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Illustration by Alex Deadman-Wylie
My jeans were wet, having ridden my bike to the hospital in the pouring December rain. I pulled them back on and sat uncomfortably on the edge of the examining bed, the paper cover crinkling and then growing damp as we waited for the ultrasound technician to get the doctor.
“I’m so sorry, there is no heartbeat,” he said in a gentle voice, sitting in front of my partner and I in the dimly lit room. I was 10-weeks pregnant and the fetus was measuring 9 weeks. At this gestation, the loss was likely due to a developmental characteristic that made the fetus “genetically incompatible with life.” There was nothing that could have been done to prevent the outcome, and nothing that could change it now. It was all so final and sad. “That’s just nature’s way, sometimes, I guess,” I said, trying to comfort the room.
I wondered when the heart stopped beating. What was I doing? Where was I? Did I notice and pause, putting a hand to my belly? Did it slow before it stopped? Or flutter faster? Maybe I was laughing as the little heart blinked out – or just sitting at work.
They say DNA from the baby transfers to the mom early in pregnancy and stays with her forever. I felt comforted by that, but I desperately wanted to keep the fetus, too. I wanted to carry it with me, even though I could sense that the little being and its spirit had already left.
The days passed on our toddler’s advent calendar, my morning sickness started to fade and we wrestled with what to do next – let my body initiate the miscarriage in the coming weeks, use medication to trigger it at home or get on the waitlist for surgery. I was lucky to have options and a caring medical team to go with them, but I so deeply wanted to hold onto the pregnancy.
Ever stubborn, I almost succeeded. Despite taking the medication that started to turn me inside out, some of the pregnancy remained, stuck between me and where, medically, it needed to go. Then an infection moved into my bloodstream and, on Christmas day, sepsis set in.
Though I had seen my daughter and her cousins opening gifts before we left for the hospital it was all a blur. In the ER, I began to hemorrhage. My vitals crashed. I watched as the doctors and nurses struggled to stabilize me, a shared look of, not panic, but serious determination on their faces. And then I heard them make the call for an ambulance that would transfer me to a hospital where I could get a surgical abortion to remove the remaining infected tissue. “Code red,” the doctor said into the phone, “risk to life and limb.”
When I woke up from the surgery I felt relieved – as if all the battles my body had been fighting magically stopped. The recovery, compared to everything that came before, was straightforward. I had finally, reluctantly let the pregnancy go.
For how dire the situation had become, the cure was simple and effective – antibiotics and a timely abortion. Staggering too, is how common miscarriages are. Among my close friends, six had recently lost babies – or the early promise of babies. None of them had accompanying infections, thankfully, but five required or requested medical intervention. Even the most “typical” pregnancy loss can be physically harrowing and emotionally devastating. And like the fetal DNA that stays with the mother, the loss is carried by everyone who wished for a different outcome.
The ambulance paramedic who had transferred me between hospitals was an older man. He was stoic and didn’t say much until the moment before I was admitted into acute care. He leaned forward and said quietly, “I’m sorry for this, my wife and I had many losses, too.” Presumably, decades had passed since then, but he looked as if he had been transported back to the moment he’d learned the baby they’d hoped for, imagined a future for, was not going to come. It is a look I’ve now come to recognize.
For parents and people who dream of becoming parents, loss is often part of their story. Even with all the advancements science has brought, sometimes, heartbreakingly, that’s nature’s way. As I explained to my toddler and reminded myself – sometimes things grow, and sometimes they don’t, even if we really wish they would. It’s not their fault. Maybe they don’t have all the right parts in all the right places, or maybe it’s just not their time. Equally, sometimes the person who is pregnant finds themselves in a situation where they have to choose if the pregnancy can continue or not, for any number of personal or medical reasons.
There was a single yellow rose blooming in our dormant winter garden when we got home from the hospital. I brought it inside to enjoy, knowing the flower would only last for a day or few, that it wasn’t up to me. I accepted that when nature said it was time, the rose would droop and the petals would fall – gradually, one by one until none remained. Or in a flutter, all at once.
Claire Hume lives in Victoria.
