of the unfathomable, and so I sit. I sit and I eat tomato soup and I watch Friends on the television. I’ll never be able to do any of those things in the same way after.
I don’t actually watch. Instead, I am stuck in my own mind, traveling back to my childhood. I’m in sixth grade at a new school with new teachers, and already they’ve pegged me for the perfectionist I am. We’re at an end-of-school weekend retreat for my year, some hundred of us, and on the last day they give out satirical awards to some of the students. I win the “Failure to Fail” award. They have me come up in front of all my peers to attempt something that simply isn’t doable: shove a box full of crackers in my mouth and then whistle. I am determined to prove them wrong, and as I blow with all my might, a cloud of crumbs bursts out before me. The room erupts in laughter, and I feel my face flush red with embarrassment. I have only failed to do what is obviously impossible, but all I see is that I have failed. It is the first time I can recall feeling so devastated.
I have failed many times since then. Stumbled and crumpled and collapsed in defeat. But as I sit here now I see all of my past failures as trivial compared to this, because this time I failed and a life was lost. Our baby is dead. I keep repeating that over and over and over again in my mind until the words mean nothing to me. How will Aaron ever forgive me? How will I ever forgive myself?
It is an inexplicable feeling to carry death inside you when the very concept of pregnancy is so explicitly connected to life. To be in a room surrounded by family mourning a soul that has departed when the body has not. He is still here. He is with us. And he has to come out. You can’t bury a body in utero, can’t cremate remains that exist in the in-between. Instead, you have to do the impossible. Somehow, it must be done.
3
LESS THAN AN hour after we get home my first contractions start. Hanah has just arrived with Carson, and her confusion over my still-full belly is palpable. Annette called her when Hanah was on a ferry to Vancouver Island. As she heard the news, she slid down the cabin wall and came apart on the floor, gasping for air. Somehow, she is here. She has never been one to hide emotion, and I can see how hard she is trying now. I feel the toll this is taking on her, and for a moment it distracts me from my own pain.
The rushes roll in gently at first—every three minutes, but manageable with a little focused breathing. My body is ready. My mom sits next to me on the couch, careful not to touch me, but her presence is grounding. Friends plays on in the background.
I pick up my phone and open up the contraction timer app I downloaded months ago in preparation. Every time I hit record my mom looks to me and asks, “Another one? So soon?”
By nine PM I can no longer divert my focus with TV and deep breaths. It’s starting. I ask everyone to leave, though the goodbyes are a blur.
Aaron is running a bath behind me, and I am bent over the counter riding out another contraction. We paged the hospital a few minutes ago, asking if I should be in so much pain so soon. Susie, the new midwife on call with our birth program, told us the Cervidil could sometimes cause intense and false contractions. “Take it out,” she suggested. “Just like you would a tampon. Then hop in the bath. The warm water should help you relax.” Before hanging up, she added, “Come back in the morning for another dose, but only once you’ve slept. Really do try to get some rest.”
I climb into the tub to soak as Aaron props himself up on the ledge. We try to talk through what is happening.
“Maybe we’ll be one of those inexplicable medical marvels and he will come out screaming,” Aaron says.
Yes, maybe that’s it. I’ve read the articles that sometimes circulate on Facebook about babies they thought were dead who were placed on their mothers’ chests, then suddenly cried out. I am skeptical, but I don’t want to be. We believe in God—a God that is good. We believe that miracles are possible through Him. What is that belief for, if it can’t help us now?
So we start to pray. We pray that He will save our child, bring him back to life, change what has happened. We believe that He can. And just in case, wanting to cover all of our bases, we pray that the doctors are wrong and that he isn’t dead. Surely, he will be born and he’ll take his first breath and everything will make sense again. I want to hold out hope that our miracle is within reach, that the fact that our baby has died on the same day Jesus was crucified is significant. There’s something to that, isn’t there?
Only that bellowing voice of the fiercely protective mother is gone; she speaks solely in moans now. Making it through this experience with our baby alive doesn’t really seem like an option. But how desperately I want to believe that it is.
The bath isn’t helping. I turn the water back on, all the way to hot, hoping it will burn away the pain. Having spent the better part of a year soaking in lukewarm baths to keep our baby safe, I am shocked by the heat.
“When I was pregnant—” I start, wanting to explain to Aaron what I am feeling. But I stop, not sure how to continue. Am I still pregnant? I remember the saying, “You can’t be just a little bit pregnant.” We think of pregnancy as a very clear “you are or you aren’t” situation, so much so that it’s inspired the idiom meaning there’s no gray area or uncertainty. But what about when you are still carrying a child, but not a living one? I shudder at the thought and don’t continue my sentence. Aaron doesn’t press me for more.
Soon, I can’t make it through my contractions without clutching Aaron’s hand, fighting back against the force of them. We had decided that we would try to labor at our place for as long as possible—that was one of our only hopes from the start of this pregnancy and we wanted to stick to our basic birth plan as much as possible. But we need help. Aaron calls our doula, Jill—he has been texting her with updates since we were in the hospital—and asks her to come over. My contractions are now just over a minute and a half apart, lasting for sixty seconds. That leaves me thirty seconds of rest in between them, and it isn’t enough. Nothing could ever be enough for this. “I can’t do this without pain relief anymore,” I moan. “We need to go in.”
Aaron looks relieved to have something to do. He calls Jill again and tells her to meet us at the hospital instead, then gathers our things by the door. By 10:50 PM we are off.
Ten minutes later, we are back at Admitting. A nurse greets us, smiling. “Are you having contractions?” she asks cheerfully.
“I am,” I start, pausing to breathe through one. She waits, and I squeeze my eyes shut as I sway. “But we’re here under different circumstances,” I continue. “If you look up my name, you’ll see.”
She looks at me from behind the desk, clearly confused, and asks again if I am in labor. “You’ll just need to sit in the waiting room and we’ll call when we have time to admit you.”
I can’t believe her. How does she not know what happened? How has the whole world not stopped to grieve with us? I shout at her that my baby died, that I was induced, that I need to be seen right away. I am spitting venom at her, and only my depleted energy holds me back from causing an even bigger scene. I am not even embarrassed. I am angry, and that anger feels good.
Another nurse, one I recognize, quickly appears and ushers the baffled nurse to the side. We are taken to a desk where the administrator takes our information. Another contraction starts. I grip the armrests and close my eyes in response. Jill comes in and immediately runs toward us. She places her hands on top of my shoulders, pressing down firmly and whispering, “You’re on top of this.”
A nurse takes us into an admitting room, not the same one we were in earlier, and shuts the door behind her. We wait through more agonizing rushes. I ask for pain relief, whatever they can give me. I’d planned on having an unmedicated birth, but at home I changed my mind and decided I wanted it all. “Anything you want,” Aaron said.
They wheel in some sorry-looking nitrous oxide with a broken hose. I try it for a few contractions and give up. It doesn’t do anything for the pain and it only restricts my breathing, which is strained and quick. Jill puts the TENS