From So Much

It's strange how you can go half a lifetime, or a quarter of a lifetime, with so much normal, and then near-bouts lose sight of it altogether - suddenly, like it was never there. Like, you wake up one morning and your body is different and you never go back; the life you knew just starts to fall apart from there.

At about 11 weeks along I dream I lose the baby. It’s one of those vividly real dreams that scares you even after you’re rescued with wakefulness. The despair of my dream-world loss remained palpable well after that night, periodically coming to haunt my thoughts. Two weeks later to the day, in spite of a series of tests indicating a normal pregnancy, I start to bleed.                                              

It starts with a disconcerting spotting that becomes progressively heavier over a short period of time, sending me to the Emergency Room within the hour. 

Bobby, Little H, and I sit together in the crowded E.R. waiting room on a Thursday evening. My son is hungry for dinner and quite unaware as to why we have decided to spend a couple hours sitting in this boring room. Bobby and I are completely tortured by fear. He keeps looking over at me. I stare straight ahead at a TV screen of a fish tank. I’m watching the one-dimensional fish swim back and fourth and trying to coach myself into continuing to believe that the world still makes sense. Mostly though, I’m just feeling utterly broken inside. 

When we’re called back, we meet doctors and nurses, I give samples of body fluids, and we do a lot more waiting. Bobby eventually leaves to feed Little H dinner and put him to bed. I continue to wait. Eventually I’m taken back to the ultrasound room where we will determine if I am, in fact, miscarrying. They put the ultrasound wand inside me and immediately I look over to the screen to see the baby squirming around, it's heart beating rapidly, and it's tiny arms flailing. Amazing!

I thought that miraculous little life had already ended, but there my baby was, moving around and making it through yet another trial. 

13.5 weeks

It turned out that I wasn't dilating and I wasn't going into labor/miscarriage. There was a small gap between my placenta and uterine wall, which is abnormal. That pocket was bleeding, essentially emptying itself. But if the bleeding, which is already slowing by the time I’m released that night, stops and there is no dislodging, everything will be okay.

It’s just a scare that falls on already shell-shocked shoulders.

Our baby is okay.