I Had a Miscarriage by Jessica Zucker (classic books to read .TXT) 📗

Sitting there on the toilet, in an effort to galvanize physical and emotional wherewithal, I fervently texted a few of my closest friends and family “I HAD A MISCARRIAGE.” I could not summon them to physically be by my side, but as the blood continued to drain from my body and she remained in my presence—both of and not of this world—I found myself reaching for some semblance of community, of comfort, of a way to tether myself to the living as I remained in the presence of death.

In the meantime, Jason had made it home, and I had instructions to relay to him from the doctor, who was still on the phone.

“Get a plastic bag!” I shouted. “Put her in it so we can bring her to Dr. Schneider’s office.” Anything but grounded, reeling from his own experience of this trauma, he shot back, “Why are you calling it ‘her’?!” before descending the three flights down to our kitchen, where leftover grocery bags were stored.

The last thing I needed was to hear him call the baby—our baby—“it.” I don’t know what I expected his reaction to be, but even in the very initial moments of my grief, I knew it wasn’t that.

• • •

We numbly sped to the doctor’s office, mute.

When we arrived, I urged him to leave me on the corner and go find parking. Blood was spilling down my legs as I stood there, on the bustling corner of West Third Street and Willaman Drive, across from the Cedars-Sinai towers. Waiting for the light to change, holding the unimaginable bag, shouting into the phone to my sister: “The baby FELL. OUT. She is IN A BAG.” She couldn’t believe that had possibly happened. I couldn’t either. I still can’t, all these years later.

With increasingly soaked towels still stuffed down my baggy sweatpants, I knew I wasn’t going to stop bleeding until I delivered the placenta. In an effort to push the details of what was to come out of my mind, I recounted every detail of my miscarriage (thus far) to my sister while I shared a street with oblivious strangers.

“Wait, go back!” she said. “The baby came out while you were home alone?!”

“Yes,” I replied. “She did. And I had to cut the umbilical cord. I have her in a bag right now so the doctor can do testing!” I wailed, the unfolding events unimaginable to me at sixteen weeks along. But what was even more unimaginable is that, on that busy street and as my life felt as though it was unraveling, people around me continued to live theirs. As I held the remains of my daughter in a bag, blood collecting in pools around my ankles, people were rushing past me to work or day care, a coffee date with a friend or a mundane errand. The contrast was nothing short of jarring.

As I started to disassociate from the duality of it all, I watched my life from a distance. And in the safety provided by that distance, I let the dread take hold. I felt suspended in midair, floating in the liminal space between life and death; a simultaneous place of trauma and disbelief, where the certainty that all life ends clashes with the sheer cruelty of an unexpected loss. I remember that, for a moment, I was terrified for my future self. Now there’s a dead baby. A hollow womb. What will come next? How will I mother, work, put one foot in front of the other, and grieve? Amazing, the places our minds go.

I was bleeding incessantly, and I couldn’t fathom how I’d take my pants off when I arrived at the doctor’s office. But when she ushered me in, I heeded her orders to do so, and a blood clot the size of a boulder splattered across the floor. A nurse muttered that it looked like a “murder scene.” She wasn’t wrong—a death had occurred, and it had felt violent and cruel. The only way to make the bleeding stop was to extract the placenta, and that meant proceeding with a dilation and curettage (D&C), a procedure to remove it and any remaining tissue inside my uterus.

Before the procedure began, a nurse removed her from the plastic bag for testing, then placed her on the kind of tray you’d see surgical tools prepped on, where she stayed for the duration of my D&C. Her peaceful body was within eyeshot as mine continued to writhe.

I was faced with two options: wait for anesthesiology—numbing me for the painful mechanic extraction—and continue to bleed, then undergo a blood transfusion; or just get on with it unmedicated, pain, bloodlessness, and all. While I wanted desperately to not be in physical pain anymore, I was told that it could take the anesthesiologist up to an hour to arrive and administer the medication. If I chose to simply get it over with, the whole ordeal would be over in another ten or fifteen minutes, max. So, desperate for it all to end, I elected to press on without anesthesia. I couldn’t imagine the fleeting pain would be any worse than the agony I already felt, emotionally and physically.

At some point, Jason entered the room. To this day I cannot recall from where or how, at what time or in what state. I can’t tell you how he looked—was his face distraught with worry?—or if he asked my doctor for clarity on the next steps. I do, however, remember the rhythmic sound of his labored breath. He had been running. He ran to me. Now by my side, I asked Jason to turn some music on to help drown out the near-savage sound of the machine—to drown out the thoughts that accompanied those sounds.

Jason obliged and put on Alexi Murdoch’s “All My Days,” but the usually calming rhythm was woefully incapable of shielding me from the sounds that will always signify the final moments of my pregnancy. As the machine roared, I