A Loss

Two weeks ago, during Holy Week, I had a miscarriage. It lasted for three days, and it was the most heart-wrenching experience I have had in a long time. It was terrible.

I had suspected that I was pregnant for some time, as my body had responded alarmingly quickly to the hormonal changes. The evening before the miscarriage started, I took a pregnancy test that came up with a faint positive line. Even though the pregnancy was unplanned [Sidenote: all ye who do not want babies, hear me when I say: the birth control pill does not come with a 100% guarantee], I was completely ecstatic, and as Preston and I sat in the dining room that night, we started talking about the baby for the first time as if it were real - it would have been due in late November or early December, and we had decided that we might stay in Pennsylvania for the holidays.

I went to bed that night with cramping, and when I woke up in the morning I knew something was wrong; I just felt different. Within a few hours of my waking up and walking around, the miscarriage began. At first I thought it was my period - that the pregnancy symptoms and test had been a fluke - but throughout the course of the day, it became clear that this was not my period (and for your sake, dearest reader, that's as detailed as my description will be).

I walked around in a haze in the days that followed. Pale and weak from the blood loss, I looked terrible. When Ness lunged at another dog in the street on our walk one morning, I simply didn't have the strength to stay up, and she pulled me roughly to the ground, where I became scraped and bruised. My left knee still hurts. I found it incredibly hard to motivate myself to do much of anything. I went through the motions - school, dogs, dinner, sleep - but the days were hollow.

At the same time, however, I also felt silly. The pregnancy was still very, very early - I miscarried between five and six weeks - and I felt ashamed at being so affected by the loss of a baby that really wasn't even a baby yet: according to the The Internet (the source of all knowledge, obviously) the baby was probably only the size of a poppy seed when I miscarried. That is right. A POPPY SEED. But still. It was my poppy seed, our poppy seed, the poppy seed that would change our lives forever in every possible cliché sort of way. And I was devastated to lose it.

In the two weeks since those terrible three days, I have accepted that this loss was a valid one. I no longer feel ashamed about taking time to grieve. I needed time and thankfully, was surrounded by people who allowed me to take it. Preston was an enormous support during what was I know an incredibly difficult time for him as well, and the few family members and friends I told rallied around me immediately. I will say it again: I am a lucky girl.

***

My Mom miscarried between my middle brother and me. She was much farther along than I was (she had heard a heartbeat), and was understandably devastated. The year was 1987, and a family friend brought her a tiny rubber plant as a consolation gift. When I was growing up, that rubber plant sat in our plant room, and for years my mother never trimmed it, feeling that the plant was a tangible connection to the child that she had lost. By the late 90's, it had taken over the plant room, snaking along the walls and windows like kudzu. Eventually its branches grew so heavy that it started to topple over, and when I was in high school, she finally trimmed it. When Preston and I moved to Pennsylvania in 2007, she gave me a tiny shoot that she had potted for me. After three years on a sun-flooded window-sill in our den, that tiny shoot has grown into a full-fledged tree (see it here), and I have passed my own potted trimmings along to several friends.

A few days after I told my Mom about my own miscarriage, I came home to see a lovely house plant with a few flowers - yellow and pink roses - waiting on the front desk in our building. When I opened the card, I saw that it was from my Mom and my brothers, telling me that they were thinking of Preston and me and that they loved us. As I climbed the stairs to our apartment, I quietly started to cry, and tears rolled down my cheeks and onto my chest. When I called my Mom to thank her later that evening, she told me that she had wanted to send something that would be more permanent than an arrangement: she wanted me, in a way, to have my own rubber plant. We both cried again (it's what we do best).

Although the roses that were stuck in the plant have now died, the plant itself is doing splendidly in its new home. I don't know that I'll never trim it, or re-pot it, or forget to water it one day, but I do know that for right now, it is a genuine comfort. It is lovely and green and new and fresh, and bending a little bit more towards the light every day. On our window of plants in the dining room, it is the first plant I look at when I walk into the room every morning. I notice every new growth, and I gently touch its leaves as I pass by the window during the day. It is not a substitute for the baby that we lost, nor is it meant to be. It is meant to be a herald for spring and a physical reminder of new life. And right now, that is exactly what I need.