Once upon a time I was pregnant and carrying a dead baby. I've been stuck on what to write about here lately and I think it's time I tell this story.
I was working at the bank 50 to 60 hours a week. When I wasn't getting yelled at for taking too much overtime. Even though when I came in earlier or stayed later they had to ask. Kyle was a stay at home dad with Zack and Zack was 15 months old. I wasn't eating well. As in nothing all day at work. Occasionally a cheese pretzel from Wawa. And 1 sugar-free Red bull or 2 every day. The epitome of health I was not. I was losing weight but not for health reasons. I was stressed and being verbally emotionally abused at work. Which I even started to participate in which only made my stress and anxiety level higher.
We found out we were pregnant again at 4 weeks and I became violently ill all the time. It's surprising we didn't tell our family at around 5 or 6 weeks at Thanksgiving but my cousin was having her baby that day so Thanksgiving dinner was canceled. At around 8 weeks I actually thought I had a stomach virus on top of being pregnant I was so sick. This was a couple weeks before Christmas.
I wouldn't have told anyone where I work or in my family until after I was 12 weeks because it was my second pregnancy & a couple girls at the bank had recently had miscarriages so I knew how common they were. But everyone at my job knew because I was constantly physically ill throughout the day. At around 10 or 11 weeks I went for a routine ultrasound to make sure I was really pregnant to check on the size of the embryo and see how pregnant I was and if I was right about the time line.
An important part of the story is that I had had an ultrasound when Zack was 9 weeks in utero. I saw his heartbeat and from that point on Kyle and I called him the gummy bear. The fact that we decide to become parents even though we were only 21 years old became real.
Anyone who's ever had an ultrasound go poorly has experienced this moment. The technician puts on the goo and it's cold. As she massages the plastic wand back and forth you watch what looks like a poor quality television screen with her. If you've ever seen an embryo on one before you'll know even a small embryo if the technician is pointing in the right direction will give all the faintest womp womp, womp womp.
This time when the technician waved the magic wand, pressing deep into my belly back and forth, there was nothing but a sac.
There was nothing but a circle.
A placenta if you will.
You see the look on the technicians face as it goes dark behind her eyes because she knows what happens next is she has to tell you the truth.
She turns the monitor back and tries to hide from you the truth but, if you're smart as I am and you've seen this before, you know the heartbeat is missing. You remember how excited the technician was when she found Zack even though you hadn't planned on being pregnant and you weren't all that excited before that moment about the thought of being parents.
You start to cry uncontrollably. Right away, no matter how much you didn't want to be pregnant, no matter how much it was a bad time to have another baby, no matter how much it was really a blessing that you weren't responsible for raising another life you start to cry uncontrollably. Like you lost a great possibility.
The technician talks but you don't really hear anything that she says. You already know what she has to tell you. She tells you that you have to go meet with the doctor in the office. They bring you into the comfortable office the one with the nice chairs and all the fancy documentation and awards: not the office with the implements. So you know that something unpleasant is going to be talked about.
The doctor tells you that your pregnancy appears to be about 12 weeks along and you may stay pregnant for another week or two and miscarry naturally up to 14 weeks. You risk the possibility of carrying the placenta to term and having a stillbirth if you cross the legal abortion date. But we had plenty of time to decide.
No one ever said the word abortion. I wasn't killing a baby. Even the embryo inside me wasn't alive. I don't know if they say abortion when it is legal and you're in a doctor's office. The technical term is a DNC. In my experience they didn't. But I'm sure somewhere they do. Abortion has a connotation of guilt. DNC does not. In another state I would have had to go to a separate facility and be verbally and emotionally abused by protesters on the way in.
The doctor told me I had a choice but I didn't have to make it right that moment, that I could go home and think about it and if I chose to have surgery she would call them immediately whenever I decided I had been pregnant for long enough. We hadn't even driven all the way home before I said to my husband I don't want to be pregnant anymore. I was still violently nauseous at every moment. Knowing it was all for nothing only made it worse.
I went to the local hospital in the morning and was one of the first surgeries. My aunt is a very experienced and talented O.R. nurse at the hospital I was in. My cousin, her daughter, who is the same age I am came to sit and wait with me. Kyle was home with our son.
This surgery despite the fact that it was outpatient and supposedly less bodily traumatizing was a lot worse than my c-section. For my c-section I was conscious and I could move from the waist up. My husband was there to hold my hand and the doctors treated me with compassion.
When I had my abortion the room they made me wait in beforehand was icy and cold and I was unconscious during the procedure. I woke up feeling like I had been used while I was asleep. It was an awful feeling. As I came to and my pain medicine started to wear off I was in excruciating pain in my legs in abdomen. I had the best possible scenario. My aunt heard me moaning and told them to give me more Demerol.
The doctor who had done the surgery I had only met 5 minutes prior. She came to the bedside after I woke up and told me that they had removed embryonic material. Basically it wasn't just a empty placenta. It was a confirmed dead baby. That's what you need to hear when you're in pain physically, alone, and high as fuck on pain medications.
I can barely remember leaving the hospital. I'm assuming kyle pick me up but I don't really remember. My cousin may have driven me home. I slept off the rest of the painkiller that was in my the system and when I woke up I couldn't walk. My legs felt like while I was unconscious someone had swung them around like Barbie doll legs.
The doctors had given me a prescription for 600 milligram ibuprofen to relieve the pain. I could pop 3 regular strength ibuprofen because I had cramps when I was a teenager and PMS and barely notice the difference. Ibuprofen wasn't gonna cut it. I could have called my doctor and asked for a prescription for some sort of "cet" drug. Acetaminophen with oxycodone in it.But my cousin had had her baby like I said on Thanksgiving and afterwards she almost died from loss of blood and had to have a transfusion. She's not much for pain medication so she still had pain killers. She's a pharmacist so she knew the correct dose to give me so I took percocet for two days so that I could walk to and from the bathroom.
I only got 3 paid days off from work, and then the weekend unpaid. 5 days total to recover. I had been a full time worker up until that that week but I was changing back after the surgery because my husband finally got a full time job. So I was losing my 20 paid days off and using the 4 I was going to get as a part timer in the first week. 1 of which I had used on January 2nd because my doctor's office called to confirm my appointment for the ultrasound I had on January 3nd. It's illegal that they did because I had signed for them not to call my house about appointments and personal matters just for emergencies. It doesn't matter though because the person I lived with didn't want my husband and I having another baby in their house so they told us to leave.
The day I found out I was violently ill carrying a dead baby was the day after I found out I was homeless. I had only told my cousins and their mom the day before because I showed up on their doorstep with nowhere to live with my son and husband.
It was a blessing that I had to tell them the day before because I would not have been able to utter the words, that I had been pregnant. At least this way they knew I went to the doctors appointment so when I came home and something was wrong they knew what it was without me having to use as many words.
We were kicked out for being irresponsible and accidentally getting pregnant with another baby. I honestly think it was the time we used the sponge. I am skeptical of spermicides ever since and don't use contraception that relies on them.
My aunt took us in and thought that a new baby was a blessing no matter how much money you have or where you live. I'm glad that I was with my cousins who are like my sister's who took care of me like no one else could when I found out and after the surgery. It was physically and emotionally draining.
While going through something that was more awful than I could have imagined. I realized that 2/3's of women will experience miscarriage or abortion in their lifetime and my only experience with it was best case scenario. It wasn't great.
I don't regret the hard things that my husband I have gone through since choosing to have my son at 21. Each one has taught us something important. The experience of thinking we were having another baby, coming to terms with it, accepting it, being happy about it and then losing it, brought us closer together 2 years into our relationship. before that we had started to drift apart. We had to comfort each other in our loss even if in a lot of ways it was a relief. Our son is still a perfectly happy only child. If there was a permanent solution that was safe and we could afford, my husband and I would keep it that way for certain at this point.
Miscarriage is very common. Chances are you know women who have had one or more. It may be your mother, or your grandmother, or your sister, or your cousin, or your best friend but women are conditioned not to talk about these things in polite company. Just because women don't have children doesn't mean the trials of periods and pregnancy woes haven't effected them.
There is a judgment if not having children is your choice and there is a judgment if having no children is out of your control.
We don't have the luxury of pretending these things don't exist behind closed doors. We bring up these stories to comfort one another when someone we know is going through what we have been through. These experiences, we are taught, must be silent foundations of our existence. I think if more women spoke up about how hard pregnancy impacts the life of the average working age woman whether she is trying to not get pregnant or trying to have children we would all be better off.
We have more options for old men to continue having erections and shooting out their sperm than we know what to do with. Can we please find some options that make women's lives a little easier from month to month? So that we can be happy and healthy and pregnancy free if we so choose. For less than $10,000 and major surgery? There is a better way out there than hormones that cause weight gain, mood swings, blood clots, and heart attacks or major surgery. We just haven't found it yet.
If you really wanna stop women from having so many abortions and miscarriages find a better way to keep them from getting pregnant. Educate them to be the scientists who solve the worlds contraception problems and liberate all women. Make more than one 100 percent effective birth control method to choose from for women then we will see less abortions.
Be My Fucking Friend
P.S.- These women aren't impregnating themselves and you were all were born of a mother. This issue affects all of us.
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