*** mildly graphic miscarriage information and personal details. ***
I had been told my womb was empty. Two ultrasounds, both external and internal, showed an empty uterus. I had bled a very very little. Google search: second trimester miscarriage without bleeding. Google search: miscarry without knowing it. "Though you are supposed to be 14 weeks, it is likely the baby passed quite a while ago. It's possible he was so small you didn't realize it had happened." Google search: first trimester miscarriage without bleeding. "You will bleed for the next few days, but if the bleeding gets worse instead of tapering off, come back to the emergency room. We'll want to make sure you aren't hemorrhaging or fighting an infection."
It sucked. Our Ryan was due on my parent's would-be 26th Wedding Anniversary. Right before the holiday season (our first without mama bear.) We ran away to the seashore for a month -- me, my husband, my two babies -- both of whom lived off me, one sucking from the outside, the other sucking from the inside. Out in the sunshine, with the three of them truly all-around me, I felt so much life. I "noticed" plants in a way I never have before. I sat in the rose gardens and enjoyed even the browning, rippled petals.
But in the final 72 hours of our trip, my body hissed and leaked death. I knew before I called the midwife, before I went to the ER, before I stood from the bathroom. I didn't even get to say good-bye. How cruel to never get a "Hello!" but no good-bye either? How eerie and ridiculous. I felt (mostly) physically fine and wanted to continue with our vacations plans, to close out this month away with family time in Disneyland. It's the place I feel closest to my mother, and missing her in normal life is enough, so missing her in my-first-miscarriage-life was an aggressive punch to the nose. I needed Main Street USA and churros. It was going to be my escape to what, I believe, has promises of Heaven written all over it.
Our Disney day was outstanding. Rowdy responded like the children in the commercials, Caleb did that weird-laugh on his favorite rides and little girls dressed like Cinderella rode on carved, flying elephants above a singing fountain.
And my baby, who I was told was no longer with me, was there too. I found out he was there after the fireworks (the west coast version of the place Caleb asked me to go through life together -- he and I -- forever), just as Fantasmic began. Crampy twists turned into labor contractions. I leaned over to Caleb: "I think we need to go. Now. Or we will regret it." He put Rowdy in the ergo, slung on the backpack and grabbed my hand. We were going to try to get out of the park and to our hotel, but as we jogged past tiki torches and teriyaki skewers in AdventureLand, I commanded the need for a bathroom. "Oh no. Caleb, Caleb, something is happening. Something is happening right now." It was the miscarriage version of dumping out water from those translucent blue kegs found in offices and waiting rooms everywhere. Glug, glug, glug. I could feel the heave and dump, over and over. Caleb didn't want me to use the bathroom alone in case I passed out, but it was filled with women and little girls and even in the moment it felt not-right to storm in there with him. People were around. If I needed help I could yell or knock.
february 2012
may 2014
may 2014
Instantly the toilet filled with red liquid life. I focused on breathing, on not getting light-headed. Blood streamed down my legs. I got up and went back to my husband -- I realized I might not be able to help passing out. It was a lot of blood. In the meantime he had found a Disney employee who ran with us to the charming First Aid building. Women in teal polo shirts whirred around me, laying down mats and enormous pads and making horrible faces. We waffled between getting an ambulance or having Caleb go back to our hotel to get our rental car to drive me to the hospital himself. I didn't want an ambulance -- I wasn't dying. I knew that. Caleb, armed with two dead iPhones, a hand-drawn map on a sheet of paper with a blue castle logo, and a sleeping baby in a black carrier, left me to take a tram to the main road to walk to the hotel to get our car to return to a drop-off loop where I would join him.
I laid on my back in a room much like a movie-set of "old school hospital rooms." Neat, clean blue beds lined against two walls. White and bright, silver and sterile. I went in and out of sleep during contractions and blood pours. After 45 minutes I was woken up by a soft-handed brunette security guard. "Your husband is here. I'm going to take you to him." I put my hand by my side to push myself up and I splashed in my own blood. I was laying in a pool, half an inch thick. The security woman laid three heavy-duty pads down for me and I carefully set myself into the wheel chair. She pushed me out secret passages and behind-the-scenes areas to get to the road where Caleb was waiting. Even in the moment, I knew how cool that was.
Caleb looked relieved to see me, and terrified at the amount of blood. Relief and terror at the same time is a face I won't forget. We were (in essence) turned away at three clinics. "All our beds are full, and we can't guarantee a time when she could be seen. But she's welcome to wait in the waiting room." Caleb debated telling them I was having a heart attack. "Do they not know how serious this is?! What if you're hemorrhaging?! Would they just like you bleed to death because there isn't a bed for you?!" I like his angry rants. Even if they talk about me dying. He loves me.
We went to the biggest hospital we could find. All the beds were full. It was 11:30 pm on Friday night and I was seventh in line for a room. I sat in my bloody wheelchair and crunchy (useless) pad until 2:30 am on Saturday morning. Once in a room, Caleb held my newly IV-ed hand and 'slept' on a pillow of metal bed-rail. I was so sad and tired. The ultrasound tech came in two hours later and Caleb saw our baby on the screen. A head, arms and fingers, legs and toes. He looked at me tearfully. I was afraid of the miscarriage process. It hadn't happened yet and it had been so bloody and painful already. What do I do? What if it doesn't happen all on its own? What am I supposed to expect? Pieces? Clots? Chunks? How much bleeding is too much? What pain is concerning pain? They don't do Bradley classes on how to miscarry. Where to miscarry. "I'm going with a highly-medicated home birth."
The doctor saw us at 6:00 am and told me a few things I didn't already know: our baby had died at 12 weeks, my cervix was completely open, and he expected me to miscarry all by myself in the next 48 hours. April 10th is when he died. I know April 10th. It's the day my dear friend delivered her dead son, Bobby. He was 20 weeks old and absolutely beautiful. He was also perfect: no chromosomal abnormalities, no defects, no missing body parts. He died one day, for no medical or biological reason. I was texting our other dear friend Becca all day. She was beside Janet, Bobby's mama, helping her labor to birth her baby. No one came in to check the heart rate. No one turned on the heating station. Janet, Becca and I were all pregnant together. Expecting within a couple months of each other. Janet's loss was blind-siding, and I held my tummy all day long, letting tears come as they willed. Before I went to bed, as I was receiving pictures of Bobby's tiny face, I felt a mermaid-tail flip inside me. It was early, but my first and only kick of Ryan's I got. I now wonder if maybe that's when he died? Or maybe he was playing hard and fell asleep later in the night and then woke up in heaven? I remember April 10th.
We left the hospital and drove straight to the airport after fetching our eldest from Caleb's brother and his girlfriend in the waiting room. A long night was had by all. We had an 11 am flight to catch. We talked over and over about our options, but decided to take our chances and fly. We were headed to Dallas for me to shoot a wedding. I couldn't think about that yet. And I still had a week to worry about the wedding. But I wanted to try to arrive, to get the flight out of the way. We carried our luggage and Disney plastic bags and crap to the big windows in front of the ticketing gates. I tried to find Rowdy's birth certificate and all the liquids in the carry-ons. Rowdy took delight in pulling one item of clothing out at a time, putting it on his head, and running a few circles before starting again. We let him. Caleb had diarrhea (sausage McMuffin and coffee after a night in the emergency room, anyone?). I felt thin and waif-like (I'm not... but my body was timid and drained.)
You don't know until you know. My group of three pregnant friends was down to one. My mom wasn't around to call or come help. My body held my dead baby. And we were playing peek-a-boo at gate B3 in LAX. When it comes time to never-be-the-same, you somehow just do.
I delivered Ryan Day Morris on Sunday night, May 4th, in a friend's tub. There are 100 reasons why I should have never been in that particular friend's house, let alone master bathroom. But I'm grateful that that's where I was. I'm grateful my husband was with me. I'm grateful we weren't 30,000 feet in the air. Contractions had laid low for most of the morning and afternoon, but 15 minutes after we arrived at our destination they started. When they got too painful, I left the kitchen and conversation and went to the bedroom to labor.
I'm grateful that though I didn't get 12,000 mother-moments with Ryan, I got a birth experience with him. I had been so afraid of golf-ball-sized blood clots. I worried I wouldn't know when he had come out, or that I would accidentally flush him down the toilet, or that he would get stuck. The Lord told me "You're in labor. You pushed out a very big baby once before, and now you're going to do the same with a much smaller baby." The mental transition to over-the-top-clotty-period to natural labor was just what I needed. It was calm, peaceful and nurturing. It was my last chance to do something with Ryan, to be a mama to my baby. I enjoyed in a heartbreaking way every stitch of it. Swaying and breathing, with a good daddy rubbing my back.
The final large contractions set in, and I got in the warm tub (at my husband's recommendation) and quickly felt the urge to push. Two painless pushes later, my apple-sized (much bigger than expected!) little one was "born." No nurses. No cord to cut. No cry to wait for. No skin-to-skin for bonding. Caleb lifted his little boy out of the bloody water and wrapped him in a blue towel. You don't know until you know how much you can love a wrinkled brown (human) lump. The next morning we drove him out to the farm where his father and I met.
On Tuesday May 6th our little family of four went out to the land we love so much, and we left one we love so much. The house was built for the joy of little children like him; built with visions of him in mind. Ryan ("Child of the King") Day ("Light, Hope") Morris lays outside our future-bedroom window, in the center of the future-front-garden. When I walk over to his hole in this red earth, my heart carbonates and spills over. Inside his too-small wood tomb (which is sealed shut by dad so "the ants don't get him.") is a heartfelt letter from each parent, and "dit! dit!" (sticks) from big brother. I look forward to the day you sword-fight with sticks, while mom and I sit on the front porch with the Lion of Judah laughing at our side.
"I love that God is leaving nothing undone. It's like He's going back in time and mending wounds, the big gashes and the tiny tears. He sees them all and He does not forget even when I try. I pushed things into the 'forget' corner because they were too small of hurts that didn't matter all that much. And yet God brings them to the light and says, 'This one too. I'll mend that too. I'm not done here.'" [The Nato's]
Sing like never before, oh my soul.
Good-bye my baby. Snuggle grandma for me. Go delight in being the child of the King, and I'll be there to play and talk and get to know you very soon.