B is for Bent, not Broken

I remember lying on the exam table. My elevated legs were unshaven and peppered with stubble. My pelvis was pulled forward towards the edge of the table while a quiet technician held a vaginal wand between my legs. I was around seven weeks pregnant and bleeding. She was searching for a heartbeat, a sac, or any sign of life within me. This was the fourth time we tried to do this. Fourth loss in a row. 

A row.

This wasn’t a fluke anymore. It wasn’t a string of bad luck like the nurse had told me before. 

This was my path. My very bleak reality that I couldn’t bring myself to face.

My head turned slowly to look at the screen. The image of my uterus projected on the large monitor like I was in a movie theatre. In the short glance I saw nothing. The black and white grainy image proved to be as empty as I felt— a massive void within me. My gut feeling was validated and with that, we’d come to the end of the road. I broke focus from the screen, and I turned my gaze to my husband. He was holding my hand in an unfamiliar, desperate grasp. In the way you see two men greet each other in the street, clasp hands, and pull each other in with a one-armed hug. Our thumbs overlapped and his fingers seemed to cover my hand entirely. He held my hand showing he was my teammate, my comrade, my reinforcement; but I hated it. 

It was worrisome and foreign. It was how I imaged loved ones hold on to each other during a storm while the roof is ripped from their house. A hurried, desperate grasp in a merciless tornado. He made eye contact with me, and I gave him my knowing look and shook my head. I wanted him to hear the no from me. Not from a stranger with her hands between my legs. 

But my husband is an eternal optimist and, ever the hopeful, he waited for the confirmation from the technician, which came like an invalid Amazon order. I’m sorry ma’am. We are all out of healthy pregnancies and babies today. We will let you know when we get another shipment, would you like an email or a text?

The sonogram room was warm with recessed lighting and symmetrical art hung under the screen. All design features I usually love, but the single canned light seemed to shine over me and Kyle, illuminating my reactionless face and his glassy eyes. I can remember looking up at the orange glow of that light and think to myself, “Bailey. Life is still good. There will be laughter. There will be wine. There will be dancing, endless discussions, and dirty jokes. There will be travel. There will be joy, damnit.” I was in the middle of that solemn vow just as I felt the sting of the wand leave my body. The technician was silent as she punched in codes and numbers in my chart. I don’t think she had looked me in the eye at all.  I took her silence as another opportunity to send my husband a message with a cold glare. 

Nothing, my love. I’m empty. Again. I’m so sorry. 

She told me I could get dressed, and I heaved myself to the bathroom carrying my pants in one hand and clutching my hospital gown closed with the other. My husband waiting by the table, unmoved in a sobering stillness. 

He looked beautiful.

I put my underwear and linen shorts back on and knew this wasn’t over just yet. I was only spotting but it was getting heavier; more was to come, the worst was to come. I took a moment to stare at myself in the mirror. My stomach was a bit bloated. My skin was gray. And my eyes—they were brilliant with heartache. My eyelids were so heavy I almost couldn’t keep them open. I splashed some water on my face and took a deep breath. I felt so sorry for myself that if I could’ve given the woman in the mirror a hug, the stench of pity would have rubbed off of me like old perfume. 

I came out of the restroom in a fog, and I was handed my chart as my husband stood behind me. The technician made eye contact with me for the first time and said, “Okay, no baby for today. But it’s time for you to be strong, little missy! Go upstairs and wait for your nurse to come get you to discuss what comes next. Remember! It’s time to be strong.” 

Are you freaking kidding me? I wanted to scream “Shut up, bitch.” You have no idea how strong I’ve had to be. Was that the best she could do? Her eye contact was short lived, and I could tell she didn’t believe her own advice.

It’s time to be strong. 

Her words vibrated over me and my rage grew. My strength wasn’t the issue. It was reminding myself to breathe and not to collapse in public that was the challenge. The more suiting advice she could’ve given me would’ve been, “This disaster is not your fault. You’re totally allowed to lose your shit. It will be more satisfying if you break things at home and not in public. May I recommend cheap glassware from Wal-Mart. It shatters well. So do lightbulbs and chalk. Oh, and throwing ice cubes at a wooden fence should scratch your itch of rage.”

We waited in a crowded seating area. Women on all sides of me were swollen and glowing while life blossomed within them. Some smiled at me, some didn’t. A few gave a humble nod; they had been in my shoes before. I suppose it was my tear stained face and my husband’s pale complexion gave us away. They should really have separate waiting areas for situations like that. Situations like ours. The pregnant teenagers seemed oblivious. Their mothers watching me with just as much confusion as I, too, looked on their mere children having children. And there I sat. The adult with a husband, a mortgage, a dog, an IRA, and an Amazon Wishlist who was currently squeezing my thighs together uncomfortably tight to hold in a blood clot until I could make it to the toilet again. For the fourth time. 

The nurse called my name. My husband helped me stand and we followed her to a room I hadn’t been in before. No examination today. No more labs. No more ultrasounds. This was a room for discussion. The art was different in this room. No sign of maternal sketches or pink newborns in here. How kind of them to leave the stale mallard duck paintings for the miscarriage-talk room. There was a golden B hanging above the door. “B is for bent, not broken,” I said. Not sure where that came from, I put my head down in a middle school embarrassment from sounding like a character on Sesame Street. My husband looked up at me and flatly told me it was for the room. This is exam room B, he said. As we waited for the doctor, I launched into my to-do list of things to finish for the week. I told my husband I was finally going to take the plunge and get Botox. Why not, right? No pregnancy, no baby, may as well eat sushi, drink wine, and beat the cruel hands of time at its own game. 

I mentioned that my last two miscarriages lasted about a week or so, so we could still take our vacation in September. His eyes met mine and he shook his head slightly.  He reminded me that we haven’t talked to the doctor yet, there could still be hope. Maybe she knew something the tech didn’t? Bless his heart. I didn’t know if I wanted to kill him or hug him. I’d been telling him since three o’clock that morning when I woke up with blood and stabbing back cramps that it was over. I knew. 

Some women know what it feels like to have life pass through them. Some women know what it’s like to breathe deeply and feel the heartbeat of a child flutter from their insides. And some know when the flutter stops. Only then fully understanding what death feels like from the inside. I woke him up that morning when I was crying on the toilet. I reminded him again when he was in the shower, I sobbed on the phone with him after he left for work and asked, ‘’why does this keep happening to me?”  The fluttering inside me had stopped. I knew that. Why wouldn’t anyone listen to me?

And I reminded him of the tech, the empty screen, her flat encouragement for me to be strong. Bitch.

Before he could answer, before my tears hit my cheek—the doctor came into the room. 

Seventeen months earlier, I found myself at a friend’s baby shower. While I was getting dressed Kyle came into the bathroom and asked me if I was sure about going. “I have to go”, I told him. We had been friends since high school, I read a bible verse at her wedding, this was her first child, my attendance felt mandatory. Plus, I’d already shared our loss on social media. Friends and family knew that in October we had suffered a miscarriage. A common loss. One in four women miscarry and it was especially common in first time pregnancies. Blah Blah Blah.

The comments and likes rolled in like lovebug season in south Mississippi. I was swarmed with messages until I felt suffocated. Prayers for y’all. Love you guys! And my least favorite: you’re so brave for sharing. Thank you (kiss emoji). I didn’t want the attention. I didn’t want to be smothered with sympathy; I hate sympathy. Sympathy is too close to pity. 

My arrogant pride tells me that I’m not one to be pitied. But I suppose it’s none of my business if someone finds me pitiful. 

I didn’t want to share our deepest hurt at all, but I just wanted people to stop asking when we would have kids. I wanted people to realize their small talk was like taking a bullet to women like me. I needed women who had gone on to become mothers to remember what a delicate time it is for a woman, for a couple, and to remember that she was a complete person herself, before she was a mother. I am a complete person, a whole woman, even without children.

 I wanted the questions to either stop entirely or be prefaced with something more affable than “Have you thrown out the condoms yet? Or “When will you plummet yourselves into a sleepless life and crippling debt all for the sake of parenthood?” 

Oh, or my absolute least favorite, “trying is the fun part!” 

Please shut up.

I had marketed myself as strong. I was strong. I am strong. And this common, but hurtful loss would not stop me from being social or supportive of my friends. Not if I had anything to say about it. So, I went, and I smiled. I handed over a gift I couldn’t bring myself to buy, instead making my husband go into a Babies-R-Us alone. He picked the most boring thing off the registry and came out five minutes later.

I watched as my friend beamed in the center of the room. She looked so beautiful and I kept reminding myself every few minutes that one day, my ship would come in, too.  I observed the other women who were mothers themselves give advice. Some of it sounded solid, some of it sounded like bullshit, but who was I to decide? I could feel my face growing red as she approached my gift to open. I knew I should’ve just faced the baby store and picked something cute. My gift wasn’t even wrapped cute. I felt like I was back in high school where everything was a competition. Who brought the best gift? Who had the best wrapping? The best card? The best old wives’ tale? The best advice? 

My gift was generic and boring. The wrapping was loose and careless. Had I even signed the card? I couldn’t remember. And as for advice, well, I had nothing. 

I couldn’t compete. It was the first time in a long time that I felt like I had no seat at a table. No reason to belong with a crowd of women. And my crushed spirit told me they could see right through me, the barren friend making small talk to hide her shame of empty arms. 

As my face continued to flush with heat, I slowly started to step back. And back and back and back some more. 

My body was making me take an exit ramp before my mind could keep up.  I turned to apologize to whomever I’d just bumped in to and I turned only to see the kitchen wall. 

I had gone as far back as I could from the group of women who were bonding over motherhood. Without being able to take any more steps, I felt my shoulders fold into my chest. I was trying to take up as little space as I possibly could. Was it socially acceptable to get in the fetal position on the kitchen floor of a stranger’s home? If only I could disappear. 

I wondered if I could I sneak out the front door unnoticed. I snickered under my breath deciding that I would tell my husband he was right. How rare I like to say that to anyone, but I would anoint him with the honor of being wise and forthright about my coming here. He was the only person who I felt truly knew me during all of this. His cloudy blue eyes would look at me and he’d say, “You have nothing to prove and she will understand. You’re punishing yourself by going. Please don’t do this to yourself.” And then I would feel the low hum of his voice give me permission to crumble behind the closed doors of our bedroom. 

But I’m a woman, my love! Punishing ourselves is what we do. Endless diets, mom guilt, our inner critics, Spanx, overachieving only to tell ourselves we are under achieving, waxing, plucking, injecting, competing, self-deprecating, judging others so we can save time on judging ourselves, and the list goes on. Even the best of our species who would like to think she is above it all, suffers quietly with the pressure she puts on herself. Of course, I went to her baby shower. Of course, I made myself sick on the way there. Of course, I held in my still swollen stomach and pretended not to notice when people stared a second too long wondering if I was pregnant. 

I had a bet to win with myself. And when it’s me against me, I have to win. 

I was snapped back into the present when my friend looked up and said, thank you, Billy! My nickname she gave me in high school. I saw her brow furrow when she realized I was in the complete opposite room from the actual shower. By then I was as blushed as a child who’d been scolded. 

I bashfully played dumb like I’d wandered towards the baby quiches and Presbyterian punch for a refill. As I walked back towards the circle of women to find my place on the sofa, I was overcome with the sense that it would be a very, very long time before I would have a baby shower of my own, and I knew in my bones that I would have to walk through hell to get there. 

When my doctor opened the door, I was taken aback by her sympathy. I know she sees this all the time, but she was the first medical professional who’d actually told me she was sorry I was going through this. Her tender touch on my shoulder was what tore me that day. The kindness of strangers will undo me every time. From then on it felt like we were on a launch pad. 

Three...two…one…run. 

Surgery would be in the morning, don’t eat anything after six, three-seven days for physical recovery, God only knows how long on recovery time for a broken heart. I would need to call in to work, drink lots of fluids, no sex for six weeks, do not try again for at least 12 weeks, they will collect the matter left over in my uterus and send it off for testing to understand the chromosomes of why this keeps happening. 

“You could do IVF immediately and it would probably help or there is a genetic specialist who can help you, too. We can do genetic testing, hormone testing or hormone therapy, if needed. You have a textbook vagina and a perfect uterus, so our exploration of issues should be fairly easy.” My doctor listed off popular reproductive aids as I started to see spots. 

Everything felt sterile, including me. The sound of the tissue paper on the exam table, the smell of rubbing alcohol, the not so smooth touch of latex gloves. Nothing felt personal, but everything felt invasive.  I wanted to ask my doctor so much more. How will the world know how to help me when I’ve lost something no one can see? How do I explain to my friends that I’m heartbroken over something I didn’t know I wanted so badly? How do I go to the grocery store and see women with their children? How do I not hate myself and blame my husband? I was in love, where does this love go?

There are things you learn about your own body when you walk through infertility, or any health journey, that maybe the average person doesn’t know. I for one, have a very low sitting cervix, I don’t mind the sight of other people’s blood, it’s my own blood that makes me woozy, and I’ve learned I have an incredibly high tolerance for pain. I also now know that I have unusually thick skin and child size veins, which makes my labs and blood work last hours.

I’ve learned that science can only take us so far with anatomy, before a belief in the divine takes over. I remember learning these lessons in a fever pitch. During my first miscarriage, I was largely in shock. I was shocked to be pregnant in the first place, we hadn’t tried, but we weren’t preventing either. So when I found myself pregnant only four months after stopping birth control, I was in a shear panic. 

I was really surprised at myself that I wasn’t excited. The moment the stick turned pink I could see my life flash before my eyes. Vacations with Kyle, building our dream home, all the things we hadn’t accomplished yet sped by me in a hurried laughter. I was left nauseous and defeated. It took me about two days to settle into the idea of being a mother. And once the idea was nestled down in my bones, I realized I would’ve laid down my life for that child—what a thought. They were no bigger than a grain of rice, but I would’ve chased heaven and earth for them. And just as I fell madly in love with someone I’d never meet, I doubled over in pain as my body rejected it all. 

Never having gone through that before and figuring it was a bit dangerous to my health as well, Kyle drove me to the emergency room. It was a Saturday afternoon and unseasonably warm for October. There was nothing they could do, so they sent me home to rest and pass it naturally. But not before serving us with an emergency bill that rang in right around one thousand dollars. 

We were there for 64 minutes.

When I was nearing the end of my loss, I felt an urge to push. I was in the bathtub when I felt a full force labor pain and I stood up to let nature take its course. I pushed, cried, and braced myself for what I knew I had to do. I fell to the floor and turned to look down to see a perfect embryo sitting on a clot of blood that was the size of a baseball. I knew of nothing else to do but scoop it up to inspect it up close. To see if I could find a heart that wasn’t beating. A set of eyes. A resemblance of myself or Kyle. I saw none of those things. I held the perfect form in my hands for as long as I could. I thought about calling Kyle in to look, but a lot of things stopped me from that. I’ve been told that men don’t become fathers until the day their child is born. But women, we become mothers the moment we find out we are pregnant. I had been a mother for a brief moment in time, and I would never forgive myself for not enjoying it from the very start. 

I left the doctor’s office with a pile of paperwork, a scheduled surgery, and something called the death stare that my husband had come to fear. 

The death stare is when my eyes glaze over and I zone out for about a week. I don’t eat, speak, bathe, or smile. I just check out of life for a while and let my anger and heartache percolate in my chest.

 When life utterly shatters you, the checking-out for a few days could be what saves you. It’s the staying positive, keep moving, and ignore your feelings mentality that I firmly believe makes us crumble beneath the weight of our expectations. The placing of bets with yourself, the games you play with your own strength and mental health—the games you think you win and never actually do. Life is so reckless with her joy and ecstasy, grief and illness. The giving and taking of loved ones, victories, securities, and pride. Life, in her sheer majestic beauty will absolutely render you breathless in her blessings, and in her cruelty. The happy medium, the safe place of surviving, is to sit in the silence of your own destruction, and watch empathy come to you from the most unexpected places. 

 While the death stare is alive and well in our home, somehow my typically teenage like, helpless husband becomes Mrs. Doubtfire. He can assume my needs before I can. The dirty dishes he usually never sees somehow become clean, the dry cleaning is picked up, and candles are lit without me asking, and dinner is made by six.  He can make phone calls and keep the world at bay for me while I fall apart. God bless him. 

Here is the thing about pregnancy loss, or really any loss for that matter that no one likes to admit: unless you’ve been through it; you just won’t get it. Our society has created this realm of “woke empathy” that is grossly selfish. You can still be an empathetic person and not have all the answers. You can still sit in the hurt of others and not have the fix-it formula to spoon feed them. We need to be more comfortable sitting in each other’s hurt and stop waiting for vacancy in the conversation to tell your own sob story. One upping someone in grief with a tale of your own, isn’t empathy at all. 

When you announce that you’re naturally pregnant, you’re met with a gambit of lovely and tear-filled reactions. People buy you blankets and diapers. They purchase the unborn their first bible or baseball bat. Grandparents start a college fund before you’re in your third trimester. But when you lose that pregnancy, I was surprised to discover not much is offered at all. 

You’re met with a look of sympathy that once again feels like pity. People will change the subject or ask questions in a barely coherent whisper. If they can muster the question at all. Eye contact becomes minimal and your closest friends disappear. 

For the same reason you don’t make eye contact with the homeless guy on the corner, for the same reason you don’t offer to say anything to your friend whose husband just left them, it’s because you are the uncomfortable one. 

Not them. 

They have to live with their homelessness, their addiction, their shortcomings, their handicaps, their singleness, their infertility. 

We live in it. Day in. Day out. We are in it, floating through the what-ifs and worst-case scenarios, we make our beds in the how did I get heres and the I can’t believe this is happening to me.

So the next time you want to avoid eye contact with your friend at dinner who is struggling through trauma, addiction, IVF, divorce, coming out, rehab, eating disorders, financial woes, getting dumped, getting fired, being forgotten, or anything else life can hurl at you, look them in the eye and ask them how their soul is holding up. Sit through the thick of their hurt with them. Be there and listen. Don’t offer vague advice or flat encouragement, it’s been offered before. Be prepared to hear the hurt and triumphs. Settle in for a discussion. Don’t fret over hurting their feelings or making them upset. They are comfortably nestled in the hazard zone for the long haul. 

The only one who will squirm in their seat, is you. 

If you’ve never felt life literally pass through you, you won’t understand this particular type of ache. And that’s okay. Grief is so incredibly personal to each of her victims. People will find it copacetic to say the most offensive things cloaked in encouragement, friends of friends will think it’s okay to recommend Kama Sutra sex positions because they think that is solid advice for fertility, or the worst is when your closest loved ones run from you and hide entirely while you struggle to breathe. But the death stare and the falling apart and the sitting in a cold shower for an hour and half, and the glass breaking, and the screaming under water is really what grit is made of. 

If we allow ourselves time to break the shit, fall to pieces and not speak until we have something to say, I think that is where we find out who we are. It may sound manic, but when you break anything around you—anything you can get your hands on, and you shatter it down to dust, that is all in an effort to keep yourself from falling apart. And then, only when you’re ready, slowly stand up and begin again. 

But as anticipated, after you’ve swept up your pieces of shattered glass and surveyed the area for damage; you’re still helplessly broken. Just like the blue bowl you’ve hurled towards your kitchen floor. What I wouldn’t give to feel the weight of a child on my chest. But I keep that dream of my heart at arm’s length in fear that I will not live up to the task.  

Like the soldier who steadies his weapon to take aim at the enemy, but whispers to himself not yet. Not yet.

 Not yet. 

 There are no substitutes, no place holders for parenthood. There are so many space filler’s for pleasure or greed or love and lust to be found in this life. But motherhood—there is nothing that can imitate that. Nothing can fill that void if the desire exists within you. This lonely walk is isolating in itself of heartbreak and embarrassment. But the secret I hold of coveting those who are parents, is deeply guarded by the safety net of my excuses. We aren’t ready to try again. One more vacation and then we will. A few thousand more in savings and then we can go for it. 

I’m dancing recklessly on the tight rope between freedom and forever. Between falling madly in love with the hope and idea of a child and the falling face first failure of infertility and rejection. 

But the truth is, no matter how badly I crave the touch of a child’s hand in mine I keep looking out on the horizon waiting to believe enough in myself to say, I am ready.