What I Had Hoped to Save

I learned about the pregnancy on the toilet. The miracle of life, how our society and culture reproduces and evolves, is revealed to most of us by a plastic stick coated in piss.

It was there, too, that I learned the pregnancy was over two months later. There was no explosion, no weapon, no warning. Just a few drops of bright red blood that turned to swirls in the pristine water. A part of me, the me I present to the world as calm and thoughtful and patient and kind, said it might be benign bleeding. It might not a big deal. I stuck a pad on my underwear, moved to my bedroom floor and scoured the internet. Reassurance and danger, the two mixed until nothing made sense anymore, until the only clear voice was the deep, quiet belief that the baby was gone.

Pregnancy requires the participation of two parties to begin, and yet the carrying and delivery is a journey one takes alone. Every decision, from food to sleeping position to work style to medicine choices, becomes a cost-benefit analysis that puts a mark on your soul. Doctors and midwives assess how much space you take up, interrogate your wants as they conflict with baby’s needs, and all the while you navigate their disappointment in you. Would they give permission to any person wishing to be pregnant, if they could have a say?

After that positive test, my husband began growing his Baby Beard and I called my high risk OB. The on-call nurse asked if I was happy with the pregnancy. I said, of course. Of course. So happy.

It was a lie then. The dread of inevitable, prolonged hyperemesis would destroy my parenting and my joy and my work. But then, I didn't get as sick. And my lie became true as days turned to weeks. I still wonder, even now -- had I been happier that first week, would the baby have lived? Would they have had my grandmother’s curly red hair, my husband’s laugh, his brother’s wit, her sister’s spin and spin and spin without ever losing control?

No. It was an underdeveloped placenta. There was no chance. And yet. Perhaps the despair I felt over illness tormented a beautiful, special baby into nothingness. Perhaps it was my fault.

When I went in for an ultrasound at 11 weeks, I learned it was all over. The midwife gently asked me what I was going to do. No more questions about my diet, about my home life, about my safety. I was not being told how to carry and deliver. I carried nothing, so I had nothing to deliver. I had failed, so now I could be an adult again.

It would’ve been easier to have an in-patient procedure, but there was a long wait. I closed my eyes and imagined days of knowing I carried death inside of me. Of holding my living children with a motionless grey figure inside of me, floating in black nothingness, as I saw on that ultrasound screen. The midwife thought I could “settle it all” at home, so I picked up the prescription from the pharmacy like it was all normal and neutral.

I stayed in my room. Mired in the special hell of acute despair and physical agony (it went on for days), I laid on a towel and picked up the manuscript I had been working on. A science fiction book about adulthood and capitalism and rejection and my answer to the heterosexual-male gaze fembot. It was fine. It was going well, really. But she didn’t feel enough. Not the way I felt.

I transformed the book. I turned her want away from a desire for friendship towards what I knew in that moment was pure truth. The most unrequited love, the need you can never satisfy, is for the person you fail to bring to life.

I wrote that day, into the night, on to the next morning, while I cried and cramped and waited for the blood to stop coming. The love I had bookmarked for that child poured into the book. I thought if I gave it all to my pretend person, it wouldn’t hurt me so bad.

I still hurt. Never as bad as those first days. Only when I do the birthday math. Or when the morning is soft and beautiful, a cool breeze with sunshine. Like the day I learned what I had lost.