Breaking

This is a narrative about an unexpected, natural miscarriage in the second trimester.

It's graphic.

Only you can decide if you're comfortable reading it.  If you'd rather have just the cold facts, go here.  If you don't want to know anything about it at all, that's okay, too.

***

The contractions start about half an hour before midnight.

I'm not pleased, obviously.  There shouldn't be any contractions at all, and I'm not in the mood for another sleepless night.  But it's not like there's anything I can do about it.

Well, there are a few things.  I take some acetaminophen, and I let myself express my displeasure (and pain) verbally, something I didn't do the other night while Nathan was sleeping.  Deep breaths, grunting out "Okay, okay, okay, okay," as the pain rises up to a peak, then slowly subsides.  Waves, waves... so much of a woman's life is tied to the ocean...

After about an hour of this I decide to get into the shower.  The pain isn't so bad as it was the other night- at their peak these contractions are hitting a 6 rather than an 8- but it's plenty bad enough that I know I have no chance of sleeping through them.  It's shower time.  Hot water helped last time, I'm sure it will help this time.  Another one hits me as I'm getting under the water, and I make unhappy noises with no real words involved- Nathan hears me from downstairs, and comes rushing in.

I don't want him to see me like this, to see me in pain and be unable to do anything, but at the same time it's a relief not to keep silent like I was before, to be able to yell "Fuck!" and hit the wall with my hand whenever I feel the need.  Which I do often.  The contractions are getting worse, and coming more frequently.  Whatever helps me through one is not guaranteed to help me through the next- in fact it's pretty much guaranteed not to.

I ask Nathan to look up how to breathe through contractions- he finds me a few tips, but they're written in such smug, calm voices that I cannot help but feel highly annoyed by them, and certain that the people who wrote those instructions have never actually experienced a contraction.

There's no thinking during contractions, not really.  There's no talking, beyond perhaps the word, "Fuck," or "Ow".  Plenty of inarticulate growls and grunts.  But in between contractions I can think, and what I keep thinking, as if on a loop, is,

"This is fucking bullshit.  Unfair, god damn bullshit."

At one point I say to Nathan, "Know what?  One baby is good.  One perfect baby.  No need to go through this again."

For real.  This is not what pregnancy is supposed to be like.

Another contractions hits, and I twist and howl and wish desperately to escape my body.  Maybe this would be easier, if I knew I would get a live baby at the end of it.  But I don't know that.  The best I can hope for is for it to just stop, to fade away like it did the other night.  But it doesn't stop.

I've told Nathan over and over that I don't want to go to the hospital- we went for the first miscarriage, and it was sheer misery.  They can't do anything to stop a miscarriage, all they can do is charge you a couple thousand bucks to ignore you for six hours.

"If I miscarry again," I've said, "I want to do it in the comfort and dignity of my own home."

But now Nathan is looking at me and he saying, "Baby I'm worried about you.  I'm afraid if we don't go then something will go wrong with you,"

"Pain can't... hurt me," I say, fully aware of the irony.  "Pain won't kill me.  The only danger I'm in is of bleeding out, and we'll keep an eye on it and I promise I'll let you take me to the hospital if it comes to that."

Shortly thereafter a contraction hits that blows right through my anger, and instead makes me whimper like an injured animal, and cry.  I am literally crying, tears leaking from my eyes, and that's when I know shit is real, because I have no choice about it.  Normally I can choose whether or not to "let" myself cry, but this?  This is happening because it is the only possible response to the pain that I'm in.  Even when the contraction passes I'm still curled in a ball in the tub, crying, bewildered, broken.

This is wrong.

Normally I don't like to be touched when I'm in pain, but for this I've let Nathan put his hand on me.  Suddenly, I have to go to the bathroom.

"Let me  up," I say, and I can hear the desperation in my voice.  He does, and I scramble to the toilet.  A very small, distant part of my brain knows what this is.

The desire to push feels exactly like the desire to poop,

More than one woman has told me that, but it's one thing to know something intellectually, and another thing to actually believe it.


The pain comes to a crescendo and thank the gods Nathan is still holding me because I'm not just crying, it's like the sobs are being ripped from my body in great gasping sorrowful shrieks because I do push, and I feel my body passing something, and I know what that something is.  And I'm afraid of it, afraid afraid afraid...

The pain subsides almost immediately.

"It's okay," I say to Nathan, strangely calm through my tears.  "It's over now.  It's over."

And then he understands, and we cry together, his rage boiling up and over and serving to make me calmer and calmer.  Now I have to pass the placenta.  I have to collect the samples.  I have to be very cold, and logical about this.  I don't have time to break down.  I can do that later.

I send Nathan away so I can collect the fetus.  At first I don't want to.  I'd give anything not to look and see the premature horror I've birthed.  But more than that, I don't want Nathan to have to see.  So I send him away, because I know that I have seen worse things in my life, and I will probably see things worse still in the future.

I send up a silent prayer that I never have to see anything worse.

But then I look and... it's not terrible.  It's not terrible at all.  There she is, perfectly formed, so perfect perfect perfect in her unbroken sack.  Fourteen weeks, three days.  I saw her heartbeat less than 48 hours ago.  I scoop her up, and I don't feel disgust, or horror- just sorrow.  And relief.  She is not a monster.  She just... is.