Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love and Loss (36 page)

Months later, my husband and I were on a beach holiday. I swelled in the humidity like a sponge, my breasts enormous, my face squishy with fluid. “
Look
at me,” I said, frowning in the mirror.

“You look wonderful,” he said. That wasn’t what I meant. I hadn’t been complaining about feeling fat or unattractive, although I
was
fat, in a strange, swollen way.

“You’re pregnant, sweetheart,” he said. “That’s how you’re
supposed
to look.”

When I got home, I saw that I had gained thirteen pounds that week. I pulled out the pregnancy book. In red print, it said,
Call the doctor if you gain more than three pounds in one week. If your face or hands or feet are swollen.
If. If. If. I checked them all off. I called my obstetrician friend, Lisa. I whispered, “I think something is wrong.”

Lisa’s voice was calm. “Swelling is common,” she said, “but can John check your blood pressure?”

We stopped by his gastroenterology office near the Greek restaurant where we had reservations. We planned to eat, then browse a bookstore: our usual date. I eased onto the exam table and held out my arm, impatient for spanakopita.

I heard the Velcro tearing open the cuff, felt its smooth blue band. I dangled my feet and smiled at John, the stethoscope around his neck. I loved this small way he took care of me. I felt the pounding of my heart echoing up and down my fingers, through my elbow.

I will never forget his face, the change in color from pink to ash, as if he had died standing at my side. “Lie down,” he said quietly. “Lie on your left side.
Now.
”

The numbers were all wrong. He shook his head. “What’s Lisa’s phone number?”

His voice was grim—numbers, questions, a terrible urgency. He ordered me to pee into a cup. “We’ve got to check your urine for protein.”

He dipped a paper strips into the cup of gold, cloudy liquid, and the color changed from white to powdery blue to indigo. My protein level was off the chart. “No,” he whispered. “No, goddammit,
no.
”

“What? What
is it
?” I asked. I couldn’t believe that things could be as bad as what his face was telling me.

“Your kidneys aren’t working,” he said. He pulled me across the street to the hospital. He rushed me to the nurses’ station, shouting numbers. I thought,
don’t be a bully
, but they scattered like quail, one of them on the phone, another pushing me, stumbling, onto a bed. They pulled at my clothes, my shoes; another blood pressure cuff; the shades were drawn. They moved so swiftly, with such seriousness.

Suddenly, I had a new doctor. Lisa, obstetrician of the normal, was off my case, and I was assigned a high-risk neonatologist. He was bald, with thick glasses, wooden clogs, and a soft voice.

A squirt of blue gel on my belly for the fetal monitor, the galloping sound of hoof beats, the baby riding a wild pony inside me. What a relief to hear that heartbeat, although I didn’t need the monitor; I could feel the baby punching my liver.

There was a name for it. Preeclampsia.

Well, preeclampsia was better than eclampsia, and as long as it was
pre-
, they could stop it, right? And what was eclampsia? Explosive blood pressure, a flood of protein poisoning the blood, kidney failure, stroke, seizures, blindness, death. But I didn’t have those things. I had
pre-
eclampsia, which felt like less of an emergency.

They slipped a needle into my wrist, attached to a squishy bag of magnesium sulfate to prevent seizures.
You may feel a little hot.
As the drug oozed into my bloodstream, I felt a flash, like my tongue was baking. My scalp prickled, and I threw up onto the sheets. I felt as if I was being microwaved.

I was wheeled down to radiology. I stared lovingly at grainy images of the baby onscreen—waving, treading water. A real child, not a pony or a fish. The X-ray tech asked, “Do you want to know the sex?” I sat up. “Yes!”

She pointed. A flash between the legs, like a finger. A boy. I nearly leapt off the gurney. “John! Did you see? A boy! It’s Samuel!” Sahm-
well
, the Spanish pronunciation, named after the beloved host father we’d lived with in Nicaragua.

He turned away from the screen; he didn’t want to look, or celebrate having a son. He knew so much more than I did.

The neonatologist recited numbers slowly.

“Baby needs at least two more weeks for viability. He’s way too small. But you…” He shook his head. “
You
probably can’t survive two weeks without having a stroke, seizures, worse.” He meant I could die.

“What are the chances…that we could
both
make it?”

“Less than ten percent, maybe less than five.” The space between his fingers shrunk into nothing.

I was toxemic, poisoned by pregnancy. The only cure was to not be pregnant anymore.

I looked at John hopefully. “I can wait. It will be all right.”

“Honey. Your blood pressure is through the roof. Your kidneys are shutting down. You are
on the verge of having a stroke.
”

I smiled. Having a stroke at twenty-nine would not be a big deal. I was a physical therapist; I knew about rehab. I could rehabilitate myself! I could walk with a cane.
Lots
of people do it. I imagined leaning on the baby’s stroller handles, supporting myself the way elderly people use a walker.

We struggled through the night. “I’m not going to lose this baby,” I said.

“I’m not going to lose
you
,” he said. “Think: a baby born this small could have problems.
Severe
problems.”

I had worked in a cerebral palsy clinic; I knew children who could not walk or speak or meet their mother’s eyes. But we could cope with those things, couldn’t we?

After the longest night of my life, I relented.

I lay with my hands on my belly all night, feeling Samuelito’s limbs turning this way and that. There was nothing inside me that could even think of saying good-bye.

Another day of magnesium sulfate, the blood pressure cuff, the fetal monitor. No change in status for either of us.

I signed papers of consent, my hand moving numbly across the paper, my mind screaming, I do
not
consent, I do
not
, I do
not.

The doctor entered with a tray, a syringe, and a nurse with mournful eyes.

“It’s just going to be a beesting,” he said.

And it was: a small tingle, quick pricking bubbles beneath my navel; and then a tube like a tiny glass straw that went in and out with a barely audible
pop
. It was so fast. I thought,
I love you, I love you, you must be hearing this, please hear me.
And then a Band-Aid, with its plastic smell of childhood, was spread onto my belly.

“All done,” he said. All done.

My child was inside, swallowing the fizzy drink; it bubbled against his tiny tongue like deadly soda pop.

It had been injected into my womb to stop his heart. To lay him down to eternal sleep, so he wouldn’t feel what would happen next, the terrible, terrible thing that would happen.
Evacuation
is what it is called in medical journals.

I wondered if he would be startled by the taste—if it was bitter, or strange, or just different from the saltwater he was used to. I prayed that it wouldn’t be noxious, that it wouldn’t hurt. That it would be fast.

John sat next to the bed and held my hand as I pressed the other against my belly. I looked over his shoulder into the dark slice of night between the heavy curtains. Samuel, Samuelito, jumped against my hand once. He leaped through the space into the darkness and then was gone.

All gone.

After losing Samuel, I was frightened by my body’s betrayal. We began pursuing adoption; it seemed safer than the gauntlet of pregnancy. However, our two daughters insisted on showing up in our family, in spite of our attempts at contraception, and I am infinitely grateful that they did.

I do not forget that son—my small cowboy—or the way he galloped through me. Part of me that believes I failed a test of motherhood—the law that says your child comes before you, even if it means death. But I look at my girls, the life that fills our family, and I know none of this would be here if I had chosen differently. Maybe not even myself.

Carol Folsom

At sixteen I cringed
at black-and-white photos in
Life
magazine
girls sprawled in alleys
dead on hotel rugs
in puddles of their own last blood,
desperate girls like me.
Coat hangers, knitting needles, poison:
they all worked
and plenty of folks would do it
for easy cash from
desperate girls like me.

Then came Rowe
it’s legal now
the gavel pounds:
desperation dismissed
a closed file.
But oh the bag of rocks around my neck
the neon-bright regrets
in my heart’s sad eye.
I rock you still and always
my unknown unborn
in aching, empty arms,
sentenced for life to wonder
who you would have been.
Oh, I’d have loved you so.

Three Minus One Baby Loss Mums
Amy Dahlenburg

T
his book is, in its own way, a miracle.

For those of us who have lost children to stillbirth, miscarriage, or neonatal death, we are all too familiar with things falling apart, futures not happening, and beginnings that quickly become endings.

The same is true with books, films, and almost every creative endeavor I can think of, which is why the very existence of these pieces that come from our hearts and make it into the world are cause for celebration.

This book would not exist without the incredible talent and enthusiasm of the
Return to Zero
community, of which nearly one hundred members are represented in these pages. Every tear, broken heart, and drop of blood is evidenced in your stories—thank you for baring your souls and reliving your experiences so that the world can better understand this unique and devastating loss. Every story is important, and these extraordinary pieces were culled from nearly one thousand submissions, all of which are testaments to the love and loss we have experienced as a community. I wish we could have included every single one in this book.