Whew! It's hard to keep up with this blog. I keep thinking of things I want to write about and then not sitting down to do it. I have seen several important and thought provoking articles over the last couple of weeks I have wanted to share and blog about, but I'll save them for later posts and make this a more personal sharing.
Before I get to it, I have my first prenatal visit with a doula client this weekend. She's due in just a couple of weeks, trying to VBAC, and I'm teaming up with a super fabulous other doula in training to work with her! Very excited/terrified. We'll see how it goes!
Anyway, on that personal note, this week marks 3 years since we lost our first child in a missed miscarriage at 13 weeks pregnant. Dear friends of ours recently went through this themselves - a much wanted third child for them- and it brought back all the old emotions and memories that resurface at this time of year anyway. I still haven't posted Tiger's birth story, and I will do so, but the journey of my pregnancy and birth with Tiger, really begins with that first pregnancy.
We were so elated that we became pregnant only a few months after I went off birth control and I had no idea what a missed miscarriage was or that I could lose a baby and have my body carry on as if pregnant. In some ways, I am glad I didn't know -as it really is such a difficult thing to put that worry out of your mind once you have that knowledge and experience (I found this out with my second pregnancy with Tiger). Anyway, the pregnancy was going along great. We had reached the "safety" milestones - heard the baby's heartbeat at 9 weeks, made it to the 12 week mark and second trimester, but around the 13 week mark, I had some light spotting and a sharp pain on my left side a few times. I was sick with worry - I just immediately knew something was wrong - but it was a weekend and I decided to rest with my feet up and see my OB on Monday. My husband talked me down from my worry and I was so thoroughly convinced I just had a mild urinary tract infection that I told him he didn't need to come with me to the appointment.
As you can guess, the appointment revealed that our baby had passed away in his 10th week, however, my body continued unabated to grow and care for what it thought was still a living being. No heartbeat heard on the doppler led to an ultrasound led to the news delivered by an unskillful male midwife at my former OB practice and as my OB was at the hospital, another doc in the practice, without even seeing me, informed the midwife that I needed to come back immediately to have cervadil placed in my cervix in order to soften it and so a D&C could be performed the next day (this was my first encounter with the horror show that is maternity medical care system in the US). I was in shock and alone and as I left the office, I remember distinctly soft snow flakes beginning to fall - the first snow of the year. A year in which I thought we would be meeting our first baby. The rest of the details are unnecessary, but briefly, I had the presence of mind to have my husband (who met me at home after I called him at work with the news) call and switch my appointment later that day to my OB (the only sane and decent one in the large practice). He told me there was no rush, I had several options and one of them was to simply allow my body to miscarry naturally. Over the next couple of days, DH and I weighed our options and eventually made the difficult choice to have the D&C as my body was showing no signs of letting go of the baby (the spotting had even stopped) and I couldn't emotionally handle still carrying this baby inside of me. We decided it was time to let him (we firmly believe it was a boy) go and allow us to move on with our grief and allow the baby to move on to his next destination. This was probably the hardest decision I (we) ever had to make. The procedure was very difficult for me - emotionally and physically. I chose to do it on an outpatient basis in my OB's office as opposed to under full anaesthesia in the hospital. I am very scared of being unconscious while someone does something to me and I felt, that as his mother, I owed it to my baby to be awake and present as he was removed from me. DH too was in so much turmoil, he passed out during it, which actually lent some lightness to the room as nurses rushed to his side with smelling salts and my wonderful OB didn't miss a beat, barely looked at him and said to me "he's fine. how are you?" while he continued with the work. It was like a TV show. The surgery was not painful, just some tugging and pressure. I said the six syllable mantra "Om mani padme hum" over and over throughout the ordeal - clinging to those words as my life raft. After the procedure, I had a panic attack while lying on the table and my pulse racing, dizzy, I had to stay lying down on my back while the kind nurses fed me candy (peppermint patties - I'll never eat them again) and gave me juice to drink out of a straw for a long time before I was able to get up and leave. As we took the elevator down to our car, I said to DH "I will never do that again." Meaning, if I ever have to go through the trauma of a miscarriage again, I will not put myself through the additional trauma of the surgery.
My friend chose the path of letting the baby pass naturally. It has been hard for me not to reflect on my choice those years ago and doubt it - but in my heart, I know I did what I needed to for me, for my husband and I believe, for that baby. By the time we found out the baby had passed, it had already been 3 weeks since he had died - almost one month by the time I had the D&C. My body, this body that loves to have babies, still was barely registering this fact, if at all. And there was life to get on with - a job I needed to return to and healing that needed to happen before all of that. So, I made that choice. I hope I will never have to face such a choice again.
Something like that shakes everything in your world - even your political beliefs. I am a staunch pro-choice believer. But, when you lose a baby like that, there is no doubt that it was life, life of some sort. In the waiting room next to me, a teenage mother was having an abortion. She was there with her friends and her boyfriend. Joking around about it - it was not her first - and she acted like it was routine. It was hard for me to swallow. She walked out of the office at the same time as me, but didn't look as shaky. "BTDT," as they say. It didn't shake my beliefs - I still believe vehemently in a right to choose (even in that girl's right to choose) and I believe we need to educate young people so that they don't get in a situation where they are using that procedure again and again instead of birth control. That's a bigger topic. But, it's there - when you go through this situation - it comes up.
That was our first baby. We had a memorial service with family and friends. We somehow made it through Thanksgiving (we had it at our house, a horrible idea, and I spent most of it in the computer room commiserating with women on my miscarriage chatboards that helped me so much at that time). We picked up and went to Vermont for the long weekend to get some space, some different space, some perspective, I guess. In June of the next year, I commemorated the baby's memory in a tattoo on my ankle. A picture of a little baby sleeping in a lotus. It helped me so much in moving through to whatever was next, while keeping that baby alive and always present. People always ask me about that tattoo. Some days I tell the story, some days I don't.
What was next was our Tiger. It took a long time for my body to heal and reset after the first pregnancy and miscarriage. I worked with my acupuncturist to get my cycle back to normal, to get my womb ready for another life. After several months, we learned I was pregnant the night before Thanksgiving 2009. There was tremendous joy and trememendous fear - the push and pull of hope and fear. It was just a few days after the one year anniversary of losing our first baby. It was and is so lovely to have that to celebrate at the same time that we mourn every year. The cycle of birth and death right there - and day to reflect on it all and give thanks just right around the corner!
So, today I think about being appreciative leading up to Thanksgiving. It has become about much more than turkey dinners. Every year, beginning with the year we conceived Tiger, we spend Thanksgiving morning picking up meals and delivering them to our less fortunate neighbors. And every year, I mourn the loss of our first child but celebrate the conception of our second, who, I truly believe, is so linked to our first as to be almost indistinguishable. And this year, I celebrate his 15 month birthday as well! This year, I also am thinking about aspirations as our community puts forth the 100,000 aspirations project - so that these aspirations may be placed in a new stupa being built at one of our centers. There is a subtle distinction between the two - aspiration and appreciation. To me, aspiration involves more intention - it is something you desire to put out into the world, whereas appreciation is more of a hanging back and just reviewing what is and being thankful for it. Aspiration is more forward looking, whereas appreciation is resting in the present moment. I invite you to watch this video by Pema Chodron talking about aspirations. I invite you to reflect on this during the holiday season especially.
The other day, Tiger walked up to me as I was sitting in a chair, right leg crossed over left with my ankle showing - he pointed to my tattoo, which he has seen many times but rarely every paid attention to, and said "baby" and kissed the tattoo. Then he walked away - toddling off to go play. Some day we will tell him about his big brother, but he already knows.
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