"When are you going to have another?"
A story about pregnancy loss.
Trigger warning: This story is about pregnancy loss and contains graphic details. Please take care of yourself and make a conscious choice whether to read this piece. Whatever you decide, even if you change your mind halfway through, I will not be offended.
The mother sat. Her legs spread open over the toilet seat. Her back rounded and her eyes stared down into the red, swirling with liquidy, mucousy, gelatinous tissue. She normally peed with the door open, chatting away to her husband in the next room or with a friend on the phone. Or waiting for her almost-toddler to peek her head around the door frame. “Mama,” her daughter would say with her eyes batting flirtatiously as she scanned the mother’s head and body. While patting her own tummy, “bah-yee,” she’d acknowledge. Body. But not today. Today, the bathroom door was closed, locked, unreachable. Today, she let her weight press into the toilet seat until it left thin indented lines on the sides of her thighs that she sometimes wished were just a bit less thick.
The mother’s insides buckled again. Her stomach taught, bulging toward the bottom, not unlike labor contractions–or “surges” as her hypnobirthing instructor corrected. Like a fist inside her, wringing out her uterus in slow motion, starting at the top, working its way down, until the liquid drained for now. When it ended, the mother peered down. Reddish, purplish, darkness, falling out of her in a thick string of fleshy goop. The toilet bowl splattered red, the aftermath of a Jackson Pollack or shark attack. The mother sat to feel it all.
The bathroom window had a view of the yard. She could hear voices, laughter, the screech of a toddler who accidentally doused herself with cold water from the water table. She wondered how long she’d been hiding away from the noise and the smiles. Her daughter’s birthday party carried on with her behind a locked door. Her brain was torn in two places and her body was only right here.
She tried to rise and visualize her daughter bouncing from person to person showing them her favorite flower or pointing to her “dah-yee” (doggy). She desperately wanted to watch the joy on her daughter’s face as she tasted cake for the first time. Instead, her body remained glued to the toilet seat. Her guests must’ve been wandering around the yard wondering where she went. The absent mother.
All day, when she rose to stand, she could feel the gelatinous wet leak out of her onto her maxi-pad. The doctor (after Google) told her not to use tampons. Her body needed to expel, not absorb, from the inside. But she wanted to absorb it. She wanted her body to retain, to hold, not to expel. Expel. As if her body were a machine in a factory. Was it supposed to be that mechanical? Sudden and quick? Like they portray birth in the movies, the entire event boiled down to a few minutes of laborious pushing and then, “POP!” A baby! This was slow and would last for days, possibly weeks. The stringy tissue oozing out of her like a fleshy wound. Her pad soaked with the extra-thick resting on top like a cherry, the pad unable to absorb anymore.
The father knocked on the door.
“You ok?”
“Yeah, I’ll be out soon.”
A pause.
“Are you sure?”
“It’s just so lonely.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“There’s a part of me that wants you to come in and be with me, to see the toilet, but I don’t want to put you through that.”
“Oh but I will if you want me to. I want to be there for you.”
The mother thought about having him bear witness. But it was hers alone to bear.
“Thanks, babe, that’s really sweet, but it’s ok. It’s my body.”
“Ok, well, just let me know if you change your mind.”
It was hers alone. And also the billions of other women in human history who have experienced this, so called, expelling. A normal event. Something that approximately 20% of women who become pregnant have been through. Something that now three out of five of her closest friends have been through multiple times. So normal that the doctor didn’t even need to see her unless she soaked through more than one pad per hour. A hemorrhage. And then, to the emergency room. This was a real possibility, although unlikely. And nobody would know but her. She could watch herself hemorrhaging if she wanted to. She could bleed out and say nothing and nobody would know.
The mother sat for long enough for yet another wringing of her insides to come barreling toward her. With her elbows resting on her thighs and her face resting on her palms, she held her breath and then remembered to let it go with a hardly audible sigh. She pressed her hands to her thighs and neatly folded five squares of toilet paper. She wiped her vagina, slick with a layer of bloody tissue sticking to her pubic hair. She pulled it all away with the wipe and stared at it. She could make out the layers of built up uterine lining compared to the blood and fluid surrounding it. She knew she had to get back to the party. She ripped open a new maxipad. Her fourth of the day and it was about noon. Not quite one per hour.
Her weight shifted away from her seat, to her feet. She stood, feeling the familiar lightheadedness, her blood flowing a bit too slowly. She pulled up her panties and allowed the dry cotton to cradle her. She opened the door to the bathroom and slowly walked downstairs. Her legs dragged like bricks. She pulled her hands away from her abdomen. As she descended, the giggles, screeching, and voices felt like a crescendo of echoes. She could not focus on one voice in particular; she could not make out her daughter’s babbling. She felt her body breathe deeply after she had unknowingly held her breath. Exhale and she emptied.
As both feet hit the landing, the mother’s aunt caught her arm, cozied up next to her, “Sooooo,” drawn out speech with an upward inflection, “when are you going to have another?”
If you made it here, thank you for reading. If you have suffered from pregnancy loss and would like to talk, I am always here to connect. I also am a huge proponent of therapy, meditation, journaling, and movement as forms of healing. And, as a volunteer with Postpartum Support International, I can tout their excellent resources:
Oh sweetie. This was so heart trending. The juxtaposition of the birthday party, a celebration of life and a private, lonely death. 😞 Thank you for sharing this personal moment. 🙏