Miscarriage Pancakes
We're sitting on the couch eating pizza, and the baby is asleep upstairs. Out of nowhere, there's a jolt of something in my stomach. It feels like I've been hit with a cattle prod. It catches me off guard enough that I cry out and hold my stomach. It almost feels the way it did when the previously mentioned sleeping baby was still inside of me, kicking up a storm. So we think, why not take a pregnancy test? Sleeping baby is only five months old, and it seems exceedingly unlikely that I could have a baby old enough to kick inside of me, but the last time we thought that, sleeping baby had been quietly hanging out for four months.
We buy the pregnancy test but I'm too anxious to pee so we go to sleep and when sleeping baby wakes up for his 5:30 a.m. bottle, I take it into the bathroom. I've taken several pregnancy tests in my life, mostly in college, but they were always negative. Man, does that little perpendicular line light up fast if it's positive! I wait two minutes anyway, then take the test out to Logan. "Does that look like a plus sign to you?" Of course it does.
We make an appointment the next day and because the people who talk to you on the phone apparently never communicate facts to anyone else, my doctor pops in and asks if I'm there for an annual exam. No, I say, I had a positive pregnancy test, so I'm just wondering if I'm pregnant? I spent the time between the test and the appointment Googling reasons for a false positive and have convinced myself that this is what has happened.
She laughs, because we told her, the same as we told anyone who asked, that we were done after one baby, no more babies for us, thank you very much. To be fair, it is kind of funny. Who gets accidentally pregnant twice in a span of fourteen months? I can't even tell her the date of my last period because the baby still had colic then, and I've never had the strongest grasp on time under the best of circumstances, never mind while being consistently sleep deprived.
But I am pregnant and she says congratulations and is so excited, and I get handed a bag full of prenatal vitamins and Shutterfly coupons and I very awkwardly ask what happens if we don't want to go ahead with this and she—am I imagining this?—doesn't seem thrilled to say that we just have to decide during the first trimester.
And do we want to go ahead with this? The baby just emerged from months of horrible colic, where he was screaming five to eight hours a night inconsolably. During a conversation with my inlaws, Logan casually mentioned that he'd thought about suicide or divorce almost every night. "Oh god, me too!" I echo much too cheerfully. But in the end, Logan says, "I think maybe abortion is like polyamory. We think it's a great idea for some people, and we support them, but it just isn't for us." And it isn't.
So we start planning what things will look like, and shopping for double strollers, and talk about names. And my doctor has me come in every week to monitor my hormone levels and things are fine for a bit and then they're not. One hormone is too low, so they retest me, then that one is fine, but another is dropping, and everything is still growing, but they want me to come back.
And then one Friday I wake up and feel under the weather. I'm spotting a little, but the doctor told me that's normal after an ultrasound. I drop the baby off at his grandmother's so Logan can have a day to catch up with laundry and as I'm sitting on the stairs, changing him into a clean onesie before I leave, I think I can feel more blood. But I tell myself it's like middle school, anticipating something that isn't there.
I drive to work and Logan texts me to take good care of myself so I stop at the bagel place by my office and get in line to order an everything bagel with light cream cheese. Only now I'm pretty sure I can feel blood, and I'm wondering if it's soaked through the back of my dress, and there's a man standing behind me, and I'm hoping if it has that he isn't the sort of polite, direct person that is going to tell me about it.
When I get to the register, someone else's order is there. A bag of bagels, three tubs of cream cheese, and a Coke from the Share a Coke campaign. The name on it is Edith, as in Edith and Mr. Bear, one of Logan's favorite childhood books, as in Edythe, my grandmother, as in Edith, the middle name we were going to give to this baby if it was a girl.
I walk away from the register and go to the women's bathroom, which is locked, so I open the men's room and lift up my dress and there is indeed blood, a lot of it, and I leave the bagel place, and I get back in the car, and I dig a baby blanket out of the back seat to put under me because I don't want to stain my seat and I go home and shower and change and we go to get breakfast and I order cupcake pancakes, because having icing and sprinkles on top of pancakes at ten in the morning seems like the only rational response to the day.
After breakfast, the tissue passes, and I call the doctor and we have to go in and find a parking spot and wait in the waiting room for what feels like an eternity and the nurse who takes us in asks me how far along I am and both Logan and I are taken aback and I say well I just miscarried so I don't know, zero weeks? Did I mention the people who answer the phone never communicate to anyone else? And she's trying to shake me down for a urine sample and I'm too anxious and dehydrated from IHOP to pee and she's irritated but also won't bring me water and then my doctor comes in and says that she has to go deliver a baby and she's so sorry, but she's going to have one of her partners take care of me.
It's the male partner, who is competent but also seems like the sort of person that might believe my recent decision to chop off all of my hair is why my pregnancy failed. No one has told him that I've come in because I've miscarried, so I have to go through everything again. He tells me it's passed, and I don't know if he means the tissue from my body or my pregnancy in a time sense, or if it's just a nice way of saying dead, and he pats me on the arm in a way that seems completely removed from human emotion.
I'm so ready to go home, but because I have Rh negative blood I need a shot to protect me from exposure to the embryo in case it was Rh positive. So we go to the pharmacy downstairs and my insurance company is telling them I don't have coverage, which isn't true, but it doesn't matter because the shot isn't covered and also the pharmacy doesn't have the prescription in stock. Another pharmacy down the road has it, but it's 4:00 now and there's no way to make the round trip by the time my doctor's office closes.
So we say fuck it, we'll do it on Monday, and we go get fajitas at our favorite Tex Mex place and I call my mother, who reminds me this is why we don't tell people we're pregnant early, and we pick up our baby afterwards and I hold him close because what dumb luck to not even try and end up with such a cute, healthy creature.
Weeks later, after multiple visits to monitor my hormone levels as they go all the way down to zero, I open an envelope with test results. In the margins, the head nurse has drawn a smiley face and written No more blood draws! (I was not the most gracious patient.) The baby is strapped to my chest as we walk back from the mailbox. He grabs the paper and shoves it in his mouth, gleefully.