A LETTER TO UNA

I had a both difficult and beautiful conversation yesterday with someone I love deeply. She's going through some intense trauma around pregnancy, having just had her second miscarriage. We spoke of her pain, we spoke of what women must often go through to bring in new life and also we spoke of how society doesn't hold a comfortable space for us to talk about what we endure. We talked about how we both want to create conversations that other women can hear, relate to and if they desire, participate in. We talked about how it's so crucial to hold space for this unique experience. To start and keep open conversations that allow us to speak our truth, and be both heard and held while we honor our pain.

I also notice that I am in my own way reliving my losses while supporting her through hers. And it's an honor to truly understand what she's going through and to help hold her, while also processing some of my own grief - something that lives inside of me and that I am allowing to come up and be felt as it needs to. Watching her go through this is triggering, and I'm experiencing both the feeling of love and the desire to hold space for her, support her and feel empathy for her pain, while allowing my own to come up and out again. It's a dance and a new chapter in my own healing that I didn't expect to have after all these years.

I have been writing a memoir for several years now. It's no easy task and one of the tougher pieces in it is my own journey to motherhood. I rarely speak of that time and when I do, I am at times surprised by how easily the tears flow once again. The pain I went through, like much of the trauma I experienced in my life, I held back, kept hidden and felt was a burden to others if I shared it. On the occasions that I do tell the story, I feel a mix of relief at being able to talk about it, coupled with guilt over bringing others down and dragging them into my pain. I created a misguided story about being weak, dramatic and even embarrassed that I have this intensely sad story around having a child. And, it was born both out of my own ideas about my worth and out of the way others responded to me at the time.

Now, I am (finally) getting that sharing my own story is a good thing. By speaking my own truth, I hope to give other women the space to speak theirs. And so, I'll tell it here. I'll say the words because it's what happened and regardless of how long ago, it's a part of me. I feel compelled to say I don't tell this story in search of sympathy, but instead as a way of creating connection. I tell it from a place of peace and love. I am no victim. I am a proud and very grateful mom.

Getting pregnant was easy for me as it turned out, something I was really thankful for. I thought that would be the hard part. I remember when I took that first pregnancy test and with tears rolling down my face, I walked outside to the tiny garage where my husband Adam was painting. I held up the test to him and smiled. “It worked, I’m pregnant.” I couldn’t believe it came so easily and I remember thinking, thank you, this must be right. I was giddy with excitement. That feeling lasted 2 weeks until I miscarried.

“It's very common,” my doctor assured me and since I was so early along, no procedure was required. I went home, cried for a day or so and got ready to try again the next month. Again, pregnant on the first try. Amazing. Adam was excited. I was too, and when I reached 8 weeks without incident, we went for an ultrasound to see the baby’s heartbeat. We had a huge BBQ with my co-workers and friends to attend the next day and I wanted so much to have good news to share. The nurse prepped the ultrasound wand and I felt so special and so nervous. She located what looked like a black and white blob on the monitor, looked at it, moved the wand around, looked some more, then smiling said, "I'll be right back" and went to get the Dr. He came back with her and did the same, then she looked at us, “See this?” she said, pointing to a spot that was moving. “That is a heartbeat,” she smiled. I sighed with relief and looked at Adam. Then I heard her say “Now, see this?” and she moved the wand over and then pointed to another moving shape. “That is another one. You are carrying twins.”

I could barely speak. “Twins!? Are you serious?,” I squeaked. Twins were in my family, so I suppose it made sense, but I had in no way expected it. I felt even more special/scared/excited/dazed by the miracle of it all, and as I got dressed, we talked with our obstetrician about the nutritional needs of a mother carrying twins. Adam and I went home, and floated around in a bubble of surprise and kept saying “Wow, how are we going to pull this off? It’s so amazing, so cool,” we went on and on. So many possibilities, so much responsibility!

The next day we went to the party, at our boss’s house. We were in his backyard around the pool, talking, laughing. We told everyone our news and it felt surreal to say, “We are having twins.” I started imagining two little girls, two boys, a girl and a boy. The endless list of possible names scrolled through my mind all day as I just nodded and smiled and soaked it all in.

The next Dr’s appt was a few weeks later, to check up on the babies. We had been thinking about all the things we’d need two of, how great having the two kids we wanted all at once would be. I kept thinking, “Wow, this is really happening? This is amazing!” We arrived at the Ob’s office and I felt good, though a bit nauseas.  Above all, I was excited. I wondered if maybe the ultrasound must have not been working correctly because the Dr. seemed to be having trouble locating the heartbeats this time. “There’s one,” she said. After about 2 minutes of looking around, she turned to me and said, “Sometimes a second fetus is not viable and is absorbed by the body.” “Vanishing Twin Syndrome” it’s called, and is apparently quite common. So, as quickly as we learned we were having twins, we then learned we were not. It was a blow and I was both elated at the health of one baby, and sad at the loss of the other. I tried to move past it, mourn quickly and focus on the life that was still growing inside me.

The next few months were typical on my end, lots of nausea, some vomiting, a growing belly. My 18th week came and we scheduled the standard alpha-fetoprotein screening, a simple blood test that determines if the baby is at risk for birth defects, for the following week. Everything looked good with the baby, so we went home to wait for results. My Dr. called and said the test came back with a marker of a 1 in 10 chance of our baby having downs syndrome. When she heard the panic in my voice, she reassured me, saying that these often mean nothing, false positives were much more common than any real problems, and please not to worry. She said that if it mattered to us, we would need to do an amniocentesis to be sure. We wanted to know. We had talked it over and wanted to at least have information and options. We made an appointment and in the weeklong interim, I tried to be calm. The morning of the test, Adam and I entered a waiting room with a few other couples. The woman sitting closest to me with her husband looked at me and said “Are you as nervous as I am?” We both tried to laugh and talked about our ages and how this was usually nothing. I was called in, Adam following behind me. The nurse who greeted us was not particularly pleasant. Just dry, seemingly bored and very matter-of-fact and she instructed me to undress from the waist down, and lie on the table. She had done hundreds of these and was in no mood for sweetness or enthusiasm. She gave me the standard paper gown to drape over myself. I did. I was so nervous my stomach was in knots and my round belly felt tight as a drum.

Adam was standing next to me and she put the blob of jelly on my stomach and the high res ultrasound pad on me and starting moving it around.

Immediately we could see a large image on the screen of our baby. Not just some black and white blob, this was a whole, beautiful baby. A silhouette and to us, it was lovely. I could see the profile, the cute little button nose, two arms, two legs, all the fingers and toes in perfect harmony. I smiled so big and tears trickled down my cheek and onto my shoulder. It was so real now. This joy only lasted a few seconds, until she abruptly said, “Has your doctor talked to you about this?”

“About what?” I said, looking at her wide-eyed. She said, matter-of-factly, “There is something wrong here, this baby isn’t going to live.” Adam and I in unison, “What!? What are you talking about?” She said “Wait here” and left. She had just told us our baby was doomed and then left us alone in that room with nothing but the humming of the ultrasound machine and our terror.

I have no idea how long it was before the doctor came in. Maybe it was 30 seconds, maybe 5 minutes. It was too long and I had started to shake and cry, breathing heavy and saying, “No, no, no...” and I remember Adam grabbing my shoulders and looking at me saying, “Baby, hold on, just wait, hold on.”

The Dr. came in with a pained look on his face. He sat down, looked again at our child for only a moment, and then at me. “I am so sorry to have to tell you this, but your baby is sick.” How could she be sick? She was beautiful and I was lying there looking at her perfectly formed head and her profile and her arms and legs. Somehow I knew it was a girl. He told us the baby had a cerebral spinal abnormality called Cystic Hygroma, a rare lymphatic malformation, and he pointed to areas around her neck, face and head, then on to her body explaining how fluids that normally circulate through our bodies were not moving and instead were collecting in these areas. The condition was fatal he said. No hope for survival. She would not live more than another month inside of me, he told us. It seemed to all happen so quickly. The room was spinning. He explained what our options were: Either to carry the baby until she died, or stop her heart and be induced to deliver. He asked me if I wanted him to perform the amnio so that the fluid could be tested to determine if this was something that would be recurring in future pregnancies or just a one-time thing. I consented to it. It was very painful, I imagine because of the anguish I was feeling, my body so tense and my mind reeling. I sobbed and everything seemed to go black. I folded in on myself, and sunk into a dazed, catatonic state. Adam helped me out of the room, and back into the waiting room. But not before we passed each other in the hall - the other mother and I. She was smiling broadly, her news must have been very good. She saw me, ashen, tears streaming down my face, and her eyes dropped. I knew she was silently thanking God for letting her baby be okay.

I had no idea how to walk, or move, or function. I couldn’t carry this baby around, knowing she was suffering. I couldn’t be expected to keep my own sanity, walking around with my baby dying inside of me. I made the horrific choice to stop it then. No one should ever have to make that choice. I wanted to die myself.

To matters even worse, I was given this horrible news, only to be followed by learning that my insurance would only cover a small portion of the necessary procedure. I spent half a day on the phone with Blue Cross and Cedars Sinai and other hospitals discovering how little people actually care when your baby is dying. The insurance agents were incredibly cold in the delivery of the news that “We cover 100% of healthy pregnancies. Yours isn’t though, and for this procedure, we only pay 40%.” They reduced my dying baby to a “procedure.” It would cost us thousands, this excruciating task. I finally contacted an independent surgical center who terminated late term pregnancies and after discussing my situation through sobs with the doctor there, I knew I had no other choice. It was all we could afford - we had to pay in cash, $1800 - and he was the kindest person I had talked to all day. He prescribed valium and I took it, knowing it might well stop the baby’s heartbeat that night. I took it because what I really wanted to do was to die, too, and I felt that I just might do something awful if not sedated enough to numb my anguish. I literally felt as if I could close my own eyes and the two of us, my sweet baby and I, could drift away forever. It was one of the darkest days of my life.

The doctor had explained the upcoming procedure to me, to be endured over the course of three days. He said that the valium, if taken consistently, would most likely stop the baby’s heart on its own. I remember Adam inviting our small group of friends over for support that first night, and they all talked and laughed nervously and moved awkardly around, having no idea what to say or do. Adam bounced back and forth between checking on me and trying to let them distract him from his own pain. I sat in the same spot all night, slumped over, stoned on valium and dead inside. Breathing hurt. The light hurt my eyes. I wanted to die. I had to kill my own baby and I had no choice.

Or so I was told. I must interject here that since then, I have discovered that some fetuses diagnosed as she was, carry to term and go on to have relatively normal lives. I have no words for what feelings this brings up for me. Tough to sort through that one without rage and regret. Naïve and desperate, I trusted and believed the word of my doctors. No second opinions. No questions asked. I will always regret that.

I fell into a drug induced, agonizing sleep that night. The next day Adam and I had to go to the bank and get cash to pay for this gruesome operation. We both had to go since it was a joint account and taking out that kind of cash required each of our signatures. I wore a favorite brown dress, covered in flowers. I chose it this day because I thought it best hid my round belly. I didn’t want people to so much as look at me. I thought if one person says anything to me, I will break into a million little pieces and blow away in the wind.

We stood in the line awaiting our turn at the teller and when she summoned us up she stopped and grabbed her mouth with her right hand, making a “Oh, wow!” expression. She blurted out “Oh my goodness, when are you due? Is it a boy or a girl?! Do you have a name?” I felt my feet start to give way under me as I signed for the money, not answering her and as I began to fall down, Adam caught me and rushed me outside before I started sobbing and moaning. It was too much. I didn’t know how to take this much pain. I had nowhere to put it, no idea what to do with it. I could not hold it all. I wanted to run away from it, screaming. But it was inside me and there was no escape. Adam held onto me, helping me to the car and he went back inside to get the cash, leaving me to cry alone, holding my belly.

We had gotten our news on a Thursday, spent the day on the phone Friday, me doped on valium over the weekend and Monday morning we went to the clinic and sat in a waiting room with a big fish aquarium in the middle of it. There was one other couple across the room from us. She was further along than me and they just kept hugging. She didn’t seem particularly upset or anxious as they made small talk and waited. I was in no better state than I had been the day before, unable to talk, dazed from drugs and pain. We finally were called in and the Dr. explained the first part of the process. They would put me to sleep and insert these tiny reeds inside of me that were made of some substance that would cause my cervix to dilate. They put me under, I secretly wished I wouldn’t wake up again as I felt darkness of the anesthesia close in. I woke up throwing up and bleeding badly. I cried all the way home and lay down to rest, as instructed. I was to go back the following morning for a second round of dilation meds then on Wednesday, the big procedure. They would take my baby. I saw no one during those days, I made the phone calls to my grandmother, who cried with me, to my friend Michelle, who cried with me, to my sister, my other girlfriends, my clients to say I would not be working for a while.

I cried. Adam cried. We were devastated. I had experienced so much pain already in my life but nothing compares to losing a child like that. This was no miscarriage. This was my baby and I had already imagined a lifetime together. My body hurt and it was hard to breath. I got through the first 24 hours and we returned the following morning. They took me in to have the anesthesia again and I was prepared to wake up again and go back home, then spend the next 24 hours saying my goodbyes to my baby. The next thing I remember is being taken, vomiting, into a recovery room. My throat hurt badly and I asked, confused, why it hurt so much. The nurse kept saying “It’s over, honey, it’s okay, it’s all over now.” Adam said the same thing then and I just sat there, half conscious, looking at the three of them. “What? What do you mean it’s over?” I asked. “Why does my throat hurt?”

The doctor said “You stopped breathing and we had to intubate you.” He said it so evenly, as if it meant nothing had happened. I suddenly had the feeling someone had made a mistake and I was seeing a wave of guilt and nervousness pass over their faces. The nurses eyes darted back and forth and she said “But it’s all over now and you are fine.” I said again, “What do you mean, it’s all over?”

The nurse cut in, “The baby is gone, honey. You had too much bleeding, you were hemorrhaging and we had to take the baby early.” I slumped over, and now new, fresh searing sobs coming from deep in my chest. I wasn’t ready. I thought I had another day before I had to say my last goodbye and now the baby was just... gone. “Where is it? Where is the baby? Was it a boy or girl? Can I see her?”

“A boy, it looked like a boy. No, you can't see it. The baby wasn’t in tact.” I had to throw up again and when I rose, blood was streaming down my legs and Adam said “Oh, God.” The nurse helped me through and changed my diaper-like bandages. The doctor assured me I was okay, and left. The nurse was walking away too and I said “Wait, please - tell me something about my baby…What did he look like?” She just looked at me as if she could not imagine why I needed to know this and flatly said “It looked like him”, pointing to Adam. She said “ I am sorry, honey.” and left for a few minutes. With Adam’s help I got dressed and sat slumped over on the table until she came back. She was holding an envelope. She said, “Here are your baby’s hand and footprints.” Inside was a little card that said, "Gone.... but not forgotten," with tiny hand and footprints in a dark blue/black ink. It was the only real proof I would ever have that my baby existed. They sent me home to heal, giving me sheets of paper with instructions on how to handle what was coming next. I had no idea how much I still had left to endure. I left my baby behind, in pieces, having signed a consent form to allow the use of the body for medical research.

The grief was intense. I can’t write enough words to truly impart the severity of it. And nothing could have prepared me for the physical pain still to come. When you lose a baby at 5+ months, your body behaves as if that baby had been born alive. Within 24 hours, my breasts swelled to gigantic proportions, filling with milk that had nowhere to go. I had to bind them, and put ice and heat on them and slowly, over the course of two weeks, let my milk dry up. They hurt so much, even the fabric brushing against them was painful. My abdomen ached, and I lay on the sofa unable to move more than a few inches at a time. I needed assistance to get to the bathroom. I think part of what disabled me what not only the physical pain, but the emotional pain was mind and body-numbing.

There is another syndrome I learned of, called “Empty Arms Sydrome” wherein there is an undeniable, intense longing to hold your baby. The baby that is gone. Intensified by postpartum depression, it was nearly unbearable. I lay on our sofa and sobbed, arms outreached, unaware of my hands opening and closing over and over, reaching for a child I would never hold.

Friends and clients sent flowers. The room was filled with them. So many notes, so many loving messages. No one knew what to say and I remember a bowl of purple and blue flowers from my friend Karen, and her card that said “No words, just love” I wish everyone had made that choice. When they did speak, people often said the most well meaning but insensitive, foolish things in some twisted effort to connect and probably to make themselves feel better. I just lay there, unable to fight or stand up for myself.

One of our friends, Katharine, came over to see me and as Adam was returning from the kitchen with tea, she had leaned down next to me, our faces only inches apart. I was laying prone on the sofa, where I’d been for days, and she took my hand and looked into my eyes and said “I understand, sweetie. I had an abortion once, too.” I looked up at Adam, my eyes widening in horror, and he was already at her, saying “Get out, leave, now.” She said “I didn’t mean anything by it...” and she was gone, he slammed the door behind her. It was not the first or the last shocking thing someone said to one or both of us.

I don’t know how long it took for me to come back to life, but I slowly did, and after journaling, making a keepsake box for the baby’s hand and footprints and ultrasounds, we got a call saying the lab had come back on the baby and it was in fact a girl. I had known it and when she said boy I felt confused. No fault of the nurses, her little body had been nearly unrecognizable in the end. I named her Una, and I wrote her a letter and put all the sympathy cards, all the bits and pieces that proved she was real into a cigar box. I painted a scene of a field, mountains and sky in the center of the box top.

Nights were the worst. I was hurting so badly, my empty arms, tossing around, crying for her, so on the advice of a therapist, I found a teddy bear the same size she’d have been, and I slept with, lay with, went everywhere with that bear for months. I still have it. 

The strange thing was, while all of this was going on and our grief was still intense, people would say things to us like, "You're different. When are you going to get back to normal and let this go?"  We lost friends over our losses, because they simply could not be with it. We had no choice and while some people were truly wonderful and loving, some were downright mean. I guess it was too painful to be around us.

We knew we wanted to try again, despite how terrible it had been. We waited to find out the results to see if the abnormality was genetic. If it was, we’d have a good chance of another baby with the same problem. I didn’t know if I could go through it all again, so was relieved when the test results came back with no genetic abnormality. We could try again and the chances were very good that the same thing would not recur. After 3 months of mourning and healing, I got pregnant again. And miscarried at 10 weeks. A D&C. Tears. Maybe I was not meant to have a baby. How much more could I take? It felt like every loss was a death of part of me. The nurse at the hospital was cold, asking, “So you are here to have an abortion, is that right?”. Adam had to correct her and she did not apologize. I still feel sick when I think of how insensitive the people around us were. When I went in for a checkup, the nurses had me wait in a room with pregnant women, all past 6 months. I sobbed as I sat there, unable to hold in my pain.

I waited a month, got pregnant again. Another miscarriage at 11 weeks. Another D&C. Anguish. No ideas as to why I was now miscarrying. We speculated that the doctor had messed up my insides when he took Una. We were grasping for reasons. My body was weak and tired from the multiple surgeries and pregnancies. I was limp and growing increasingly less optimistic, less willing to keep going. 

Then I got pregnant again a couple of months later. I tried so hard not to get excited this time, not to attach to the baby. The thing is, we are made to instantly love our babies. We are built to put them and their needs before our own from the moment of conception. To tell a woman not to attach to the child she is carrying is like telling someone not to breath. And so I did all the things, I started to think this just might be the one. I was feeling good, I had past the first trimester. Then I began bleeding at just over 13 weeks and after hours in the hospital, and at least 6 vaginal ultrasounds, it was concluded that yes, this one was lost, too. But this time, several doctors kept coming in and all doing more ultrasounds on me, several in the room at once, discussing my body as a matter of interest and the fact that I was a person, one who has just been told their 4th pregnancy is lost, seemed to be of no concern to them. I was a fascinating case. They talked among themselves as if I were not there. Was it two separate uteruses? A bicornuate uterus? Really interesting to them. I was listening, but confused and as they stood there, unwilling to stop their conversation long enough to answer my questions about my own body - the body they were so fascinated with. I vowed to change insurance and doctors as soon as I could.

I had my 4th operation, threw up, went home and cried it out again. I cried to God, to Adam and wondered if I was doomed to never have a living child. I thought of my own mother and how she just got pregnant out of high school. I thought of friends I had who had decided one day they wanted to have kids, got pregnant, had their baby naturally with no complications. I thought that maybe I should give up. I felt cheated, wounded and exhausted. But I didn’t give up. We switched insurance and I met a new doctor, Bradford Kolb, who did a wide array of tests, some of which had never been talked about or done before, the last of which resulted in the discovery and confirmation that I did in fact have a bicornuate, or heart-shaped uterus. Mine was severe and the upper walls were not vascular enough to support a pregnancy beyond a few weeks. That made sense. It explained how I kept miscarrying between 8 and 14 weeks. Over and over. What was a mystery is how Una had lived in that environment for 5 months. Miraculous, my doctor said. He explained to me that surgery could correct this, he could reshape my uterus and I could likely go on to finally have a baby. Should be no problem, though I would be considered high risk after all that had transpired.

He performed the surgery a month later, and exactly one month after that, I became pregnant again. I was excited and absolutely terrified. We had begun looking to buy a house, we were making good money and we knew we wanted a home of our own. After looking at several places, our realtor found a craftsman house in Hollywood on a sweet little street called Homewood. Adam was already there, standing on the porch smiling at me as I drove up to meet him there following a Dr’s appt where I got good news – strong heartbeat and things were going well.

I remember stepping onto the pathway of that house and knowing it was our home. It was in original condition, full of charm, just big enough and I loved it. It had three bedrooms, and one bathroom. The kitchen had a breakfast nook, an O’Keefe and Merritt stove and black and white tiled floor. The living room had a fireplace and hardwood floors throughout. The backyard was a bamboo grove. It was $290k – the top of our budget - and it was perfect. We put in an offer and it was ours within a week. Escrow closed a month later and we moved in. I immediately began working on the baby’s room, painting creatures on the walls, nesting and thinking of names. I was finally able to feel real joy at the prospect of being a mother.

This pregnancy was not easy, still riddled with drama, and I had multiple episodes of bleeding, going to the ER, coming home and being on bed rest. Fear became a part of every day life. When all seemed okay, I’d start back to living my life again, then bam – cramping and bleeding. I prayed and I meditated and I begged God and I journaled and I tried to rest. I lit candles, I listened to affirmations, I thought good thoughts.

About two months earlier, my friend Karen had gone to see a medical intuitive down in Long Beach and she said she was amazing and that maybe I should go. Perhaps she could give me some assurance. I called and made an appointment. When I arrived, two women were there to greet me. The house was small and on a non-descript street, nothing special about any of it. Inside, there were pictures of babies posted on a bulletin board. There were growth charts and indications that pregnancies just might be her thing. She introduced herself and Alice. She was stoic. She did not smile. Her partner, or assistant, stood next to her as she stared at my belly. She hardly looked at my face, just kept her gaze on my stomach until finally she looked up and said, “You have the strongest twin energy of anyone I have ever seen.” I wasn’t pregnant with twins this time, so this confused me. Why would she say that now? Maybe she saw my first pregnancy and was commenting on it. She looked at my belly again and said, “I am sorry but I don’t think this one is going to make it.” This is the last thing in the world I expected or needed to hear, and I stood up and said, “I have to go.” I drove back to Los Angeles and tried to shake off her grave prediction. I chalked her up to being a negative nutcase and kept my vigil.

On our anniversary I was four months pregnant, and we had just been to the Ob/Gyn to have an ultrasound that morning. Baby was there, floating around and healthy, and we were going out to dinner that night. I took a nap to make sure I was rested for the evening.  After maybe an hour, I woke up, groggy, but needing to go to the bathroom. I made my way there, still half asleep. I pulled down my sweatpants and sat on the toilet and I felt a weird pushing/pulling sensation and heard a plop into the toilet. I looked down and started screaming. There was blood everywhere. I jumped up off the toilet and sat down on the bench nearby, blood running into the floor from between my legs. I wash shaking uncontrollably as I wailed, “No, no, not again, NO!”

Adam came running down the hallway to find me there, half screaming, half moaning and pointing to the toilet. There was a big, bloody blob in the water and it must have looked like a horror movie to him. I was hysterical, just crying “Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!” and I crouched in front of the toilet and looked at the mass I just passed I said, “We have to go to the hospital. We have to take it with us.” I asked Adam to get me something to get it out of the toilet with. He ran to the kitchen and grabbed a large plastic spoon and while I shook and moaned, I fished the mass out of the toilet bowl and we put it into a plastic bag, and that into a paper bag. I pulled up my pants, stuffed a pad in my underwear, and started to psyche myself up for another D&C. I kept breathing thinking, “Hang on, just hang on.” Adam was in a panic, I tried to calm him but I wasn’t much better, vacillating between holding it together and losing it, crying and shaking. In the car, he was still freaking out and suddenly I had this strange sensation wash over me. Without looking at him I said quietly, “It’s going to be okay.” He asked what the hell I was talking about. “It’s okay, it’s going to be alright.”

“What!?” he asked. “It’s not alright!!” I said, “It’s okay, let’s just get there, I don’t know why, but it’s okay.”

I have no idea what came over me, a sense of peace, of resignation, a message from God. All evidence pointed to things not being OK, but I felt warm and safe and oddly at peace for those few minutes on the way to the ER. Surrender, perhaps.

Once inside, they wheeled me right in. The doctor came in and I handed her the bag, crying. I told her what happened, I rattled off my medical history to her, and then started talking about the baby and how it was in the bag I’d given her, how we’d just been there this morning and everything was fine. What could have happened? I was shaking uncontrollably now.

She put the brown paper bag on the counter and turned her attention to me. I wondered why I mattered, knowing my baby was dead and in that bag. She said, “Let’s just take a look, okay?” She put on the jelly, then the wand against my skin. She looked at me and said, “See here’s the baby, it’s fine, see?” I looked at the screen and saw the little form, all in tact. She was right. The baby was there, just like earlier that morning. I was stunned. “So what is that!?” I asked, gesturing to the bag containing the bloody mass.

The doctor said it could possibly be a twin. They would have to take a look and test the tissue. We never knew I’d been pregnant with twins again, she explained that happens sometimes, that the second fetus isn’t always detectible early on. I remembered Alice and what she’d said to me that day.

Again, I was thrust into a half grief, half joy state of mind and the next few months were a roller coaster of hospital visits, followed by days on bed rest, and back again. I prayed and cried and begged for this baby to be born. I just wanted an end to the pain and anguish and to finally have a child of my own.

We held our breath and at 5 months, we got a phone call from our doctor giving the baby a clear bill of health and word that we were having a boy, and it was the best news ever. I really think I’ll never forget the elation I felt at that phone call. All the pain of the past two years poured out of me and I cried and danced with joy. Finally, finally, finally it was happening. Finally I was getting my miracle.

At 7 months, I lost almost all use of my hands to severe carpal tunnel and swelling and had to wear arm braces for the remainder of my pregnancy. I was achy, my ankles were swollen and my back hurt all the time. I could not sleep. Could no longer drive, work or do much more than sit and wait. Yet I was still happy and excited. After all I had been through, it was a small price, and fortunately we had enough money that I could afford to take off work for a while.

At 9 months, I got a call waking me from sleep early one morning. My friend, Michelle was screaming and crying, “We are being attacked!” It was September 11, 2001 and the twin towers were going down. We still did not have a television at this point, so I walked down to my neighbor’s house and watched the footage for a while, numb like the rest of the world. I felt scared, and very vulnerable with this baby in my belly. That night, Adam’s alma mater, The Harrow School in England, had their annual dinner in LA and they did not cancel it. We pulled ourselves together, got dressed up and went. We both thought maybe it would lift us a bit. What a terrible day. I was exhausted but agreed to go. Drinks before dinner were at a bar in Hollywood on the 19th floor of a building on Sunset Boulevard. I remember feeling woozy as the elevator went up and I couldn’t help but think of all of those people who died that morning, wondering why this dinner was so important that we were all still going, despite the tragedy and its impact on all of us. And why, for God’s sake, was it so high up?

After drinks, we were to meet at the restaurant nearby on the street level and there were 8 of us standing around waiting for the elevator to open and take us back down. It couldn’t come soon enough for me. The elevator never opened and after a few minutes, we found out that both of the two elevators had malfunctioned and we were stranded on the 19th floor. The irony of this was not missed and there were very nervous comments made as we all realized we would have to walk down the 19 flights of stairs. This was not that big of a deal under normal circumstances but today, on this day, it made us all a bit shaky and for me, at 9 months, my belly was huge and I couldn’t even see my feet, let alone navigate down that many stairs. I had to have people on either side of me help me to get down all those steps without falling. I was worried I might go into spontaneous labor from the combination of stress that had started that morning, now compounded by the physical and mental duress of this predicament. We all finally made it down safely and we made it through dinner, then home where I collapsed, grateful and exhausted.

It was a battle and it was nearly won, this pregnancy. The nursery was ready and so was I. After so much loss, I was finally feeling the joy of nesting and I had finished painting my whacky, colorful creatures on the wall of his bedroom, including a red striped cat and a giant replica of a squeak toy Adam and I had bought earlier. I was giddy and nervous. It was hard to believe we were so close.

I was as big as a house and I didn’t care. The doctor had already told me I had to have a scheduled C-section. The baby was sideways and flipped around and the risk of trying to turn him was too great, given my history. Not even our doula, Carmen, would try it. I surrendered, willing to do whatever was necessary for my baby to be safe and whole. So on October 2, 2001, we woke up at 5am, Adam painted “It’s my birthday” on my belly and took a picture, then we went to the hospital.

After a long wait, I was finally wheeled into the delivery room. There were so many people around, around 6-8 of them, all buzzing around preparing for my child to be born. High risk that I was (we were) they ensured every specialist was on point. I lie there waiting until the anesthesiologist came over and said it was time to give me my spinal block. He revealed a very long, very thick needle and explained what he was going to do. I rolled over and curled into (ironically) a fetal position while he inserted the needle. It hurt and as he found his target, it felt like a bolt of electricity shot down my left leg and it convulsed involuntarily for a moment, scaring me. He assured me all was fine and then they rolled me back over onto my back. They strapped down my arms and put a blue screen across my chest, so I could not see them cutting me. Then a mask over my face. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I felt the sensation of tugging, and pulling, pushing. I was splayed out, vulnerable and so nervous that still, in this 11th hour, something might go terribly wrong. My anesthesiologist was wonderful and when he realized I was claustrophobic and saw the panic on my face, he leaned down and literally talked me through, helping me to stay calm. He was wonderful and stuck right by me through the whole thing, warmly talking in a soothing voice, and it meant the world to me.

I felt them cutting, tugging at my belly. There was no pain, just this numb, detached feeling. It was surreal and after months of so much pain and heartache, I felt very removed from what was happening, as if I were actually in a waiting room next door from all of this, waiting to meet my baby.

I felt them pull him out of me and then they swiftly took him across and over behind me to clean him up, and make sure he was okay. They gave me a shot of morphine for the pain that was impending and I immediately had an allergic reaction to it. Before I ever really saw my son or touched him, my skin started to burn and itch severely and I was tearing at my face and neck - the only parts of my body I could feel yet - trying to stop what felt like a maddening itch. They gave our son, Griffen to Adam and then took me into the recovery room, giving me an injection of Benadryl to help the reaction and park me there, where they finally handed my baby to me. He was wrapped up warm and tight and he was perfect and beautiful I couldn’t hold back the tears. I sobbed with relief, I was so grateful and overwhelmed with love and emotion. He was real and alive and my son. Finally. I will never forget the intensity of love I felt and the relief that washed over every cell in my body. I just held him and cried, rocking back and forth, saying, “I love you, I love you, I love you so much, I’ve been waiting for you for so long.” And I had. Every day since then, no matter how tough parenting may be at times, I am grateful for all of it. I am so very grateful for my child and I know very well how fortunate I am. And I can say I have given everything I can to be the best mother I can, humbled and honored to have been given the chance to raise my son, now 16 years old. I don’t take a moment of it for granted. What a gift. 

I would never wish what happened to me on anyone. My heart truly aches for every woman I know who goes through even one loss. It’s life changing. It’s tough to explain. Tough to feel heard, seen and understood. I pray that my sharing my own story gives at least one woman a touchstone of understanding. I notice that when I support another woman who has had a loss, it triggers me, bringing up all of my own pain and I must hold that along with the woman I am supporting, and that’s OK. I can be with it. I want to keep this conversation open because we need to have a space to share, to not hold it alone. We are not alone in this. I for one, will be here, arms open and in deep understanding. Women are miraculous and we endure. We mothers are warriors. As for me, I am happy, healed and whole and incredibly thankful for the child I have. My gratitude runs deeper than my pain.