The Worst Feeling

Disclaimer: This happened a few weeks ago. I'm working through it and feeling much better, but I wrote this in the middle of the bad. I wanted to post it because I feel like so many women experience this and I don't know why it feels like this shameful thing at times. It wasn't my fault, and there was nothing I could have done differently. The more women I talk about it with, the more I learn have either experienced it or have a very close friend or relative who has. It's going to be okay, but the loneliness that in part comes from the shame that surrounds the experience is not.

 

One of the worst feelings in the world, must be that moment when you’re reclining back on that stupid exam table with your legs spread, waiting to hear your first baby’s heartbeat for the very first time, and you see a circle on the screen and realize, there’s nothing else. You glance at the doctor because maybe you just don’t understand what’s going on and you see her mouth go into a thin concerned line. She lightly says “well there’s no heartbeat” and proceeds to move that uncomfortable wand around your woman bits trying to poke a heart beat into that empty circle. She softly says “maybe a blighted ovum” and that you’ll need to come back next week because maybe the dates are off, but as of right now, there’s a sac, but no baby.

No baby.

Just an empty circle that’s been playing mind games with you. Making you pee all the time, making you hungry for second breakfast at 10:30am, 2^nd lunch at 3:30pm and pre-dinner snack at 5pm, and making you feel full and curvy and beautiful.  Did you make those symptoms up? Are you delusional in wanting a baby so much you completely convinced yourself that you had pregnancy symptoms?

No baby.

You keep it together in the office and take it in stride. “Okay come back next week and double check and if not, then you’ll give me the pills to have a miscarriage. Sounds good.” You get dressed quickly; make your appointment for next week and walk down the hall to the elevator and outside, trying not to catch your husband’s eye. He pulls you aside in a doorway and says, “Come here.” And you cry a little but then pull it back together because you’ve got a 30 minute subway ride surrounded by strangers to get through before you’re safe at home.

No baby.

You get home and finally, you cry in your husband’s arms. Because there’s no baby, because you’re apparently delusional, because you have an empty sac taking up space and preventing you from trying for another baby, because there never actually was a baby, and because how can you be sad for something you never really had.

No baby.

And you’re angry with your body. You felt beautiful and gorgeous not four hours earlier and now your body has made a joke of you. Why didn’t you just miscarry before it had been a month of happiness and planning and hoping? Why did you think you had pregnancy symptoms? Why after months of trying? Why didn’t I work right?

No baby.

You wake up in the middle of the night googling “pregnancy symptoms with a blighted ovum” to make sure that you weren’t actually delusional and crazy thinking that you had pregnancy symptoms while not technically being pregnant with a baby. Just a circle. A very empty circle.

No baby.

You head to work and try not to cry. You sit down in a seat on the subway probably taking it from an old lady, but you’re trying not to cry. You walk into the building making small talk with the one girl who knew you were pregnant and pretend (poorly) that everything is fine. The nurse sees you look like crap and asks what’s wrong. You try not to cry while making up a stupid excuse. You can’t talk to patients, you can’t talk to co-workers, but eventually you feel slightly under control. You finally explain it to the nurse. She says all the right things to normalize it. “It’ll be okay. It happened to me too. You’re young. You have a husband who loves you.” And she’s right.

No baby.

But, you still have a husband who loves you. And a dog who cuddles. And a turtle who entertains. And hope. And faith. It hurts. It is sad. It is hard. But you know it was a trial run. There’s a little someone who wanted to make sure you were ready. Wanted to make sure it was something you really wanted. And you know that someday, somehow you will have that little someone and there will be a baby.