Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love and Loss (34 page)

First, just a hint. Then undeniable pink. Loathsome red. I staggered to the bathroom, all of me pouring out.

I lowered myself to the tile, afraid of how much would come. I affixed one pad to another. I scrubbed at a drop on my sock, making it worse.

“By the time you see blood, it’s too late,” a nurse later told me.

My son, the child who lived, grew from kumquat to avocado to butternut squash. Then he slipped from me, not a day too soon, ready for the world.

One morning before kindergarten, we buried his tadpole in a grassy hill behind our house. His baby frog, dead too soon. It dissolved into dirt, reduced to fluid and thin tissue that clung to the surface. Some life isn’t meant to last.

We called the doctor’s office; the nurse said to come in. She emphasized: “This happens more often than people realize.” Women are united by their secrets, too.

“You may need a D and C,” she said. “There’s a risk of infection, serious bleeding.”

I winced at “serious.”

“You’ll need a shot, if you’re Rh negative, and the baby was—”

“Was?” I asked, but she pretended not to hear.

In the doctor’s waiting room, I was surrounded by bellies swollen with success. Beige walls pressed in, reflecting too much light. I was bent with surging waves of pain like labor, or almost. My husband asked the receptionist, again, if I could wait somewhere else. He was told, again: No. Mothers-to-be glanced sideways at my sweatpants, my puffy eyes, and unbrushed hair. They knew. I was humiliated, but sorry, too, for the bad omen I was.
Don’t look
, I whispered into patterned carpet.

“Deceased for days, probably,” announced the doctor. My body, bare and empty, shivered beneath a paper gown. He said I should’ve brought the expelled material. Sometimes it offers an explanation. They run tests. I didn’t have anything to give him, but if I did I wouldn’t tell.

Back home, I avoided the bathroom. My grief lived in the grout between tiles, in the toilet. I should have thrust my fingers into blood, in case there was something to retrieve. I should have tried to find something to bury in dirt, like the tadpole reduced to fluid and thin tissue.

For days life drained from me. I collapsed to soggy rubble. “What kind of a mother?” I whispered, too many times. My eight-year-old didn’t know. He went to school. My husband went to work. They went out among the living. I was glad to be spared my son’s questions. I had no answers, only guilt.

Choice is power. I’ve always believed this. Free women choose to accept or deny lovers, to welcome children or delay them—or refuse them. As I lay in bed, still in sweatpants and layers of pads, I
wondered if losing this tiny fetal comma—to me, my baby—would weaken this conviction. My thoughts tumbled: Is it punishment? I’d never believed in a vengeful God, but I fretted because of all those years I’d considered a fetus a collection of viable cells, not a baby. Perhaps that’s why?

I wanted this blame, but I couldn’t convince myself. I didn’t believe it any more than I believed a ten-week-old fetus was really a baby, for any reason besides our love for it. For him, or her.

Miscarriage didn’t turn me against choice. I was relieved when I realized this. The blood didn’t wash all of me away. Although it did humble me. I was never invincible. What was lost wasn’t a comma, or a kumquat, or a fetus. Loved already, it was our child.

Now I know a woman’s power results from choice but also voice: speaking aloud our bloody secrets.

Afterward, when the monthly blood arrived on schedule, I was not indifferent. Not relieved. How long would all blood remind me of that blood? How long would my shame keep me silent? Too long.

A woman’s body may betray her, lose its hold on a wanted child. Likewise, it may implant an egg fertilized by someone she doesn’t love, someone uninterested in parenthood. Someone bad. The betrayal goes both ways.

Some life isn’t meant to last. Every month, another bloody reminder.

Natalie A. Sullivan

W
e don’t know exactly when she died. We said good night to her on the Monday. On the Wednesday, the doctor delivered the terrible news. She was born just after midnight on that Friday. The pregnancy had overjoyed us, and then stripped us of life as we knew it for the next eight and a half months.

The sickness was severe—hyperemesis gravidarum, they called it. It was followed by endless calls to the doctor’s office, insomnia, dehydration, IVs, emergency room visits, hospital stays, medication, extreme weight loss, and the psychiatrist who ultimately saved my life. In between the tears and the terror, there were moments we still hold onto: sweet good-night kisses, pictures of our hands laid gently on my pregnant belly, a baby shower with family and friends. We took silly pictures in front of the cake. We oohed and aahed over each little outfit. There was so much pink. At home, we set up her crib, a lovely wooden oval bed. I ironed a shiny decal onto a crisp white onesie. It said “I
Daddy,” and I put it on a stuffed rabbit and lay it in the crib to surprise him. She loved to twirl and spin in my stomach at night as I lay on my back. She loved to hear her daddy’s voice and feel his touch. When she was born, she had his eyes. After so many months of waiting for her, she was everything we could have ever wanted. Burying her was the hardest thing we’ve ever done.

Our daughter’s birth, albeit still, brought more joy than sadness, more pride than pain, and overwhelming beauty and love over anything else. We often talk about her now—our baby, our daughter, our
firstborn. She’s an angel on a charm bracelet, a locket on a chain, a heart on a pair of cufflinks. She’s a wind chime on the terrace, a flower in the baby garden, and a pinwheel in the wind. After she died, there were tears. There was pain. There was counseling. There was hopelessness and fear. There was anger and blame. There were words that could only be written and pain that could not be contained. There was restlessness and uselessness. There were pointless distractions. And then, there was him.

We found out about our son only weeks before he was born. There was no time spent together before his birth. There was no swollen belly, no sickness or pain. There was paperwork, and there were meetings. At the one we will always remember, his pregnant mother looked at us and said, “He’s yours,” with such certainty that we allowed ourselves to hope. Still, we promised ourselves we wouldn’t get attached until everything was certain. We wouldn’t prepare. We wouldn’t set up a nursery. We wouldn’t even see him until the signature was secured. Then, when we knew he was coming, we dropped everything and rushed to be with him. Over the hours and the miles of highway, we tried to manage our expectations, but when we had the chance to see him, we couldn’t stop ourselves. He came through the door of the nursery swaddled in a blanket into the hallway where we were standing, and he smiled. He smiled, and that was it. We were his, and he was ours. At that moment, our joy, our pride, and our love were as strong as they had been only once before.

Since bringing our son home, our days have been filled with his footsteps and his laughter. Our nights have been filled with his little cries. Our months have been full of celebrations, and our plans are now focused on one thing: what is best for him. Every night we say a prayer with our son. In it, we thank God for his sister whom he will never meet and for his birth mother whom he will probably never see again.

As our son grows, I can’t help but think about the age our daughter would have been. I think about how the two of them would have played together and how much she would have loved her baby
brother. I think about how different, yet alike, they would have been. Then, without fail, I am gripped by a thought that never ceases to amaze me: if she were here, he probably would not be. Under different circumstances, it is unlikely that they both would have been ours. I can’t say that our daughter’s death “happened for a reason,” and, at the same time, I can’t imagine a life without our son.

I am so grateful for the time we spent with our daughter. I will always wish we had more. She made my stomach rise and fall, but her little chest could no longer do the same. He never moved inside me, but now he keeps us on our toes. I carried her for months, but could only hold her for a few moments. I hold him each day and feel like I’m holding my heart in my hands. Through some divine miracle, he finished what she started. We made her, but she was taken away. He was born to another mother, but was always meant to be ours. We have two children, but one could not stay. He’s what I lived for. She’s the reason I’m not afraid to die.

Touching Heaven
Lee Cavalli-Turner

Shannon Vest

T
he white heron sat calmly listening to me as I unraveled right there on the beach into a steady stream of tears. I apologized for not being able to save its life. I had just thrown a glass bottle into the ocean; it was filled with sparkly beads, herbs, and a letter to the daughter that I had lost. I told the heron my story because I had not told anyone else. All of my friends were too busy to listen or to bother with my current predicament. The father, who was normally insanely intuitive, had drifted back into his own little world, which did not currently include me.

In LA, people get caught up in their own lives. It was easy to feel alone. The whole experience had been so strange. I knew that I was pregnant the morning after it happened. I woke up with a swimmy feeling in my belly, and my fluffy Turkish Angora cat curled up in a purring ball on top of it. He draped himself across my belly every single night, purring happily until February 14, the night I came home from a friend’s house covered in blood from the waist down. It was a twisting pain that had made me get up from the couch that I had been lounging on watching a movie. I went to the bathroom and found my skirt already saturated with dark blood. The cramps were horrendous. It felt like death was writhing out of me. I informed my friend that I had to leave because my period had started. I asked for an old towel so that my car seats wouldn’t get stained. She seemed a little concerned about my behavior, but let me go. I laid the towel on the seat and drove home telling myself that my period had finally
started after three months. As I crossed Suicide Bridge in Pasadena, I fantasized about driving my car over the side. The barriers were too high, though.

I got home and immediately peeled off my ruined clothes. I showered, realizing that the bleeding had stopped and all that was left was a sick feeling in my stomach. I curled up on the bed and began to cry, knowing that I had not taken care of myself—this was my fault. I should have been stronger. I should have told him. I had tried, but the conversation had always turned back to him. I was also in a bizarre state of denial, which was unlike me.

Over the previous three months, my hormones had taken me on the roller-coaster ride of my life. I would feel waves of euphoria and then crash into the pits of despair. I got nauseous, but never threw up. I had vertigo. My breasts itched and grew. I had heartburn every night when I lay down. I wore empire-waist dresses to cover my small, rounded belly. I had this amazing glow that seemed to emanate from within. I wandered through my days distracting myself from the truth. I felt amazing except for the fact that I was utterly alone. I desperately needed to be held. I felt like a child myself.

One friend accused me of being pregnant because of my glow and recent cleavage. I told her that I was getting fat. My mother watched me suspiciously as I waved away nausea before having Christmas dinner. I asked her nonchalantly if she’d had morning sickness with me. She said no, her pregnancy was blissful and easy as she watched me carefully. My mother was never one to pry, but I wanted her to so badly. I needed someone to take my hand and guide me through this. I was an only child. I was used to doing things alone, but someone needed to break my stubborn silence and force me out of denial. I have always been the person that people come to with secrets. I needed someone to be me, to keep asking, to sit with me until I admitted to what they suspected. No one did.