Personal Purgatory: My Natural (Miscarriage) Birth Story

I just want to tell my sad story.  For the last week, this one act is my consistent comfort.   If not for social graces, appropriate conversational topics and my (typical) positivity, I would likely be shouting my horror for all to hear.  I don’t want to hear about your party plans.  I want to talk about how I labored over the course of two days.  I don’t want to hear about how other miscarriages were much harder.  I want to talk about the passing and birth of my third child.  I don’t want to see the sunshine.  I want to hold the darkness that has swallowed me.  

Part of me wants validation that I worked hard. 

Part of me wants to let people know that something really shitty happened to me. 

Part of me wants others to free me of life’s daily obligations.

Part of me wants to share my story without any shame and blame.

Part of me wants to help those who have walked/will walk the same path.

Part of me wants to think or talk of nothing else. 

All of me wants to have my pregnancy and my baby.

We found out on a Tuesday that there was no heartbeat.  As if my body was just waiting for me to know the truth, that very evening the spotting began.  For the next five days, I was in my own personal purgatory.  The doctor said it would just be like my two previous labors—contractions, breathing, clenched fists, the whole shebang.  Now, waiting for a baby to come is hard.  Anticipating a labor and delivery for a baby who did not make it on our earth is messed up.

On Monday morning, I woke up to go to work.  As I was drying my hair, the familiar tightening I felt during the births of my girls came.  It was starting, and I was grateful for it.   From experience, I knew there was much work ahead.  So, I went back to sleep while my body could still rest.  The contractions never came back.  Jeremy went to work, the girls went to school and I rested that day.  When it was time to pick up the girls, I went.  I picked them up, we got in the van and the contractions started again.  Maybe it was a fluke?  The next two rounds of contractions, twenty minutes apart, confirmed my reality.  I let Jeremy know.  So, with the girls by my side, we got to work.  The strange thing about contractions is that they build over time and they are intense.  You instinctively want to curl into a ball in a dark room.  Instinct, in this case, is wrong.  Grateful for my experience, I knew to keep moving and breathing.  We went on a long walk.  As the girls chatted, I would walk.  “Girls, Mama needs to stop.  Can you find me the biggest leaf?”  As they bantered about who had the largest piece of foliage, I would breath, breath, breath.  The contractions were now ten minutes apart, and I needed to get to a bathroom.  As we walked up the driveway, Jeremy came home.  I waddled as quickly as I could to the restroom.  For the next four hours, the contractions, bleeding and passing of clots continued.  I kept walking around in my bedroom, swayed my hips as I breathed through the tightening and let me body rid itself of something no longer viable.  At 9:30, as I was reading a story to Bennet, I had four contractions, one-minute apart, and then it all stopped.  Nothing.  It was over.  Or so I believed.  

I went to work the next morning, and I was sent home.  The crying did not stop.   The physical part was over; however, the emotional counterpart  was starting her crescendo.  Again, I spent the day resting.  Again, I picked up the girls.  Again, the contractions started again.  This time, Lady Contraction quickly escalated to being five minutes apart.  Again, I let Jeremy know.  He was in South Austin.  I took the girls outside to play and kept moving by watering the lemongrass plants.  After an hour, the contractions were right now top of each other.  Jeremy was still 15 minutes way.  Completely fucked.  “Girls, Mama’s tummy does not feel good.  You girls can watch a movie on the ipad on my bed.  I will be in the bathroom.”  The elation shown on their faces did give me slight comfort as I thought about what was about to happen.  The second the girls settled onto our bed, I went to the bathroom, sat down and felt something large pass.  I looked, and I saw the sack that harbored my baby.  There she was.  This time, there was no birthing music playing.  There was no husband comforting me.  There was no joy.  Much like my other births, however, I was on complete autopilot.  There was no thinking taking place.  I washed her off, walked to the kitchen, reached over my dad to retrieve the prettiest bowl I could find and placed her inside with utmost care.   I felt like this was the least I could do for bringing her into this earth in a tiled bathroom with a window that opened up to a world with those who were laughing, cutting the grass and buying purses.  

Our baby girl was buried in our garden by a jasmine, my mom's favorite plant.  Jeremy, Bennet, Ruby and I said our "see you later."  Bennet, my wonderful Bennet, said, "I hope you come back (she feels that all babies who go to heaven come back to earth somehow), and I hope you feel better."  It was perfect.  Ruby, the lover of all small, tiny things, said, "I will find you the smallest piece of dirt."  After finding the perfect speck of earth to put over the box, she said, "Thank you."  Jeremy quietly spoke his words, and I could find no words.  The same hands used to wash the blood from her quietly and gently filled the hole.  

Bennet and Ruby’s birth story is written down in beautifully decorated journals filled with sonograms and well-wishes from family and friends.  This story will only exist here.  This story does not bear less worth.  It does not make a smaller imprint on my heart and my memory.  

This story holds no optimism.

This story empowers anguish. 

This story needs prayers.

This story needs love.

This story is whole-heartedly mine.