Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love and Loss (21 page)

We wait for the first week of the New Year, when we can finally go meet our midwife, see the heart beating. When we can confirm the cause of strange new eating habits, swollen breasts, bone tiredness. Our eyes widen as we witness the fast beating for the first time.

Our baby
. We toss the words around like magic.

We go for our next appointment, a new midwife this time. We want to meet everyone so we will recognize the face of the one who will catch our baby. She comes in smiling, says usually she has to tell women at least one thing they need to work on.

But all your numbers look great
, she says.

Keep up the good work
.

This time, we
hear
the heartbeat. She tells us little kids like to
guess at what it sounds like. I nod when she shares the ones most guessed.

The ocean
, she says.

Or horses’ hooves, galloping
.

I start to pull on my pants.

What’s that?
asks my love. His smile turns to quick concern. I look at the table just as I feel a rush of fluid between my legs. I am bleeding through my clothes. We call to the midwife.

Please come back
. Her smile is gone. A nurse escorts us to a desk to set up an ultrasound.

Stat
, she says.
Stat
, the word does somersaults in my brain. We guess it means emergency. We wait.

The chairs are different in this waiting room. We look for a magazine, talk about nothing while holding hands. Shift our weight in the brown and purple seats. Finally a woman comes to get us. I notice the stark white of her lab coat as she ushers us back, puts the tool to my sticky belly. She is without words.

She’s measuring your cervix, and now the baby
, Mike says to comfort me.
Right?
he asks her.

Yes, that’s the heartbeat
, the white-lab-coat woman says, then asks:
Is someone meeting you now?

The midwife said to come back
, I say.

Mike lets go of my hand as I get off the table, pull on my bloodstained pants. The technician tells us nothing.

It’s her job not to comment
, he says on the elevator. I hug him as we travel up to the third floor.

Back upstairs, we sit in a new room. Eventually our midwife pops in again.

Still no results
, she says.

Why don’t you go home and rest? I’ll call you
.

I lie on the couch, the phone within arm’s reach. Mike goes back
to work. Nothing. He calls them and leaves a message. Nothing. I call them and leave a message.

After another restless night of sleep, I start calling around.

Results
, I say. I am looking for answers.

It is midday when someone calls back. By now I have eaten a burrito—the craving of the week—talked to a friend, tumbled through what happened yesterday. Trusting that today is a new day, I return to the couch.

Take it easy
, she’d said.

I set up an appointment to go see a doctor. New day, new ultrasound. My feet in stirrups, she leans on my knees as she forms the words:
I’m concerned
. Her expression is grim. She is shaking her head. I like her eyeglasses. She ushers us into an empty office to wait while she gets the genetic counselor. The roller coaster ride is just beginning. We have just pulled the bar onto our laps, begun the slow incline up, up.

Three weeks pass. I wait on the couch, in the bed, at the table. Wait as we walk on clean, wide sidewalks with our dog. Talk to her raised ear:
You might not be a big sister quite yet.

She tilts her head, like she already knows.

They smell pheromones and sense pregnancy right away
, the vet had told Mike.

And now, does she sense that we are dangling on a thread of uncertainty, slow dancing with grief? Does she sense the fluid around the baby growing?

We keep busy while we wait. Busy with the early amnio, busy with blood work and bile, busy with dreaming and sleeping. Screening supportive phone calls, movie marathons to escape our own story. Wading through the days, waiting through the nights, walking hand in hand. Hugging a lot.

Two hundred forty hours pass slowly when waiting to hear news
about chromosomes and genes, about whether our baby will be our baby, about next steps.

The test results come back. They come back negative; we try to stay positive. Try to keep believing in something. We put one foot in front of the other, keep walking toward the answers.

Soon we come to learn the problem—rare and random, this condition:
cystic hygroma
. We mix the words like strangers that soon become fast friends. A fluid growing, a fetus growing, a body’s wisdom, telling us that this is not going to end okay. Mike finds a website, a chat room, some horrific stories, some hopeful ones. We tune into our own story.

A dream one night: I go into labor. My water breaks; we are in this together. But the baby, the baby has a problem. The baby is not going to make it. Something with the lungs, something about the Spirit staying for one hundred days. I wake up nodding.

Our next ultrasound will be the last.

I’m so sorry
. The perinatologist half smiles. Her hands are soft. Compassion fills the cream-colored room. She points out the increased fluid engulfing our little baby. It is the silhouette of a heart, which somehow warms my own.

No room to kick
, she points at the curled legs.

No way to make it to birth
, she continues.

One hundred percent certain
, she says.
I’m actually surprised the heart is still beating.

Silence, before I hear myself say:
So, we’ll terminate today?

And next time…
Mike starts.

Next time should be fine
, she says.

We came to hear this. We waited for the moment when the specialist would tell us what would be and we would know what to do. Our little trooper, brave little one, heart still beating in the middle of a flood that would overtake her at any moment.

So we leave to eat some lunch, take the dog for one more walk. Stand together in the kitchen, touching my belly, hands over hands, before we get into the car. Just outside the clinic, under a cloudless sky, we spot a lone man on the sidewalk, holding up a sign:
Abortion Kills
. We turn into the parking lot, enter the building, and wait for them to call my name.

Latorial Faison

In an eight by two
Decorated with thick, pink
Ribbon and young tears

They’re everywhere
Except alive in live arms
Or Grandma’s dead ones

Mentally buried
’Neath sands of untimeliness
Lie stolen childhoods

She, too, longs for the
Precious pitter-patter of
Firstborn happy feet

To light the darkness,
Complete her chaos, give life
To this make-believe

Rachel Libby

W
hen Oliver left, the last nine months of my life left with him. Nine months of joy and laughter and discomfort and so much expectation. You can’t admit the good. Because of how it ended. And you can’t talk about the misery either. Because of how it ended. You can’t be grateful for the late-night internal dance parties, because it hurts so much to remember. You can’t celebrate the ability to sleep on your own stomach again. Because you’d trade it all—you’d sleep uncomfortably for the rest of you life—for your baby to still be here.

The first days after he died, I could talk freely. I could talk about Oliver and nothing else for hours if I wanted. I could cry and everyone knew why. I was surrounded by people who were acutely aware of exactly how much pain I was in. Or at least they could imagine how much pain I was in. Gradually, time has passed. And now people look at me sometimes, if I’m staring off into space or I look a little lower than usual, and ask, “What’s wrong?”

It takes a lot of self-control not to respond, “My baby is still dead.”

(That very fact still surprises me. Every single day.)

I understand that people move on; they move forward with their lives, and while they still remember the pain of losing Oliver, their wounds heal. Mine is still fresh, raw, and wide open. I’m still acutely aware of how much pain I am in.

But I do get it: the world must go on, which seems impossible at times. And I’m going on with it, which seems even more impossible. I have let myself be reintroduced into society, back into the real world.
A world of unavoidable land mines, of new healthy babies and pregnant ladies and salesmen who ask, “Do you have any kids?” A world of strangers, of new acquaintances who didn’t know me then, people who don’t know that the whole world changed on April 10, 2012.

You see, I still want to discuss Oliver with frequency, with immediacy, but as time has passed, my audience has changed. Physically, a new cast of characters has emerged. People who don’t even know about Oliver. And even if the people are the same, they’ve moved on, some of them growing their own little ones inside. I no longer feel it’s appropriate to be recounting every heartache, every instance that reminds me of my boy.

And like I said, some of the people in my world are in the best time of their life; they are in the midst of cookin’ a bun in their oven. And I tell you, I’m so, so happy for them. But I feel as if, here I sit, the cautionary tale. Their worst nightmare. And I’m caught betwixt my head and heart, wanting so desperately to let out the constant Oliver newsfeed that’s running through my mind but so wholeheartedly not wanting to cause them any worry, stress, or anxiety.

I want to throw in my pregnant two cents; I want to commiserate about swollen ankles and deciding on a name and being consistently punched in the rib cage by the boxer inside. But I can’t. Or rather, I won’t. Because of how it ended. Because who wants to hear about my cravings and bizarre pregnancy dreams and epidural experience? I can only imagine what they would think if I were to join in—how they would compile a list of what not to do. (I know it’s not my fault, but still I can think of million things I would have done differently.) So I could understand why one, full of another life and hope and expectation, would not want advice from someone like me. Because of how it ended.