I don't think there was ever a time that I didn't expect to be a mother. Perhaps growing up in such a large family myself made it seem more necessary - that my life wouldn't be complete if I didn't reproduce.
My husband-to-be and I discussed it as were dating. I said something about two kids. He countered, subtly mentioning two, maybe three. I stupidly agreed, leaving him to claim I had agreed to three and opening the way for him to counter again with three, maybe four.
Um... I don't think so.
But we never looked at the other possibility: none. After a few years on birth control and deciding it was time to have a family, we just assumed we'd have one. By a year later, we began to wonder.
A couple of months waiting for an appointment. A visit to the doctor. A semen analysis. A few blood tests to check on thyroid function, etc. But before anything more, a surprise. The follow-up visit to the doctor turned out to be a pregnancy test. On August 9, 1990, give or take a few days, our life would change.
We waited a few weeks to tell anyone. I'm not sure we believed it ourselves. But it was too difficult to hide for long; the morning sickness (actually all-day sickness) was overwhelming. Once Christmas arrived, we decided we had to spill the beans (pun unintended but fitting).
A week or so later, I had my first prenatal visit. I should have been about 10 weeks along, and had just begun to wear maternity clothes. But the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat, so he scheduled an ultrasound for the next week. The ultrasound didn't show a heartbeat either, but he scheduled a second one another week later, just to be sure.
No change. No growth. No heartbeat. Fetal size appeared to still be at about 8 1/2 weeks of development. By this point I should have been at 12 weeks. Not a good sign.
I cried as I told the doctor, "I thought it would be easier if I just knew that we were able to get pregnant."
He answered, "Be careful what you wish for."
Asshole.
He scheduled a D&C for the next week. That's a nice term for an early-term abortion. They try to be kind and not call it that to make you feel better. They stressed that since there was no heartbeat, it wasn't really an abortion. It didn't make me feel better. The end result is the same no matter what you call it.
No more baby.
I had to go through another week of being pregnant but not really. Of still being sick all the time, knowing there was nothing to show for it.
When it was over, I came home and sat on the floor in front of the blowing register vents, trying to warm up, so tense that I couldn't stop shivering. I sat there, arms wrapped around myself, rocking. Trying not to let anyone see the tears.
My baby was gone. And it had never really been a baby so no one would acknowledge it.
But it was real to me, dammit.
My husband-to-be and I discussed it as were dating. I said something about two kids. He countered, subtly mentioning two, maybe three. I stupidly agreed, leaving him to claim I had agreed to three and opening the way for him to counter again with three, maybe four.
Um... I don't think so.
But we never looked at the other possibility: none. After a few years on birth control and deciding it was time to have a family, we just assumed we'd have one. By a year later, we began to wonder.
A couple of months waiting for an appointment. A visit to the doctor. A semen analysis. A few blood tests to check on thyroid function, etc. But before anything more, a surprise. The follow-up visit to the doctor turned out to be a pregnancy test. On August 9, 1990, give or take a few days, our life would change.
We waited a few weeks to tell anyone. I'm not sure we believed it ourselves. But it was too difficult to hide for long; the morning sickness (actually all-day sickness) was overwhelming. Once Christmas arrived, we decided we had to spill the beans (pun unintended but fitting).
A week or so later, I had my first prenatal visit. I should have been about 10 weeks along, and had just begun to wear maternity clothes. But the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat, so he scheduled an ultrasound for the next week. The ultrasound didn't show a heartbeat either, but he scheduled a second one another week later, just to be sure.
No change. No growth. No heartbeat. Fetal size appeared to still be at about 8 1/2 weeks of development. By this point I should have been at 12 weeks. Not a good sign.
I cried as I told the doctor, "I thought it would be easier if I just knew that we were able to get pregnant."
He answered, "Be careful what you wish for."
Asshole.
He scheduled a D&C for the next week. That's a nice term for an early-term abortion. They try to be kind and not call it that to make you feel better. They stressed that since there was no heartbeat, it wasn't really an abortion. It didn't make me feel better. The end result is the same no matter what you call it.
No more baby.
I had to go through another week of being pregnant but not really. Of still being sick all the time, knowing there was nothing to show for it.
When it was over, I came home and sat on the floor in front of the blowing register vents, trying to warm up, so tense that I couldn't stop shivering. I sat there, arms wrapped around myself, rocking. Trying not to let anyone see the tears.
My baby was gone. And it had never really been a baby so no one would acknowledge it.
But it was real to me, dammit.
8 comments:
Wow.
This is... something.
It was real. You have every right to grieve your loss.
Oh what a hard thing to go through. I can not even imagine expecting a child after all you went through and then to just lose the baby. And you know friends would avoiding mentioning your loss or even being comforting. I am sorry to hear it all. I am glad things worked out eventually.
Thanks Maggie. I didn't intend the post to get quite so emotional for me... amazing how even this many years and 3 kids later it still makes my eyes water to think of it.
Thanks Barman, I tend to get introspective around the time of my kids' birthdays and think about the one that didn't make it. I guess I feel like it deserves to be remembered too. But yeah, it all worked out in the long run, and I've got 3 amazing kids now. :)
it was a baby, your baby, your first baby. no one can take that away from you. I won't say I know how you feel because I have not been in that place. I really don't see that your loss should be any less emotional than if baby had died after birth.
Oh honey, I know exactly how you felt - I had a similar experience that uncannily enough I just wrote a post about too, so understandably, your topic caught my eye.
It's a really tough and lonely place to be, losing a child that no one else thinks of as a child but yourself. You're going through the necessary mourning process for someone everyone else has forgotten. This was very sad, but I'm glad you wrote it.
Nikki, I'm sure it's got to be tougher to have actually held the baby. But then I don't know. How can you really quantify the depth of a loss? It just IS.
We_be_toys, sometimes it surprises me when it still hurts. Usually it's just a dull memory any more, and then for some reason you remember it and it's right there, staring you in the face.
It's very very real.
You are very strong to have come through it.
My current wife a long time ago before we knew each other had a baby when she was only 16. The baby died at 6 months from SIDS. That was back in the 60's, and the people in her life; her parents, the husbands parents, the husband himself, just told her to forget it ever lived.
Not knowing any better other than her own anguish, she did that. When we meet in 1998, and we married, during the finding out all the things between two people with a long past, she told me. That baby was all she ever had. She had developed toxic shock syndrome two years alter, and they did a complete hysterectomy, and she never had the opportunity to ever have any more kids. The baby was born in September, died in March, and she never ever had a mothers day card given to her. I gave her her first mothers day card some 35 years later. Having had lost my only daughter some six years before I met her, I knew the pain of losing a child. I finally convinced her to tell people when they ask if she has any children to acknowledge the existence of Everett, her only son. But that he died as a baby, and she didnt have any more children since.
Your loss is real, they all are, its no matter what the age, pre-birth or post birth, its loss. You never held your child, my wife never saw hers grow up, mine never made it to adulthood; each different in amount of time spent with us, but each a tragic, total and complete loss.
My heart goes out to you.
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