Counting my blessings in the midst of a miscarriage.
Last weekend was definitely a scary experience. I miscarried our baby at 13.5 weeks. I had been told a week and a half before that there was no heartbeat and that I would miscarry, but I didn't want to believe it. I was praying for a miracle. All week I prayed, hoping the heartbeat would return. Hoping the doctors would be shocked. Hoping my baby wasn't really gone.
Friday night I went to bed feeling off. I've had four babies and I could tell my body was preparing for birth. It's a horrible feeling to know your body is about to deliver a tiny baby that you desperately want to keep, and you are completely helpless to stop it. I woke up Saturday morning with contractions. I went to the bathroom and started timing them. 45 seconds long and 90 seconds apart. Almost on the dot. Suddenly I found myself waking up on my bathroom floor. I had blacked out. My timer was still going so I was able to tell that I had been out for almost 8 minutes. When I woke up, I knew something was about to happen. I knew I was about to lose the baby. I had been reading stories from other women who had miscarried, and I knew doing it at home would be painful, messy and emotionally difficult. I also knew the baby often doesn't come out in one piece, and it's often difficult to separate from the mess that comes out with it.
I wanted the baby to be whole. I wanted to be able to save the baby to bury. Once I knew it was happening, I began praying for just that. A whole baby that I could easily separate from the rest of what was about to happen. Almost as soon as I finished the prayer, I passed the baby. In one perfectly painless push I had a perfectly in tact, perfectly clean, tiny 13-week-old baby, the length of my ring finger. I was able to put the baby in a small dish I had in my bathroom, and didn't even need to clean him off. Maybe it often happens that way, maybe not. But I'm choosing to believe that was an answered prayer because as soon as that was finished, everything went wrong. I started losing blood. Too much blood. I passed out again on the way to my bed. Everything is kind of a blur after that. My husband wrapped me in a thick blanket and carried me to the van, still in my pjs.
I'm not sure how many women can say their husband literally saved their live, but I can. I was told I would have died if he hadn’t taken me to the ER when he did. At one point, I remember lying on the hospital bed and suddenly feeling like I was sinking. Everything became even foggier than before. The monitor I was hooked up to began to beep, nurses came running into the room and everything just felt dark. I was shaking uncontrollably, the room felt like an icebox, and I could feel the blood (and consciousness) just pouring out of me at a rapid pace.
I felt like I was slipping away. I couldn't move, I couldn't speak, all I could do was lie there and sink deeper into what felt like a white, blurry hole of nothing. As I sank, I thought about my life. I never thought about the fact that I never went to college. I didn’t think about the size of my house, or the paint peeling off of the hood of my mom van. I wasn’t concerned about my wardrobe or the fact that 90% of it came from Goodwill. And I wasn’t wishing I had had a better career or earned more money. As I lie there, sure I was about to die, two thoughts come to mind. First, I wished I’d spent more one-on-one time with my husband. Easier said than done when you have jobs, school and four young kids, but it’s something I plan to work on from now on. The second thing I thought of was how Katie had come to me the night before, a book wrapped in her blanket as a "present", and asked me to read to her. I told her to ask me the following day because I was tired.
I was "tired". I lie on that hospital bed, bleeding, losing consciousness, unable to move or speak or even open my eyes, and I thought about the fact that I had used the word "tired" the night before. That could have been the last chance I would ever have to sit with my girl and read her a story. What if that had been it? The last conversation she had with her mother?
I remember being rushed off to the OR for surgery. I was conscious, but couldn’t move or talk. My husband kissed me goodbye and told me he was praying, then I was in a room being prepped for surgery. The nurses talked in a normal voice most of the time as they worked, but would often drop their voices to a whisper to talk about me.
“Do you think she’s going to make it?"
"I don't know, we almost lost her once already.”
"Someone said she has four kids."
"I know, it's going to be so sad if they lose her right before the holidays."
I wanted so badly to yell “I can hear you!”, but I couldn’t even whisper at that point. I just kept thinking, “I should have read that book to Katie.”
What if “Not right now, I’m too tired” had been the last thing I had said to my sweet girl? What if the last time she had seen me was when her daddy was carrying me to the van and rushing me to the hospital?
It's been a hard week. I'm not just sad about losing the baby, I'm mourning all of the birthdays I had dreamed about. Seeing the first steps. Watching my husband tickle the baby with his brothers and sisters. Watching Rachel rock the baby to sleep just like she has done with her other siblings. There was a whole life I had dreamed of, not just a birth. I’m still mourning the loss of our baby, and will be for a long time, but when I came home from the hospital with the news that I almost didn't make it home at all, I resolved to be a better mother to the four blessings I have already been given. I've committed to saying "Yes" to story requests and snuggles on the couch. I'm resolving to have more game nights, more hot chocolate dates and more one-on-one conversations with my Mini Marshalls. Longer hugs. Lots of tickles. And saying "I love you" so many times they get sick of it. I'm not going to let this heartache interfere with loving the children I already have.
I've heard people say things like "You never know when it will be your last...." for years, but before last weekend it always just felt like a cliche to me. Just something you take with a smile and a nod, then you go about your day still being "too tired" to spend time with the people you claim to love more than anything. Well, I'm jumping on that cliche bandwagon now. Hug your kids. Read them stories. Snuggle up for a movie night. Be as close as you can for as long as you can. You really don't know when it will be the last...