The First Miscarriage.
On Sunday, November 1st, 2015, I had my first miscarriage. It was not the last. I would go on to have another two after this, before finally having a pregnancy that stuck. That pregnancy was agonizing (as pregnancy usually is, I’ve learned) because by then I knew that I had a genetic blood clotting disorder that likely contributed to the first two losses and required me to administer daily painful injections of blood-thinning medication to my sides, and then, as my sides grew too taut from my expanding belly, to my thighs. The shots left huge bruises and my muscles would harden and grow sore around the injection site. I hated nearly every minute of being pregnant but was terrified to admit it because of how delicate the “miracle” pregnancy felt the entire time. I had contractions at 20 weeks that put me on exercise restriction, and multiple other issues that forced me on bedrest for weeks at a time — miserable for a weightlifter/cardio junkie like me. I missed the wedding of one of my best friends in the world and never got to wear my bridesmaid dress because my doctor wasn’t comfortable with me flying for four hours. I missed my beloved great-aunt’s funeral.
My subsequent miscarriages were much less (physically) dramatic. Both times I found out during a routine ultrasound. Both times a heart that was once beating was no longer thump-thumping. If you have to have a miscarriage, I highly recommend going the dilation and curettage route instead of spontaneous abortion. It’s much less surprising, much less painful, much less traumatic. Plus you get better drugs.
I wrote about my first miscarriage a few days after it happened. It was for my journal at the time, so please forgive the informality. I’ve been meaning to post this somewhere for a few years, but have always felt conflicted about it since I’m now lucky enough to have had a healthy baby who is now a delightful toddler, and the years of miscarriages and infertility seem like a lifetime ago. Five years later, though, I still carry its weight with me.
Thinking about Jeb Bush still helps when I need to barf.
On Sunday night after a baby shower (irony!) I was feeling incredibly queasy, which was surprising given that much of the previous ten weeks were nausea-free. I welcomed it, hoping I would barf, as that would make me more of a Pregnant Woman who had Pregnancy Symptoms like Morning Sickness (TM). Reed sat with me in the bathroom, reading aloud a New Yorker piece about Jeb Bush, patting my back. I didn’t end up throwing up, but after peeing, I realized when I wiped that I was bleeding. Heavily. Spotting isn’t uncommon, but blood, like it was the first day of my period, is not. It is an urgent sign to rush to the hospital. Cramps immediately accompanied. A quick call with Dr. Schmones confirmed that we needed to be at a hospital, and off we went.
St. Joseph’s emergency room was of course packed. We were quickly triaged and actually got blood drawn and a pee cup relatively quickly. We were then sent back out to wait again. The pain was getting worse by the minute, and when I couldn’t hold it anymore I used the bathroom in the emergency room. My horror upon wiping was utterly complete — more blood. Lots of it. I stood up and blood flowed down my leg, soaking my jeans. I opened my mouth in a silent scream, gasping for air and sobbing. Reed was pacing just outside, nervous and anxious, and I wished I could call out to him to come in and help me. The pain was coming hard and fast and I’m sure the realization that this was it, it was over, didn’t help. I cleaned up as best I could, grateful that I had worn black jeans, and handed my cup to him, hands shaking. By this time there were few seats left and I was in so much pain, not to mention my heart was cracking in half, that I didn’t want to be separated from Reed, so we stood to the side as I loudly sobbed into his shirt. He asked the staff if there was anything that could be done as my pain was getting worse and our name was called somewhat soon after that.
I was wheeled to a tiny, dark room far from the main ER, down several long, empty white hallways. By this time I was screaming and shaking and Reed was probably having heart attacks too. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was in labor. I was passing the 1.5-inch lump of cells that was meant to be our baby through my cervix. The short, Trump-haired, little old Russian(?) technician that inspected me didn’t seem to have much bedside manner, but he did rush to get another woman to come into the room so that he could do an ultrasound. The wand entering me was excruciating, and I cried out, sobbing and screaming with every jab and adjustment he made. He took around 100 photos and not one of them showed a fetus, and not one of the recordings showed a heartbeat. I know now that it was because I had already delivered it through my cervix by then. By that time I could only focus on the pain, knowing that our baby was lost. I couldn’t stop screaming and sobbing, and Reed could only watch helplessly as I writhed in agony, both of us staring into each other’s eyes and communicating the heartache we both felt upon knowing for certain that I had miscarried and our baby was not going to be born on May 27th and that we would not announce it to our friends in three weeks and that we would not have our adorable Christmas card to send out to friends and family. I sobbed thinking of the early ultrasound that showed a tight amniotic sac, of which google had nothing to say but “90% chance of miscarriage” — which stayed just barely behind the front of my mind in the previous weeks. I thought of the follow-up ultrasound which showed much more room — though still not enough — and the heartbeat thumping like a hummingbird with a tiny drum, the tears in my eyes as I called Reed with glee that we were set and that Dr. Schmones was “thrilled.” The image of the tiny little adorable alien staring at us upside-down from a too-tight black balloon. It was almost waving at us. I would turn those photos right side up so that I could stare at it and smile and talk to it. I thought of Reed proudly sending the woosh-woosh-woosh recording of the heartbeat to his family. I thought of the photos of my mother in shock as I proudly showed her the sonogram images and she screamed and cried, realizing that her daughter was pregnant. That same set of fetal images I would throw into our kitchen trash can on Monday.
Before long one of us asked, so, is that it, what’s the diagnosis, and the technician patted me on the arm and quickly said, “I’m so sorry about the result” and wheeled us outside. We waited outside (“waited” isn’t the right term so much as I shook and moaned and sobbed and screamed in the worst pain of my life, as Reed shouted for someone to help us) as a couple behind us got wheeled in and was told that they had nothing to worry about as they had come in just because she was “worried” about something. I had no idea what they were in there for but I immediately hated them. We would come to laugh later about how terrifying I must have been for them, an entirely gray ghost shaking in a wheelchair, shrieking like a banshee, going in and out of consciousness.
The tech said on the phone to someone that I needed help, that I was suffering, and finally, someone came to get me. As he wheeled us back he mentioned that we were going back to the waiting room, and I SCREAMED, NO. NOOOOO GOD NO OH GOD PLEASE PLEEEEAAAASE GOD I AM IN SO MUCH PAIN. Reed begged him for a room — he said there were none available for an hour — and then he let us stop for a bit in front of the ER control center while Reed pleaded with them to make room for me. A few EMTs looked at each other, talked a bit, then agreed that Room #4 could be cleaned out for me. I stopped at the bathroom once more and wiped another time and more blood was gushing out. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and I have never looked more like a ghost than then. I made it to the bed, body contorting with pain, and tried desperately to get comfortable. It took a bit for an IV to get hooked up to me. The attending nurse offered morphine but said it was best to wait until we got the official word that it was totally over. This, of course, took over an hour — during which the pain began to finally subside. Instead, every few minutes an enormous wave of pain would crash over me, making my toes curl and my hands grip the rails of my bed. I didn’t realize until about an hour into it that I was having contractions. They were fucking awful. (Why would anyone NOT want drugs during childbirth??) Eventually, my pain and nausea subsided enough for me to have conversations with nurses, and FINALLY a doctor showed up and talked to my doctor. I was given some prescriptions for the pain and nausea, and five hours after entering it, we left the hospital. We stopped for french fries and chocolate peanut butter ice cream on the way home and ate them at around 1 AM, sniffling and holding each other.
After some sad emails to our bosses, the next morning we hurried off to the appointment that would have been our 10 week checkup with Dr. Schmones. He had been incredibly caring on the phone the entire night, and was totally heartbroken for us. My feet went up in the stirrups and he took a look down there — and he saw it. He saw the tissue. I didn’t need a D&C — he took a pair of forceps and pulled the mass out of me. All that remained of The Blueberry, as we named it a few weeks before, was a small grape-sized lump of blood and cells, placed into a tiny vial. Reed saw it all happen and he looked ghostly pale and stunned. We talked about options and how long we should wait to try again. We spent the day at home barely processing anything.
He tried to go in to work the next morning — I thought I would but the moment I woke up I was exhausted and felt like something had been physically ripped out of me, so I didn’t. On the way home from a dentist appointment I saw a man carrying a tiny baby on his shoulder, wrapped in a blanket. He tenderly tapped its back. I lost it, ugly crying in the car. Meanwhile, Reed was dry heaving in a park bathroom at the La Brea Tarpits after almost having an anxiety attack at work. He came home and we held each other. I sobbed. We talked about it, really processed it. It ended up being a wonderful afternoon and night.
We are both back to our routines, more or less. I am exhausted and sleepy due to so much blood loss and will probably continue to be for some time. My hCG levels are dropping quickly. We will most likely wait until after the holidays to try again, but it feels incredibly wrong to not be pregnant anymore. I am not looking forward to drinking again. I am not excited about the fact that now I can have x-rays to finally get my knee fixed. I am not glad that we have a few more months to save. I am devastated and heartbroken and angry and sad. I am just so fucking sad.
