25 years ago, I had a miscarriage on MDW
A My Name is Amy
Gains + Losses
by
Amy Byrnes
This weekend marks the unofficial start to summer and the Morticia Addams in me is not sad that it’s cold and rainy here in the Northeast. That gloomy ghoul rather likes that the weather has helped temper all the pictures she'd have to see of family cookouts and someone’s freshly manicured toes in the sand with the #happyplace caption on Instagram.
I had my first miscarriage on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend 25 years ago and no medical professional was remotely interested in helping me out. The reaction was more like, “And you waited until now?” when I explained that the spotting about 9 weeks into my pregnancy had started a few days earlier.
What did I know about miscarriages?
That’s how I found myself in the basement of our local hospital later that afternoon with an ultrasound wand rammed so far up into my vagina it felt like the technician was trying to assess my spinal column and not the embryo slowly dying inside my uterus.
(On a side note: I had a lady problem a few years ago that needed to be examined and found myself once again in the sad cinder blocked dungeon of the hospital’s radiology department with the internal ultrasound wand again jammed into what felt like my lungs and I find it hard to believe that we can punch an address into a magic computer in our car to get us to our destination and yet – 25 years later – science has not found a better, less invasive, way to see what’s happening inside a woman’s uterus. Just saying.)
I already had my hands full with a two and three-year-old at home. It's like that Jim Gaffigan joke: What's it like to have a fourth kid? Imagine you're drowning, and someone hands you a baby. You can really apply that principle to any baby in your litter. It's always overwhelming to bring a newborn home to add to the mess you already have.
And yet, I really wanted that third child. I liked my days shepherding two little ones to Gymboree and bagels with friends and naps and long afternoons with PlayDoh all over the kitchen table. Early dinner and bubble baths and climbing onto somebody's bed to read, a pile of picture books next to us and their combed wet hair tucked under my arms. It was easy to lose myself in their sweetness and I didn't want it to end, forgetting that someday, inevitably, it would be the children who would want to move on.
***
I spent that whole weekend lying in bed and feeling so sad about the miscarriage and wondering what I had done wrong to set the pregnancy on a doomsday course. How had I gotten the recipe, that had worked so well for the first two kids, so wrong? And what did it say that those pregnancies were completely unplanned and that the universe was making me work so much harder for that third, much-wanted baby?
I watched cable tv and sent the kids' dad to the store to buy maxi pads and when he came home, he reported he'd been so overwhelmed in the feminine hygiene aisle that some older woman finally took pity on him and asked if she could help.
***
Weirdly, exactly one year after that visit to the hospital dungeon, I was pregnant and back in the hospital on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. Once again, I discovered medical staff wasn’t excited about my uterus’ timing. But this visit was to labor and delivery to finally give birth to that elusive third child.
She and I now joke about how it almost didn’t happen. How, when the nurses asked if I wanted to see the birth, I thought, "What the heck?", which turned out to be a true error in judgment. I watched through the standing mirror positioned at the foot of the bed my how my pelvic floor bulged with the baby’s head, which would start to make its way out and then quickly get sucked back into the birth canal. How it reminded me of the Little Rascals episode where all the little kids tried to make a cake and poured into the mixing bowl every crazy thing they could get their little hands on – like a hairbrush and corncob pipe. When they pull it out of the oven and tried to ice the thing, it started to pulsate and make this “mweep mwomp” sound. As everyone gathered around the hospital bed shouted for me to push, I stared at my undulating perineum and had a hard time connecting my brain to that part of my body that looked like the Little Rascal's cake that explodes later in that episode. It was highly alarming and left me paralyzed for a contraction or two, unable to push.
***
Most nights, when I get into bed I pull out a little flowered notebook where I list all the things I am thankful for. Sometimes it’s getting a new job and other times, it’s brown sugar cookie dough ice cream.
I always write the date at the top of the page and I’d been so busy all day on Friday that I’d forgotten the significance of the day. I picked up my phone and Facetimed my third child in the basement.
“What’s up?” she said when she finally answered. She was holding the phone so just the top of her head, like her forehead up, was showing, which I took to mean that the Facetime call from her mom was both annoying and aggressive since we had just seen each other 10 minutes earlier.
I shared with her I’d just realized the day, and how one year, I’d found myself in a hospital losing a baby I wanted so much and the very next year, I was back in the hospital having that baby. As I told her all this she began to lower the phone so I could see the tears in her big blue eyes. “I just wanted you to know how happy I am that you’re here,” I told her, and she nodded and we said goodbye.
***
I had two miscarriages before getting pregnant with my fourth child, and if that wasn't the universe trying to tell me to cease and desist, then I don't know what kind of sign I needed from God back then.
The good news is that it got baby making out of my system after that fourth baby finally came along.
The girls and I went out to dinner last night and shared plates of chicken satay and some spicy tuna on crunchy rice. I got a big bowl of ramen as my entree and as I began to eat, I could hear the cry of a small baby coming from the big table behind me. "Wait, there's a baby at that table?" I asked the girls, who nodded their heads in the affirmative. I turned my head slightly to see the bare pink bottoms of two tiny newborn-sized feet pedaling above a woman's lap.
"Does that make you want another baby?" one of the girls asked, smiling. They know I can't wait to be a grandma someday and cuddle their babies.
"Absolutely not," I said and slurped a long, wavy noodle into my mouth.
xoAmy
SUNDAY SHARES:
Due to the crappy weather, the girls and I ended up bingeing the new show Hacks on HBO. Damn, Jean Smart is having a renaissance! She was amazing in Watchmen and now absolutely kills it as an aging comedienne forced to work with a GenZ comedy writer. Loved it.
I am also absolutely obsessed with Glennon Doyle's new podcast, We Can Do Hard Things. She and her sister and funny and insightful and each of the first three episodes available tackle different "hard things." The episode on "boundaries" should be required listening for all humans.
I am really trying to curtail my TikTok-ing, but sometimes, I just can't resist swiping just one more video. Lately, I'm in a healthy-food Tok and made this recipe I saw for a crunchy topping you can add to roasted veggies or salads and it is DELICIOUS. I made a bunch and kept it in the frig and sprinkled it on salads all week. (Here she is on Instagram)
I forgot to share the movie trailer that dropped last week and even though the lead actor is now WAY too old to play the part, as verified by the internet, there could really be no one else to do it.