sinking loss
I stared at the stain, not wanting to believe what I was seeing. Blood. Bright red. Little did I know that I was a couple of weeks pregnant.
I built up the courage and cautiously remained inconspicuous whilst trying to make my way to my colleague's office without leaving a trail of blood and hide any body language or facial expressions of agony due to repetitive abdominal stabbing pain.
I watched as the color drained from her face as she started to examine me. In an instant I just instinctively knew what was happening: miscarriage. I was finally facing the terrible loss that one in four pregnant women suffer. Knowing how common an occurrence this was didn’t help one bit - no rational thoughts could have helped.
There, an ultrasound confirmed my fear - I saw the tiny, tiny beginnings of a body, but no heartbeat.
I went home, opting to let the miscarriage complete itself in secrecy. I bled, and waited, and bled, and waited. Two days later, after the bleeding had nearly stopped, I passed that tiny form I had seen on the ultrasound monitor.
A mix of grief, bewilderment, frustration, and shame overwhelmed me. The worst part about it was the sense of futility. Sure, I had only been pregnant for a few weeks without my knowledge, but in an instant of learning about my pregnancy, I realized that unconsciously I have invested great physical, emotional, and spiritual energy in this new life only to have it taken away from me in a split second. And for what?
Some women receive revelation that the life lost will be resurrected, that the forming child will be part of her eternal family. But I had received no such reassurance. It took me several minutes to fashion a coherent state of mind and resumed my life with this knowledge pushed to the dark corners of my mind and resumed my life as if nothing of the sort has ever happened.
It was only a week later when it really sunk in. I suddenly found myself in a surreal state of being where I could literally feel life slipping from me. I jerked up from my nightmare and realized it was happening in the real world. I sank back onto the bed, whispering "oh no, oh no", whilst my husband, rudely awakened and unaware of the miscarriage, struggles to make sense of what was happening to me. It was dawn.
As I continued to speak, I heard surprising words coming from my mouth. "It wasn’t a waste", I said. "It wasn’t a waste". I wasn’t quite sure what I meant. I did not feel any more certain than I had before that the partially formed body I had passed would someday live again. Nor was I referring to the personal gain of knowledge and experience that comes from our trials. Rather, I knew that somehow, my loss COUNTED.
I felt better after that, even though it still took more time to recover, both physically and emotionally. But it was easier to accept my loss with the assurance that somehow it hadn’t been in vain.
All I could do was hang on to that irrational, blessed conviction that there would be eternal compensation for this pain. Eternal meaning, eternal gain.
I built up the courage and cautiously remained inconspicuous whilst trying to make my way to my colleague's office without leaving a trail of blood and hide any body language or facial expressions of agony due to repetitive abdominal stabbing pain.
I watched as the color drained from her face as she started to examine me. In an instant I just instinctively knew what was happening: miscarriage. I was finally facing the terrible loss that one in four pregnant women suffer. Knowing how common an occurrence this was didn’t help one bit - no rational thoughts could have helped.
There, an ultrasound confirmed my fear - I saw the tiny, tiny beginnings of a body, but no heartbeat.
I went home, opting to let the miscarriage complete itself in secrecy. I bled, and waited, and bled, and waited. Two days later, after the bleeding had nearly stopped, I passed that tiny form I had seen on the ultrasound monitor.
A mix of grief, bewilderment, frustration, and shame overwhelmed me. The worst part about it was the sense of futility. Sure, I had only been pregnant for a few weeks without my knowledge, but in an instant of learning about my pregnancy, I realized that unconsciously I have invested great physical, emotional, and spiritual energy in this new life only to have it taken away from me in a split second. And for what?
Some women receive revelation that the life lost will be resurrected, that the forming child will be part of her eternal family. But I had received no such reassurance. It took me several minutes to fashion a coherent state of mind and resumed my life with this knowledge pushed to the dark corners of my mind and resumed my life as if nothing of the sort has ever happened.
It was only a week later when it really sunk in. I suddenly found myself in a surreal state of being where I could literally feel life slipping from me. I jerked up from my nightmare and realized it was happening in the real world. I sank back onto the bed, whispering "oh no, oh no", whilst my husband, rudely awakened and unaware of the miscarriage, struggles to make sense of what was happening to me. It was dawn.
As I continued to speak, I heard surprising words coming from my mouth. "It wasn’t a waste", I said. "It wasn’t a waste". I wasn’t quite sure what I meant. I did not feel any more certain than I had before that the partially formed body I had passed would someday live again. Nor was I referring to the personal gain of knowledge and experience that comes from our trials. Rather, I knew that somehow, my loss COUNTED.
I felt better after that, even though it still took more time to recover, both physically and emotionally. But it was easier to accept my loss with the assurance that somehow it hadn’t been in vain.
All I could do was hang on to that irrational, blessed conviction that there would be eternal compensation for this pain. Eternal meaning, eternal gain.
