One of the Lucky Ones

I’ve tried to keep these blogs consistent on theme—focusing mainly on my writing process and updates on current projects, while trying to incorporate aspects of my personal life. After all, this is a writer’s blog—my illustrious 9-to-5 won’t exactly produce the content that people want to read on a monthly basis. But for my post this month, I’ve been debating on whether to write about something incredibly personal that happened recently. Something that shook me to my core and isn’t a topic that’s openly discussed; it’s curtained by hushed tones and buried deep beneath the surface of taboo, grief, and shame.

And it shouldn’t be. Questioning whether to write about it—even speak about it—shouldn’t cross my mind. Society’s archaic view is more reason to bring the topic to the forefront. Talking promotes healing, silence promotes shame.

With that in mind, I’ve thought about it long and hard and have realized it’s something that made me truly reflect on life. It has affected just about everything. And that’s a good thing.

So here goes.

Starting a family has always been a top priority in my life, and I’m lucky enough that my husband holds the same values. It was discussed at length on one of our first dates. We both come from very tight-knit family units, that has only expanded when our siblings started having kids. But having nieces and nephews just wasn’t enough. So, we got married in June and didn’t want to linger in the “honeymoon phase”. Two months into trying, we both waited impatiently outside our bathroom for the pregnancy test to stop “cooking”. After three minutes and chugging the remainder of my grapefruit White Claw (“That might be your last one for a while,” he told me) I opened the bathroom door and retrieved the test.

And it was positive.

When the “Oh crap, it worked,” feeling wore off, we were both indescribably happy. Our smiles were ear to ear and we started dreaming about our baby—our baby still sounds so weird. Over the next few weeks, we slowly told our close family and friends, and made the preliminary doctor appointments. Blood tests and an ultrasound confirmed our bundle of joy, and we even had a date—April 2020. My first trimester was nothing short of perfect; no excessive morning sickness, food aversions, mood swings, or overall pain. Every day, I stared at myself in the mirror in earnest, watching the slight bump grow. It was exciting and the most excruciating secret to keep for twelve weeks—“safe zone” to tell people you are expecting. Additionally, we wanted to wait until we’d told my husband’s entire family overseas before making any sort of official announcement. Between us, we decided to keep the news off social media until after the twelfth week. I’ve never been great at keeping this kind of secret—when I found out both my sisters were pregnant, I almost immediately called my best friends to spill the beans. But this secret reveal would be worth the wait, especially with the announcement I had planned.

The morning of October 10th—my 13th week—started like any other with my husband’s alarm blaring at 6am. But he lingered in bed, cuddled up close to me until my alarm went off about ten minutes later. Then he got up to shower and I pushed snooze on my alarm. After dressing, he climbed back into bed with me, and kissed me goodbye before making his way downstairs and out the door for work—our usual routine for the day. After his goodbye kiss, I usually stay in bed until my second alarm but that morning I got up almost immediately and headed for the bathroom.

I think about the two minutes that followed like this: if my husband hadn’t lingered in bed for an extra ten minutes and if I had slept til my second alarm, he would’ve been well on his way to work and not heard my scream from the bathroom.

Because I was bleeding.

Bleeding more than I knew I ought.

My husband bound up the stairs and was kneeling by my side before I could utter another syllable. My mind went blank with panic, but the first thing I uttered when I looked up into his worried, crystal blue eyes was, “Should I not go to work?” He looked at me incredulously and then went back to our bedroom and grabbed my phone. He handed it over, saying, “Call your mom.”

Phone calls to my parents’ house before 7am never bodes well. My dad answered on the second ring, knowing something was wrong. “Everything okay?’ he asked. I couldn’t tell him, I just asked for him to wake my mom. I listened as he huffed up the stairs, their bedroom door creaking open, the buzz of the box fan, and then his voice as he woke my mother, telling her it was me on the phone. “What’s the matter,” she said, her voice sleepy but instantly alert.

I don’t know if anything I said to her made sense—a series of jumbled words, improperly placed in a sentence format, only conveying the severity of the situation and my pure terror. My mother is truly a warrior woman and remained completely calm and composed even though her daughter might be going through something awful from her own distant past. She asked me a series of questions which I answered as best I could. Questions she knew all too well; my mother had three miscarriages and delivered a stillborn all before my elder sister was born. In addition, she worked for forty-one years as a neonatal and pediatrics nurse. “Don’t worry,” she said. “This happened early on with both your sisters. Hang up with me and call your doctor.”

Which I did. Office hours weren’t until 8am so I was put through to an on-call triage. Eventually the doctor answered, and she asked me the same set of questions my mother had. After listening to my sobbing reply, she asked how close the nearest hospital was. My heart sank, and my stomach convulsed. “We just want to make sure everything is okay,” she assured me, but still insisted that I come straight to the ER.

The thirty-four-minute drive to the hospital was tense. My husband white-knuckled the steering wheel with his left hand while gently holding my hand with his right, as he negotiated rush hour traffic. His eyes never left the road, even as I cried hysterically beside him, clutching my stomach. I’m thankful for his strength during that drive—though he told me after that he was holding his own tears at bay. Silently, I pleaded with God, begged my aunt and grandmother to keep our baby—our baby—safe. I closed my eyes and prayed harder than I ever have. All I wanted was to hold my baby. Please God, let me hold my baby.

My two previous visits to the ER have been for other people: once when my Dad was t-boned in an intersection, and again when my husband had an emergency appendectomy. So, I’ve never been the one in the bed. I was expecting to a take a seat in the waiting room, but we were immediately escorted back—my situation had preferential treatment. The nurse laid out sanitary pads on the hospital bed then handed me a gown to undress into. My hands were shaking uncontrollably, so my husband had to help me strip down and climb onto the bed.

After two hours, a physical exam, a blood draw, an IV drip (to fill my bladder), and countless questions from billing, I was finally taken for an ultrasound. Beforehand, the ER doctor—who is a credit to her profession and made me laugh even though I was a blubbering mess—told me that the ultrasound tech wouldn’t speak to me and to not ask questions; they were all business down there, but it didn’t mean anything was wrong. So, as the tech took pictures of my abdomen, I closed my eyes and repeated my prayers from earlier, with one added plea; Please, let there be a heartbeat.

And I am one of the lucky ones.

My cervix was closed, the baby was not in distress and had a healthy heartbeat at 150rpm, and they knew what caused the bleeding. I had a subchorionic hemorrhage—basically a pocket of blood—on the wall of my uterus that the placenta was bearing down on. If big enough, these hemorrhages can cause complications, including miscarriages. But mine was small. The doctor prescribed rest, avoiding stress—and WebMD—and cutting back on exercise. And that was it. My husband and I walked out of the ER in an exhausted haze, but also completely humbled by what we just experienced. We were walking out of the hospital with our baby still safe inside me, and not many do that.

I didn’t know you could love something so fiercely without seeing or touching it. We wanted this baby, but more so when we thought it was going to be taken from us.

It’s been over a month now, with no more issues—thank God. It certainly brought us closer and made me love my husband all the more. But it also gave me a deep appreciation and respect for my mother. Four times, four times she went through this, but she didn’t let the heartbreak quench her dream of having a family. How she’s still (relatively) sane is beyond me. With my own experience well in the past, I recently had the courage to talk to her about those pregnancies—the babies she still mourns and the experiences she has never talked about. And I’m thankful for that. My mother (and father) fought for our family and deserves every ounce of happiness.

Today, I am just shy of 19-weeks. And I don’t take that for granted. Every pound I put on, every piece of clothing that no longer fits, the cheese and sushi I can’t eat, the alcohol that I (begrudgingly) must abstain from, and the small discomforts I feel are now a badge of honor. I’m looking forward to feeling that first flicker of movement—something I’m told will happen any day now.

I also realize it’s very easy for me to sit here and preach the need for an open discussion on miscarriage; the grief I experienced for only a few hours was only a glimpse into the real thing. But I’ve seen the stigma and PTSD-like symptoms of not talking through the loss of a child—the yearly pain my mother still deals with on my unborn sister’s birthday. So, for anyone of you out there suffering in silence, I’m here. My ears and heart are open, and you are never alone.