The Baby Who Almost Wasn't

Until his or her first shocking gasp of air, the initial glaring preview of bright lights, and the sight of a pair of strange hands reaching out to pull them into the world, a baby shares a kind of secret identity with its mother. She is usually the first to know of its existence, and the first to recognize its unique personality and temperament. A baby whose movements go unnoticed during the day, but who seems to host a dance party each evening will be a night owl, while the child who kicks vigorously whenever mom eats ice cream will have a penchant for sweets.

She alone bears the responsibility of protecting and nourishing her child up until the moment of birth when she must share them with the rest of the world. But for nine months, she has the satisfaction of knowing that her child rests securely below her heart, an extension of her own body.

Just after R’s second birthday, I got pregnant for the second time. My midwife estimated that I would be due around the end of April or the beginning of May. We were very excited that R would be a big brother.

I was about 6 weeks pregnant when I decided to go out and thin the hosta plants on the side of the house. I knew that I would never get it done in the spring when the baby was born, and I had been feeling great (unlike the first six weeks I was pregnant with R, and constantly felt like I was on an ocean liner without any Dramamine). I dug and pulled and split, and when I was happy with the results, I went in the house. That evening, I knew that something was wrong.

An ultrasound the next day revealed a kind of bruise on the lining of the uterus where the placenta had attached. The tech reassured me that this sort of thing was very common and many times healed on its own. Still, the slower than usual heartbeat, and the fact that the baby measured almost a week and a half behind where it should left me with an ominous feeling. They scheduled another ultrasound for a week-and-a-half later and sent me home.

Just as a mother is the first to know of her baby’s existence, I believe that I knew almost immediately when that little flicker of a heartbeat officially stopped beating. I didn’t feel pregnant anymore, even though I had had no more outward signs that that was the case. We waited several more days for the follow up ultrasound, but when they went to look for the heartbeat, the tech turned the screen away from us, and I knew that the baby was gone. I should have been eight weeks pregnant.

First, I was consumed with guilt. If only I had been patient and waited to thin the hostas, I might not have caused the bruising on my uterus. (My midwife assured me that the bruise was there from conception, and nothing that I could have done would have changed the outcome.) Then there were the days that I stayed in bed, unwilling to face the rest of the world, especially the people I felt that I had somehow let down by miscarrying this baby.

Knowing that I needed to return to normal life, I decided one day to go do some early Christmas shopping. I love the Christmas season, and I thought that the decorations and the atmosphere might help snap me out of the funk I was experiencing. I was looking through the ornament section at a local department store when I came across the “Baby’s First Christmas” ornaments. I fled the store, half-blinded by tears and drove home.

One night, R asked me to read the book “Horton Hears a Who” before bedtime. It was a book we had read a hundred times. Horton the Elephant discovers a microscopic world of tiny people called the Whos, and he saves them from certain destruction. There’s a line in the book that reads, “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” When we reached that line, J had to take over and put R to bed that night.

Although we told few people outside of our families and a couple of very close friends, I confided in a friend and colleague at work. His wife had had a miscarriage between the births of their son and daughter many years before. He shared with me how difficult the experience had been on them, especially her. And then he said something that, although I couldn’t fully appreciate the message in the moment, stuck with me for many months. In retrospect, it was probably the most sage advice given to me during that time period.

What he told me was this: “Looking back now, I know that without what happened to us, even though it was so difficult, I wouldn’t have my daughter or my grandchildren. I might have a different child and different grandchildren, but not exactly these ones, and I can’t imagine my life without them.”

K was conceived a few months later, and when I look at her today, I find it impossible to think about my life without her. My sassy girl with innocent blue eyes and full, pouty lips, her blonde curls cascading down the back of her sweet baby neck. The bossy way she reminds everyone to put their coat on before going outside, and how she must identify every person she knows in a photograph before she can move on. What would my life be like without her raspy little voice singing along to “I Love You a Bushel and a Peck” or finishing each line in the Madeline books?

As the months went on, and I confided in more friends and family members, I realized how common miscarriage is, and how many of us had silently gone through the cycle of joy, hope, fear, disappointment and sorrow. I wondered why this wasn’t a topic more widely discussed among women. There are few things worse than feeling alone.

The baby we lost would have been three this May, and even though the hosta-side of the house can still put me in a melancholy mood, and I sometimes wonder whether it was a boy or a girl and what he or she might have been like, I know that if I had been spared the pain of experiencing miscarriage, I would also have missed the elation of being K’s momma. In a roundabout way, I feel gratitude toward that tiny person the rest of the world never got to know, but who for six short weeks lived under my heart, and who will live for the rest of my life inside of it.