The Start

My husband and I had been in the car for a while, after dinner out, so I had been sitting quietly for a few hours. It was January; it was cold and dark and icy when we got home. I got out of the car, got the mail, and headed back toward the house when I felt gushing blood. I called to my husband that I needed to get in the house NOW, and I will never forget the sound of panic in his voice when he asked what was wrong.

I got myself into the bathroom and kept bleeding and got my soaked clothes off. The bleeding slowed way down, but I could feel some pressure internally, so still, I was sure I had miscarried.

Looking back, I’m surprised at how calm I was. I found the phone number and called the hospital to talk to the doc on call, who said to come in. I remember thinking how long the drive was taking, even with no traffic, and how numb and miserable I felt. I had stopped bleeding, and I was sure the pregnancy was over.

We had a long wait in the ER. I remember how quiet it was in there. One of the nurses showed me a picture on her phone of an 18-month-old and said, “You never get the first one with IVF. But you will. See? You will.”

I remember an old woman staring at me from across the room. Just standing outside another patient’s cubicle, staring at me. It felt like I was in a bad arty movie.

We waited. We waited more. Someone pulled a bunch of blood clots out of me. (Hey, I told you this was going to be gross.) And finally we got to see the on-call doc. In a labor and delivery room, of course, with the plastic bassinet. He did an ultrasound, and everything was fine. There was a little wiggly baby-image on the screen, with its heartbeat just what it should have been. Yes, we were both in tears; everything was OK. I immediately calmed down, after hours of being in some kind of limbo where I was sure that it was over, but nothing else happened.

The doctor said I’d be on bedrest and wanted me to stay overnight and have another ultrasound in the morning. I got set up in a room obviously set up for families post-birth, and my husband went home.

And that was it. It started out pretty bloody and awful, but then it seemed like everything would quite possibly work out.

Why I’m Writing All These “Why I’m Writing This” Posts

OK, I’ll admit it: I’m scared. I am scared to pull out the notes and the ultrasound photos and the death certificate and the ashes from last year. I am scared I’ll get stuck in my grief, that it will come back again like it did and suffocate me. I am scared of remembering what I’ve forgotten. I am scared this won’t help me.

As long as I keep introducing this blog, I don’t have to actually remember.

The problem is I can’t help but remember. It’s summer, my mind has room to breathe, and I am remembering. I guess that is telling me something, like “get to work, already!”

Why I’m Writing This, Part 3

After the surgery, when I could think beyond the pain, I wanted to know that something good had come out of this. It was so important to me, that something, anything, positive had come out of this.

I’d had the procedure at a teaching hospital, so there was a good chance that someone had learned something because of me. Someone had; the resident who did the procedure got to practice on me. I suppose that sounds awful, but it doesn’t feel awful. Maternal hemorrhage in the second trimester is extraordinarily rare, so having an opportunity to see it and do the procedure under supervision is not something that happens every day. So now this resident not only saved my life, but she will be better prepared to help someone else.

It made me feel better. Knowing that something good came out of this doesn’t take any of the grief away, but it adds a dimension to the whole experience. It helps me see beyond my pain and loss, gives me something to hold on to. It helps.

So I’m writing this blog as a way, I hope, to help something else good come out of this. I hope that this blog will find its way to someone else who needs it, and helps her. I hope.

Why I’m Writing This, Part 2

There’s a blog I read by a professional in a related field to mine. She writes long, thoughtful, strong posts on current events or ideas, and they give me a lot to think about. If that were the only reason for her blog, it would be more than enough. But recently she had a post that mentioned why she started the blog. It was because she was having trouble writing for her job, and she was going through difficulties at work, so she started her blog. And blogging helped her writing for work.

Among other things, I am a writer. I need to write for my work, my job. My paycheck. Thank goodness it is only one part of my job, because I realized recently that I have not been able to write for over a year. This is not unusual. When creative people live through tragedy, some of them find comfort in their work. Others can’t face their work for months or even years. When I look back at all the things that went on in the last few years, most of them beyond the scope of this blog, I think, “of COURSE I couldn’t write anything. How COULD I?”

So I am writing this blog in the hope it helps me write again. I used to find so much joy in writing. It used to be fun, something I was good at, something I could get lost in. I am writing this hoping that it will help me start writing for work again, too. That it will help bring me back to the parts of myself that have disappeared in the past few years.

Why I’m Writing This, Part 1

“For the boy I was, the book I could not find”

It took me years, YEARS to understand that. It’s the dedication of Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book of Animals. There’s a small black-and-white photo of a boy, and this dedication. I remember reading those words as a child and puzzling over them. I think I understood that the boy in the picture was also the author, because I did know that adults had once been children. And that those children were often in black-and-white, not color.

But the grammar of it could not get through my six-year-old mind. The idea of being an adult and thinking back to myself as a child was just too much for me. And then the idea of doing something for yourself in the past, well, the past was the past, right? It’s not as if his boy-self could actually have the book and use it.

I understand it now. I am writing this blog for the person I was when I went through this, because I could not find another story like mine anywhere I looked. I found lots of miscarriage stories, lots of I-bled-but-it-turned-out-OK stories, some placental abruption stories, some neonatal death stories, a very few second trimester medical termination stories. But I couldn’t find anyone who had to end a pregnancy to save her own life.

Even just writing that makes me feel lonely.

Six Week Scare

Six weeks in, and I bled. I was at work, sitting down, and felt that rhythmic gushing like I was having my period. It didn’t occur to me that I might be bleeding, because I was pregnant! I wasn’t supposed to be bleeding for months! But I was, and I was scared and sad. I was sure I was miscarrying.

My husband came to get me. I went home, got in bed, called the doctor, and waited. No more bleeding. We went for an ultrasound the next day, and everything was fine. Size, heartbeats, location, everything. The staff all said that there was nothing to worry about, it happens all the time, it could have been any number of reasons, and there was no reason I should have any more problems. Women bleed during pregnancy, sometimes a lot, and there’s often no way of knowing why.

I went on, and nothing else scared me. I got nauseated, gained weight, was exhausted, glowed, felt sick, started to look at maternity clothes. We had prenatal testing, and on Christmas Eve we found out that everything was fine, genetically. At about 15 weeks I told people at work, and finally started to let myself feel happy and excited about having a baby! My nausea slowed, energy started to come back, just like it was supposed to during the second trimester. I wore a maternity top to work, and because it was an empire cut I looked even more pregnant than I actually was. It finally felt real, and I was happy.

And So We Go

Where does this begin? The dramatic beginning is too much to write about now, at the start of this blog. There’s nothing special about today, so it’s not a place to start. Yesterday? Yes, but not now. How about when I first found out I was pregnant? I got the call, and I had been so sure I wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do with myself.  I probably cried. I thought the hard part was over.