched at are the only ones I have left to hold.
I now attempt to love my baby through creative conversation with the few images I have of her bittersweet, abbreviated existence.
I think a lot of people miss the insane superpower of photographs, writing, video- documentation in general in the way of self care.
Photographs as self preservation over memory preservation.
We are not constrained to only document things we want to remember.
In fact, I believe it’s even more crucial to document the things we wish to forget.
We don’t always need to want to reflect on what it is we are seeing and making and living.
An acknowledgement, a reverence, a testament to the significance of all of life.
Your life.
Never before, never again.
The documentation we might never look at for the rest of our days but somehow, the knowing of it being there settles our soul.
Although I can now have compassion for myself in that painful moment, I still find myself thinking, “How could I not look at my baby?” in that moment.
I know I could hold on to that moment and make it mean something that cripples me for a lifetime. It would be so easy to drink in the shame of that reaction- especially as someone who has spent a lifetime showing and exploring love through my eyes.
The fact is, I didn’t have to see her to love her.
Looking away wasn’t a withholding of love
but a knee jerk reaction of self protection.
I felt like seeing in that moment would end me.
But the knowing that there are these picture portals to bring me closer to her when I can bear it, when I need it- that cradles my psyche.
That creates space to wrap my mind and heart and soul around a piece of her again and again and again.
And if I didn’t have those scans,
I would make new pictures that felt like her-
I still will,
I actually already do.
Because it’s impossible to separate her from anything I do forever on.
There are times where I don’t give a shit about images and times where images are the only thing that I can be with- vital as air.
When we have no words,
there are pictures.
When pictures aren’t enough,
we search for words.
In all of them, we find ourselves.
Right now I’m reading
“It’s Okay To Not Be Okay” by Megan Devine.
She highlights how important it is to witness and tell stories that don’t end in triumph or some grand profound learning and growth that gets tied up in a bow of well earned wisdom. Otherwise, we have no idea how to even begin living inside of our own grief- our new reality.
It is not something to overcome or climb over or burrow through.
It’s a continuation of love that can hurt forever.
It’s not pretty and it’s gorgeous and something no one would ever choose.
But we can make space for ourselves inside of it- as impossible as it may seem.
So no, I’m not okay.
I’m living in a reality that I desperately want to wake up from but I cannot.
I ache for the baby I’ll never hold.
And also, I am deeply committed to holding her in all of the other ways I can possibly find.
I am both involuntarily & voluntarily beholden to being with all of life-
allowing it to do what it must
inside of me and outside of me,
seeing all that I can,
and forgiving myself when I must blink.
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