Unplanned

We found out we were having a surprise second baby on a Friday. The following Monday morning, we headed out on a cross-country flight with our one-year-old, Noah from Maryland to Seattle for one of my husband’s business trips. I have one husband, Ash. He has two businesses and lots of trips. We spent Monday getting settled, eating, heading to a radio interview Ash had at the Clear Channel offices.

The next day, Ash headed to the conference we flew in for. While Noah napped, I called a new midwife. I needed to have the new pregnancy confirmed by science. We switched midwives because our last midwife was far away and tended to run behind on appointments. Having been through the process once with Noah, we recognized the convenience of having a provider across the street with hospital privileges a few blocks away. I set up an appointment for the following week. Ash and I began to daydream about a second child, and we each were convinced that this time I was carrying a girl. Our daughter.

I took Noah to the Seattle Aquarium that day. I wore him in the ERGObaby carrier all day. He loved the aquarium, and especially loved the jellyfish display. On our way back to our car, I saw a sign for the Pike Place market. So we took a detour and headed up a long staircase to an elevator that took us to the market. At the market one of the fruit stands gave us a free sample of a local peach. Noah loved it so much he cried when the sample was finished. So I bought a whole peach for us to share and asked to have it cut in slices. We walked around the market eating the peach as the juices dripped down his face and all down my arm. It was the perfect day spent with my little one.

We left the market and headed back to the hotel room. I strapped Noah into his car seat and pulled the stroller to the door of the bathroom so he wouldn’t hurt himself while I peed. As always, I peed quickly and then I noticed that there was a bit of blood on the toilet paper. I was bleeding. It sort of looked like the start of my period, but didn’t continue after I wiped a few times.

I panicked. I couldn’t call my husband at the conference, so I called a friend that I had confided about the pregnancy and who happens to be a doula. It was 4:30 pm in Seattle, that meant it was 7:30 pm where she was in Brooklyn, and there was a chance she’d be putting her 9 month old to bed. She answered. I explained I was bleeding, and she said she thought something might be wrong since I was calling from Seattle. We talked about possibilities, random bleeding, miscarriage, etc. I appreciated the balance in her support. Just enough reassurance so I wouldn’t freak out but not so overboard that I didn’t realistically think of all the possibilities. She offered to call a midwife friend of hers to see if she would talk to me on the phone. I thought that was a great idea.

I sent Ash a text and let him know about the bleeding: “I’m worried I am miscarrying.” Then, I called the midwife that I had set an appointment up with earlier that morning. She suggested that I head to the ER, and after talking to my friend’s midwife friend both seemed to say that it was weird that I didn’t have more bleeding if something was wrong. Still, we both agreed that since I felt crampy, I should head in.

Ash came back and we picked up sandwiches from a deli across the street then headed to the University of Washington Medical Center. It was about 7:30 pm there or 10:30 pm for Noah who was still on east coast time. I took a look across the waiting room at my little boy looking tired and decided to send the two of them back to the hotel. Needless to say, we didn’t want Noah crawling around on the waiting room floor and he’d be bored senseless otherwise.

I waited. As I was being triaged, the nurse told me she’d bled during her second pregnancy and that her child is now 20 years old. I knew she meant well, but I resented her for trying to reassure me.

After a few hours, they finally called me back to a room. I met with two nurses and explained to them what was happening. I mentioned I had a one year old.

Before they entered the room, the nurses stood in the hallway explaining my situation to someone. With judgment in her voice, one of them said, “…and she has a one year old.” During the ensuing pause, I imagined glances were exchanged. I regretted sending my boys back to the hotel. Did I really want to be alone with some mean nurses right now? They drew my blood. A young doctor came in. He did a routine check of my stomach and reflexes. He asked a bunch of questions, and then somewhere in our conversation he mentioned that he was a brand new doctor. This meant that I’d also see a supervising physician. He explained that they would do a pelvic exam and an ultrasound after they got my blood work back. Next thing I knew, the supervising physician came in and asked many of the same questions. Then he stopped and looked at me and said, “Is this a desired pregnancy?” I froze, was he asking me if the pregnancy was planned or unplanned? If that’s what he wanted to ask why didn’t he ask that? So I looked at him and took a deep swallow so I wouldn’t cry. Then I decided to handle it like a politician, answering the question I thought he should have asked. “The pregnancy was unplanned but very much desired.” It caught him off guard. “Of course,” he reached for my arm and patted it.

And then I waited for a very long time. It was around 10:15 pm that the young doctor came in looking very sad. He paused and sat down. “Your HCG levels are way too low. It’s not...” He was stumbling on his words, and my mind started to spin. I cut him off. “Are you going to do an ultrasound?” “The levels are so low, there is no way that…” He may have still been talking, but I didn’t hear anything else he said. Tears streamed from my eyes and I began to sob. Violent sob. Sobbing so hard that I tried to plug up my tear ducts with my fingers the way you stop an open wound from bleeding. I couldn’t make them stop. I couldn’t breathe. The young doctor grabbed my hand. “I am so sorry.” It was one of those moments where I felt so grateful he was young and new to this whole thing. He held my hand as I sobbed for a while, and then he explained, I would still need to have a pelvic exam, and that I needed to be seen again in 48 hours. My HCG level had not zeroed out, so I needed to come back to make sure everything was okay.

I couldn’t stop crying. Eventually he had to leave the room. So I sent a text to my husband telling him we were losing the baby. Truth is, I had already lost it but couldn’t admit it. I sent my two friends messages. Then I cried some more and thought about ripping my IV out and just running somewhere, but I knew I had to wait to be discharged. I wanted to go off into the woods to be alone, sort of how I felt during labor with our son. One of the nurses came back, and didn’t say anything to me but prepared the instruments for the pelvic exam. That’s when the supervising doctor came back in. I stared at the ceiling as he did the exam thinking it was by far the worst moment of my life. Tears streamed from eyes but I did not make any sounds. I wanted to be alone in my grief even though there was a doctor administering a pelvic exam. I felt the nurse staring at me, as I felt the doctor feeling for my cervix. Finally he stopped. It was over. He explained that he didn’t see much blood so I shouldn’t have much bleeding in the next few days. Then he looked at me and said, “There is nothing you could have done or not done differently. Please don’t blame yourself. These things are horrible and happen sometimes. Often, really. But it is not your fault. It’s around one in four pregnancies.” I kept crying. I knew of women that have gone through this, but have never spoken to any of them about it. How is it that women go through this then pick up and eat, work, carry on with their lives? I found myself resenting these women for not telling me they wanted to die because there I was with no frame of reference as to what I should feel.

He left and tears continued to stream out of my eyes. I told myself over and over to get it together. Some people lose babies way later than this. Get it together. Get it together. You have a baby. Get it together. Pull it together. Come on. Stop crying. Stop. Stop! It made me cry harder.

Eventually, I stopped crying. The young doctor returned and explained that since I was in Seattle and not Maryland for the rest of the week, I’d need to come back to the ER on Thursday (48 hours later) to have more blood tests to make sure my HCG level continued to go down. Then he looked up, “I won’t be here. I’m sorry, I’m off that day.” He paused and started to say, “Unless…” That’s when I stopped him and said, “Thank you for holding my hand and being so understanding. I didn’t expect that. Thank you.” He told me to get my blood drawn in triage next time so they would be able to tell me the results by the time I came back. Then the mean nurse came back in, acting like she interrupted something she shouldn’t have. “Oh,” she said and hurrying out the room then awkwardly waited in sight right outside the door for me to sign my discharge papers.

I headed back to the waiting room to call Ash. He said he would pack up a sleeping Noah and pick me up as soon as possible. He was sad I had to be alone for the news, but I told him the young doctor held my hand. I mentioned that the other doctor was nice too but that he’d asked if the pregnancy was desired.

My next call was to the answering service for my new midwife. A young woman answered the phone, “Name, date of birth.” I gave her both. Then, “Due date.” I whispered so the other patients in the ER wouldn’t hear me. “I miscarried today, she is expecting my call.” Young woman, “What is your DUE DATE? I can’t hear you.” So I swallowed hard as tears streamed down my face. “I miscarried,” I said in a more normal leveled voice. “When?” “Just now, I am leaving the emergency room. She asked me to call as soon as I left the ER.”

The room was still. A man that had been bent over grunting about his stomach pain to his girlfriend a few minutes before sat upright staring at me blankly then reached over and grabbed the young woman next to him. I wanted to go outside, but it was after midnight, and I didn’t know anything about the area around the hospital so I had to wait for my boys in the waiting room. A few minutes later they pulled up. My baby was still sleeping. Ash got out of the car and gave me a huge hug and then just held me for what may have been 30 seconds but felt like an eternity.

We headed back to the hotel and I told Ash about my ER experience. After several minutes of hushed conversation, Noah woke up. Since we were all awake anyway, we decided to head back outside because we’d heard that the Northern Lights would be visible from Seattle that night. We stood staring up at the sky waiting for something to happen when what looked like lightening began to flash periodically. Except this lightening went straight across the sky instead of down to the ground. “Is that them?” We couldn’t tell, but whatever it was, we had never seen anything like it before. We headed back to our hotel room. Noah fell back asleep. I talked to my midwife on the phone.

The next day, I bled like I’ve never bled before. This is what the midwives had meant. Had this happened yesterday, I would have headed straight to the ER without calling anyone. I bled through more than a pad an hour. I bled through to my jeans twice. It felt like labor. Ash came home early from the conference to be with us. I watched as my stomach tightened and released. Why did this have to be so reminiscent of labor if I wasn’t going to get a baby out of it? I felt sharp pains in my back. I felt so completely out of it. Like I was a bad mom. I let our one-year-old watch TV for one of the first times in his life. While Noah was watching cartoons, I wondered if I was a bad mom, and if he secretly hated me. I curled up in pain and crawled around the non-baby proofed room after him. When I saw what I think may have been a remnant of the placenta pass through, again I thought, “Yeah, had I seen that I would have rushed to the ER.” The boys headed to a nearby park. I let out my last long sob then took a long nap.

After the day finally ended, we settled in for bed. Ash reached over grabbed my hand and said, "You know, for you and me there is no such thing as an undesired pregnancy. Unplanned maybe, but not undesired."