Nice to Meet You: Part 3

During my first miscarriage, I distinctly remember sitting on the toilet while waiting for the beginning of the end and having this thought: “I can do this three times.” It is eerie at this juncture that I chose that number; why three? I guess if I get to four, it won’t be such a significant number; but right now, right here - I can’t believe I jinxed myself like that.

I guess three is a number that demonstrates your willingness to soldier on multiple times, though not quite so many times that you get a reputation for masochism. Plus it seems to be a magical terminal number in so many clichés - three strikes you’re out , three’s a crowd, third time’s the charm. But honestly, who the hell really knew on that toilet that day what I could or couldn’t handle. One thing you learn fast in the infertility business is you never know what you are going to do or how you’re going to feel until you do.

Of course, back then at 34, healthy and capable, three times was inconceivable. I was just hustling the universe, upping the ante, laying down a bold and definitive bet, and daring the Universe to take me on. But that Dirty Old Universe, it called my bluff. I could no more foresee the pain I was in for than I could . . . well . . . hold on to a pregnancy.

With my eye still on the prize and holding on to the dogma of statistical probabilities, I barely registered my second miscarriage. I didn’t tell my parents until after the D&C, told my sister a week later during the Christmas holidays, and didn’t tell my brother at all. There were no dramatic visits to the mental ward and no late night sobbing into the phone. I wanted it out so I could move on. Sure, I was sad and disappointed but this was all an unfortunate streak of bad luck and the next time was going to be fine. Because I was just not one of those 3-miscarriages-in-a-row type of people. That's not how I roll.

Cut to today. It's been a month and a half since my third miscarriage at thirteen weeks. It was a surreal experience played out in an emergency room on May 7, 2010:

My lower back had been aching all afternoon at work - nothing unusual; but late in the evening, the sensation became stronger and sharper. I kept thinking maybe it was gas, but after an hour of constant intervals of pain, I finally decided to call my doctor to reassure myself that this was all OK and would pass. The nurse on-call advised that I visit the emergency room.

By the time we got to the hospital (a thirty-minute drive), were processed by check-in, and left in a room to wait, I had been having ferocious contractions for about 2 hours (though I didn’t know they were contractions at the time – rather, I hoped they were not contractions. Denial and hope are powerful blinders.) When the ultrasound tech finally arrived, waiting patiently for me to settle myself into the stirrups, the pain was so intense that I couldn’t lie down but only stand doubled over my stomach.

Suddenly I felt my water break, and I ran to the toilet. Fluid streamed out while the ultrasound tech stood in front of me, trying to be helpful and asking me if I wanted her to hold my hand. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be doing: it seemed like a grave enough situation to warrant spotlights and needles and machines and doctors with masks on - not me on the john with a stranger holding my hand in a quiet, white-tiled hospital bathroom. Jason was in the other room, trying to stay out of the way.

My solution to such a surreal landscape was to give her a blow by blow of my bodily functions while we waited for the inevitable. “That’s not pee, ” I whispered. “OK – that’s pee.” Then I felt something larger come sliding out. “Oh my God.”

I sat there for a few seconds, terrified to look in the toilet and see a dead baby. I told her I didn’t want to look and she came around back of me to see what she could see. There was nothing to see. In fact, when I did peek, the toilet bowl was still clear. There was just a little string of mucusy blood. Sigh of relief – no dead babies yet.

Now, keep in mind that I can recount the events so lucidly because I have had time to think about what was happening at each stage of the miscarriage. But at the time, I didn’t know for sure if those were contractions or if that was my water breaking. I have only surmised it after the fact. At the time, it was one horrifying event after another, a movie playing out on my body, in my life, while I watched and waited, wracked with enough pain that all I wanted was an ending.

The pain did go away, very suddenly and completely, after my water broke. Finally, the tech could get on with her job, clicking around my uterus, assessing the landscape, I assumed, examining the fetus, solving the mystery. It must have taken five minutes and all-the-while I felt fluid leaking from me. I assumed it was more amniotic fluid - the clear stuff - but it was actually blood. A lot of it. The blood was what I was waiting for. When the blood came, I knew it was over.

I asked her if the baby was dead – it was kind of rhetorical, but I needed someone to TELL me with finality that this was the case. No one had yet to say the words ‘dead’ or ‘miscarriage’ – there was only implication and innuendo. And I think my frankness did her in.

That sweet tech, Gina - who had spent the most time with me in that awful green room, held my hand while I passed pregnancy fluids, looked for my fetus in my uterus - started crying, apologizing for her emotions and explaining that she couldn’t see the baby in the uterus. She supposed it was close to the cervix, undetectable by the wand. I loved her for her tears; she cried before I did.

The next few moments/minutes/hours are a blur. I know the doctors came in and removed what was left inside of me. They shot me full of Ativan and I remember Jason telling them that he wanted to make sure I would be able to sleep that night. I staggered out of the stirrups into the bathroom to put on the biggest sanitary pad I’d ever laid eyes on, and then they wheeled me out to the car. I don’t remember getting into bed; but I slept just like they promised I would.