TW: Miscarriage
I like for things to fit in boxes, so when a disruptive occurrence blows through like warm summer air and brushes up against multiple areas of my life, I tense up. Where does this “thing” “fit”? Who do I share it with? What container should hold it? The tricky thing about being an artist is that work and personal life are intertwined. So intertwined at times that there isn't really any separating them. My personal life informs my creative work. My creative work is a manifestation of my humanness. My humanness IS my ability and urge to create and make sense of the world around me, which just happens to be what people pay me for. It’s SO tangly that it’s become difficult to decide if and when it’s appropriate to share my personal hardships publicly. The two affect one another so deeply. I fear the lack of transparency would feel too much like a lie, and at the same time I fear too much disclosure may come across as unprofessional word vomit. These concepts are anything but simple, and really bug my mind, the mind that has a need for containers. The best way I know how to work through it at times is to write it out…
This is my candid, unfiltered thought process on my most recent pregnancy loss, contained within page and text… which feels immensely vulnerable, but still better than floating around loosely in my head.
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It doesn’t make sense… how pregnancy can end either nearly perfect, or kind of awful, or maybe something in-between. Moments before I was called back to the ultrasound room where I heard the words for the second time in my life that my pregnancy had failed, I watched a lovely couple stroll their newborn baby past the OB office to the pediatrician next door. I’m lucky enough to know that stroll… the first visit with the pediatrician. Elated to be on the other side of labor and delivery, but terrified any parenting choice you make will be the wrong one.
Those newborn days are slow and sweet, almost as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist, and if it does exist, it can just wait for a while. The whole day revolves around that stroll to the doctor’s office, where they tell you you’re doing great, and you secretly question everything about this new life.
I know that stroll because I’m a mom to a headstrong, four year old little boy. I’ve done the pregnancy thing, the labor, the delivery, the visit to the pediatrician. I think that’s why this news feels like such a mindfuck (I’m not sorry for my language, the thesaurus has no equivalent expressions for this phenomenon). Even though our first pregnancy also ended in loss, my body HAS done this correctly once before. I’m now one for three, but damn if that one isn’t a really solid one. Our son is quirky and sweet and damn near perfect. That should be enough.
The doctor leaves the ultrasound room so I can get dressed. She’s coming back in a few minutes to go over the instructions for what I should do at home one more time. She gets it, how the brain doesn’t process technical information the first time around, not when grief and shock are also sharing the room. I slip my black leggings back on and decide to check my work email while I wait. New email, Subject: Baby Shower/Maternity Shoot :). You have to be kidding me. I reply “fuck off” with my mind, and close the phone. Who reads a work email at a time like this? What is wrong with me?
I walk past my son’s bedroom later that afternoon and see all his stuffed animals arranged neatly on his twin sized bed, to no credit of my own, we have really great cleaners. In that moment, I feel inadequate. Not only am I incapable of cleaning my own house, but I’ve also tried for another baby, failed, and inconvenienced everyone around me in the process. It’s only his second week of preschool, barely into his new routines and we’ve had to drop him off at his great grandmother’s so I can lay around the house and bleed for a few days. I feel like a terrible mother. I feel like all this trying and all this failing is saying to him “you’re great and all kid, but we want more”. How incredibly selfish. I can’t possibly allow this to happen again, as if allowing has anything to do with it. It happens by chance they say, not necessarily anything you have done or failed to do. Chromosomal. I’m so sick of well meaning people telling me it’s about time for another baby, as if I don’t know that already. I’m trying…. it makes me want to scream “I’M TRYING! WE ARE TRYING”.
It took two full days for the sadness to really hit me. Before that, I was in logistics mode. I made a mental list.
I know I’ll need:
the prescriptions. oh by the way, the most important prescription you’ll be needing is also the one that is now more difficult to access due to the new abortion restrictions. you’ll have to call every pharmacy in town to find one that has it in stock because your primary pharmacy won’t have it in for at least two more days.
the directions from my doctor
the heating pad
the Halloween candy pail we use as a puke bucket
the adult diapers
the pads
the brownies and coke (we never have these things in the house, but we’re grieving… just bake the brownies)
the comfy blanket
go get CBD gummies
I only know these things because we’ve been through it before. This miscarriage hasn’t been nearly as physically or emotionally painful as the first 13 week miscarriage we delivered at home, but the feelings of confusion and guilt are way more intense this time around. So I made another mental list.
Things I’m confused about:
We lost this pregnancy so much earlier… should I even be sad?
Am I heartless if I don’t feel that sad or attached?
Should I keep it all a secret?
Am I seeking attention if I share what I’m going through?
Will people just think I’m lazy if I DON’T tell them what is going on?
Is it selfish to try again?
Selfish not to?
We have a coat closet in our living room that is filled floor to ceiling with baby things I’ve saved for a hypothetical sibling that still hasn’t come. If you open it, you might have an avalanche of baby things fall on you. In a house that doesn’t have many closets, it feels like a waste of space to store so many things that can’t be used. The closet is tangible proof of my wishful thinking and need to both be in control and plan ahead. Nature has reminded me again this week that neither of those things are REALLY possible.
I want so badly to have more slow days of rest and skin-to-skin, soft head sniffs, raw nipples and milky little chins. For my son to have a sibling to share memories and our inevitable parental failings with. But not at this expense. Not if it means I’ll be reduced to half a functioning human being in the process. The things I hate and the things I need to do started to feel a little blurry, so I made a running list.
Things I currently hate, and things I hate I have to do:
I’m nauseous and I hate the way everything smells. I hate feeling angry and sad. I hate the brightness of daylight and I hate the quietness of night. I hate my body, and I make sure to hate my husband’s body a little too, just in case this was his fault. I need to go to the post office, and we’re out of milk. Obviously I cannot eat brownies without milk. I don’t know what day it is, but I’m pretty sure my husband’s birthday is coming up soon. I should probably buy him something or plan something fun. The preschool is missing some of the new student forms… why didn’t I take care of this sooner? I need to get “back” to it. Life I mean. How many days can a person possibly stay shut up inside their home hating such lovely things?
Nature is both beautifully brilliant and so incredibly cruel. Our first pregnancy ended kind of awful, our second nearly perfect, and this third one? It’s been maybe something in-between.
One for three. Unfair. So unfair.