Birth of a Mother (Part 7)

Part 7

Hello and Goodbye

It was approximately one month after Ian proposed that I went to work one day and forgot to leave the bathroom door closed to keep our precocious Labrador out of the toilet and the trash. It was a cold wintry day and we had kept the doggies inside to keep them warm.

I was warm, though. I had a warmth that was spreading from within my womb and into my chest and my windburned cheeks as I drove to work with an unending smile. I was pregnant and couldn't wait to tell Ian once I got to work.

Well, remember that episode of “I Love Lucy” where she tries to tell Ricky a million times that she's expecting but they keep getting interupted? That's how my day went. I had to work the switchboard after my accounting shift that day so Ian left the office before I did and he went home.

By 8:30pm I was home and ready to burst at the seams with my life changing news. Only.....he already knew. His first words to me were “never leave the bathroom door open when HotRod is inside,,,” HotRod had gotten into the bathroom trash and pulled out the pregnancy test and left it lying right in front of the door so it was the first thing that Ian saw.

We weren't married yet so I wasn't sure how he'd take the news but he just grinned that “Look What We Did!” grin and picked me up and gently kissed me and put a tender warm hand on my tiny belly.

We couldn't wait to tell everyone and we had never heard of the “wait three months” rule. Our families were excited but had some good old Catholic trepidation of us not being married yet. We were too busy dreaming with our head in the clouds and on the first weekend we went to Babies R Us and picked up a stroller, car seat and some outfits and blankets.

It was while we were comparing breast pumps that I felt a strange twinge. It felt like I was getting my period. My midwife had told me that the earliest stages of pregnancy caused stretching of the uterus that could often feel like menstrual cramps. So I disregarded it, loaded up the car with all our goodies and went home to take a nap that stretched into morning. I remember dreaming that I was sitting in a college class and my period showed up completely unexpectedly and I was worried about how to get out of my seat to go to the bathroom. Overcome with a cramp, I woke up to a painful warmth spreading underneath me in the bed.

I immediately called the midwife and she asked me to come in. The doppler couldn't detect a heartbeat but the internal ultrasound showed a weak fetal heartbeat that was getting slower by the minute. It wasn't going to be long. I was watching my baby die and except for the technicians and the little life fading away on the screen I was all alone.

A D&C was performed later that afternoon and I came home to a housefull of people who loved me.
They might not have been thrilled that I had been an unmarried pregnant woman but this was my parents' first grandchild, my brothers' first niece or nephew.

Ian hugged me briefly and then went outside to do an oil change on the new car we had bought for safety reasons when we found out we were expecting. Men are problem solvers. He couldn't solve my problem but he could make sure he kept us safe in that car.

I was hurt that he wasn't inside with me and my family. I thought that meant he didn't care. That he never really wanted it.

I saw the truth later when his tear streaked face emerged from under the car much later than it usually took him to do an oil change.

After my family went home, I told Ian I wanted to try again as soon as possible. I already felt so empty. I didn't care at that point if I was ready or not. All I knew was that I had to fill that emptiness. That night I looked at my ultrasound pictures of the baby I was convinced was a girl (in my mind I'd named her Bailey Mckenna) and I kissed her goodbye and tucked her pictures in a tiny box that's still in my closet. I had no idea of the long, complicated road ahead of me full of words and conditions no one ever reads about in “What To Expect When You're Expecting” or how I'd have to abandon the idea of a midwife in lieu of a specialist.

I cried. And to this day, when I hear the name Bailey, I think of the baby that could have been and I cry.

I cried a lot.... partly because I didn't get to give birth to my baby. And partly because I didn't get to give birth to the mother I knew was waiting inside and was a far better woman than the one who spent years as just another Blonde Bad Reputation.