Adrian
It takes strength to raise a child, but it takes a different kind of strength to lose one.
There was the fear. The panic of what will we do. Conversations about an abortion that I knew I could never have. It wasn’t a serious consideration. I think we both knew from the moment that pink line made itself visible on the strip, that we were going to go through with the pregnancy. We were going to become parents.
One test wasn’t enough. There were 4 in total. 2 at home, 1 at Planned Parenthood, and still 1 more at Kaiser. It was official.
It was summer, and there was young love. It was the kind of love forged in a shared crisis, made fast and intense by teenage hormones and no idea what paths life offered beyond the sheltered protection of being young.
I had just turned 17.
Promises were whispered, a marriage proposal for when we were older, made sweet by the gaudy plastic ring from a bubblegum machine. It was huge and yellow and ugly, but I said yes, sure- so sure-of this person before me. We knew absolutely nothing beyond our summer love. We couldn't predict the turmoil and toxicity that would one day become our relationship. We couldn't know that this wasn't a valuable love, it was the selfish kind. The kind that drags you in deep and tries to drown you. That day his mom said we could end up hating each other down the road, we looked at one another across that table and smirked. It was impossible. Our love, this heady, intoxicating, I will do anything for you love… it was ours. It wasn’t ever going to disappear into hatred or distance or regret. It was tender and delicate. Passionate enough to have created a life. I was terrified, but I was also hopeful. I held his hand, I allowed him to love away the fear.
The fighting started. Little things. Rooted in the impractical reality of carrying a child at 17. A human being, nestled deep inside of me. We circled things in that JCPenney’s catalog and looked at baby books at the mall. On my lunch break I would window shop for baby things, not really sure this was happening, but propelled forward by daily life. It didn’t feel real, except late at night, when I lay awake, wondering, daydreaming. I wanted to be a mom. No matter that I had broken my parents’ hearts. No matter how scared I was or how unreal it all felt at the moment. Already I knew my child. No bigger then a poppy seed, my baby.
There was that fourth of July night. I sat on the hood of my little blueberry colored car, his arms wrapped tight around me. I watched the fireworks blaze the night sky, realizing it was my first ever fourth of July spent away from my mom and dad, another symbol of how I was being thrust into adulthood. I was sad, and scared, and unsure of how to handle this budding independence.
I read What to Expect When You’re Expecting on a lazy weekend on my friend’s couch. I took naps, and had mood swings, and felt my back ache. But life went on. I listened when my mom said she was coming around and was getting excited at the idea of little pitter-patter feet to come. My dad stopped speaking to me. There was silence and disappointment, and I had no way to bridge back. No way to be a little girl anymore. He wanted us to get married, have an abortion, keep the baby. My mom told me I broke his heart and that he had cried when she told him. I had never seen my dad cry.
There was the night before my first prenatal appointment. I lay awake all night, writing in my journal, too excited to sleep. I drew a diagram of how to rearrange my bedroom. I thought silly, girlish things, like how I would carry my pink comb in the diaper bag. We named our baby, not yet knowing the sex.
That morning he brought me my favorite orange juice, and we went with my mom to the appointment. They waited in the other room, while I went in with a bunch of other women, and watched videos and filled out paperwork. My due date had not been written on the sheet given back, so I went up and asked. March 2, 1998 they said. I had blood drawn.
I was spotting. Had been since early that morning. I had thrown on a pad and was told it was normal. After the appointment, my mom went to work and he and I drove to Arby’s and then back to his house. The blood was increasing, and so was the pain. Cramps at first, and then the dull ache spread to my legs.
Denial brought us to the bookstore. There was no internet, no quick Google search to provide answers. We both thought it, but we did not utter it. Not one word of it. The pain in my body came on swiftly. Walking through the mall became almost impossible. We drove across the street to his mom’s office. She had me call Kaiser, who told me to come in just to be on the safe side.
Hope. Hope. Hope.
I would not believe I was losing my baby. Not when the pain became so very unbearable... When it felt like my back was being ripped apart. The cramps were sensational. It felt like I was riding a bucking bronco or like the dirt deep in the earth was cracking and splitting and being reborn through my very body. That was the day I realized how strong my physical body could be. We made it to the hospital emergency room in ten minutes, which included a stop at a nearby gas station when it felt like I was going to explode. As we stood in line, I felt the release of something thick and final in my womb, as tissue slid out from me.
I knew. With sickening finality, I knew.
Still, we said nothing about it. We let this woman go on ahead. She looked like she was very ill. We were polite in our desperation. Too naive to know that heartache could come to those so young. Death and loss still belonged to old people. Not to us. Not to newly cemented love and precious life growing inside of me. We did not yet know the harsh truth of life- that loss can happen to anyone, at any time.
We waited for about an hour in the waiting room, and then another hour in the examining room. I wore a hospital gown and my school bus socks, reading a book. He sat in a chair and we waited… and waited… and waited. Blood stained my thighs. When the doctor came in, he slipped out to call my parents.
I lay back, counted the cracks in the ceiling, tears pooling in my eyes. I blinked them fast away. Cold fingers pried me apart. “You had a miscarriage.” No emotion in the doctors voice. Words, words, more words. I felt myself crumble so I forced myself to look up, don’t cry, be strong. He showed me the clumpy, gray tissue that had once been my baby.
My baby.
My baby.
Gone.
When he came back in the room, I didn’t say anything. I just stared at him and he knew. He cried. Maybe we hugged. I don’t remember. My parents arrived. My dad, wearing that straw hat he used to wear a lot that year. My mom. They were frantic, angry.
I was put to sleep for the D&C. Before that, I was smiling. I was swallowing all of my hurt, so that I could be strong for the three sad faces looking at me. I remember looking down at those school bus socks. It hadn't hit me yet, what this loss was and how it would change my very core. I was still very much a child.
During the D&C I woke up during the procedure. Groggy and half asleep, but I felt the pain and it was the most intense pain I had ever experienced. It felt as if my every fiber was being sucked out of me. It didn’t last long, but I gripped the hand of the person next to me- I don’t know if it was a nurse or a medical assistant- but I clung and squeezed and cried until it was over and the sedation took back over.
The next thing I remember is waking up in recovery. It was very, very quiet. There was no one around me. I made a decision. I remember it, in that grainy way we can recall an event from long ago. I decided to act fine. I didn’t want my hurt to fall and melt and drown anyone else. Perhaps I just didn’t know how to grieve yet. I wouldn’t know how to for years.I needed to be strong. That is all I knew at the moment.
Afterwards, I ate a quick dinner and fell fast asleep in my own bed. I didn't think about the fact that I had to go in to work the next day. I forgot until they called the house and my mom had to tell them what had happened.
The following day we went to Ocean Beach with our friends. I still wore the hospital bracelet. They didn’t believe we had lost the baby. I was forcing myself to move on, to just deal with it, not to think about it.
But we had.
The loss wouldn’t hit until later.
And when it did come, it engulfed me. I stayed quiet in my pain.
Stayed quiet when I saw my pregnant friends at school.
Stayed quiet when I drove to pick him up from school, imagining the car seat that was supposed to be in that car with me.
Stayed quiet when my pregnant cousin let me feel her growing stomach. We were due around the same time.
Stayed quiet when I started to skip classes, and sleep in my car. When I stopped connecting with my friends. Stopped caring about grades and school and going to college.
Stayed quiet when my dad accused me of doing drugs.
Stayed quiet when he cheated on me, broke up with me, pulled me back again.
Stayed quiet, stayed quiet, stayed quiet.
My grief was an ocean
And his mom had been right.
She had known what we hadn’t learned yet…
That life is never constant and change comes in one moment that rocks entire foundations.
That loss is an ugly thing, and that we were too young to handle that kind of monster.
That sometimes even love cannot be held still in the face of loss.
That hatred can be born just as quickly as love can.
That day I bled.
I bled my baby.
I bled my heart.
We lost. All 3 of us. Father, mother, child.
We lost each other and there was no one to tell us how to get past that.
Written on February 06, 2013
