Saturday, June 7, 2014

The Bleed Out

I wrote the following on February 17, 2014 in remembrance of my miscarriage in January of 2006.



How did you want to handle the burial the nurse asked……burial.  I hadn’t even realized I needed to think of that.  At not quite three months along, dealing with the grief of losing a baby was enough, not to mention the surgery needed to remove the fetus.  Now a burial?  Shell shocked, she just moved me along through the process, asking if I understood what was going to happen.  Yeah, lady, I just lost a kid.  She died.  My baby girl.  I bled out.  On a cruise ship.  Just a couple of days after I lost my dad to death.  On the same cruise ship.  Stuck in the ocean.  Yeah, I kinda understand this death thing.  I just went through it before being thrust into it again.

On the day of departure, already vacated from the room on the cruise ship, I felt a sizeable gush.  I knew it wasn’t right.  Rushing to the bathroom in the magnificent ship’s lobby, there was blood.  Lots of blood.  With nothing but my carry on luggage (the cruise ship takes care of the large bags for you, and meets you with it on the dock after departure) I did the only thing I knew how – I wiped and wrapped up with toilet paper and rushed out to my then husband.  I was given a listless pat on the back, and a graceless ‘it’ll be fine’ line.  We’ll just call the doctor once we get home.  With that, he leaves me to my carry on bags as well as to Christian and his bags.  The man just walked away.  Luckily, my brother in law at the time overheard the conversation, and saw me struggling to pull two bags as well as hold Christian’s small hand.  He comes up, whispers that I shouldn’t be doing all this with the situation, and grabs my two bags, attempting to haul them out along with his.  He doesn’t say much, but his eyes convey that he knows what I know.  I just lost my baby, only days after losing my dad, and the douche of an ex husband just walked away empty handed in more ways than one.

The doctor’s visit was a slow, extended, painful process to confirm what I already knew.  When the ultrasound girl only looks but doesn’t say anything, when she leaves the room to get the doctor, when the doctor just looks and sighs and asks me to meet him in his office.  As he sits behind his massive desk his glasses come off.  He rubs his eyes, looks up.  What else can he say…..I already knew.  I asked why.  A million reasons was his response.  A million different complications, maybe even a combination.  But I want to KNOW.  I want to know why……there isn’t a good reason why.  This happens many, many times I am told.

I am walked through the process, how I have to have surgery to remove the baby, that more than likely I’ll have kids again without a problem.  But that isn’t the end of it.  You just don’t remove “it” and move on…..years later I still keep track of how old she’d be, and wonder what she’d be like.  I did have another perfect kiddo, with no adverse affect from the miscarriage.  Christian has told people before that he has two siblings.  A brother AND a sister.  But that his sister is already in Heaven.  He states it very matter of fact.  Even though she does not exist here in the physical realm any more, she does exist.  She’d be eight this August.  I still cry.  And wonder.  And in many ways, I still bleed out, but this time it’s my heart that just pains and bleeds for the baby I knew, and loved, and held, but never got to truly meet.

No comments:

Post a Comment