A Common Disaster

This is the week my eye starts to twitch.

My hand shakes a bit when I reach for things.

The timer in my head started sometime last week as I realized the dates were approaching.

I often wonder, if I suffered the same trauma at a different time, would I react differently? Would my brain forget a little easier? But having trauma connected to Christmas means that no celebration happens without the lingering memory of the event. While the rest of the world hurries and scurries about in preparation for the holidays, my mind begins to slow and count down. Reach back in time. Thirteen years, to be precise. Some years it feels like a shorter amount, some years longer. While my brain often forgets the exact dates, my body never does. My body never fails to remember the year I carried a dead baby through Christmas.

It's a common disaster, affecting nearly 20 percent of pregnancies in Canada. But until this year, it was still something that was whispered about between friends. The term “Rainbow Babies” highlights our success in getting pregnant and giving birth after a miscarriage yet manages to gloss over the actual loss. Now, with stories shared by celebrities like Chrissy Teigen and Meghan Markle, we are coming forward and sharing our experiences with the world, in the hope of connecting people who have lived through the same tragedy and attempting to heal ourselves.

For us, my husband and I had been trying for over a year to get pregnant and finally conceived in the fall of 2007. The stick turned blue! It was an atheist miracle! After the doctor confirmed it, we set about telling everyone we knew, practically vibrating with excitement. I was sick as a dog and happy to be so. I threw up every morning. Couldn’t eat chicken. Craved all the cheese.

Then, the spotting started. I went back to the doctor. She said it was normal -- that many women spot through their first trimester, and I was one of them. I took her word. The baby books confirmed it, so I continued like nothing could be wrong. I started seeing an acupuncturist next door to my workplace, and she helped me control it. Things proceeded. I entered my second trimester, and I felt great.

That’s when it all went wrong.

On Wednesday of that week, I was elated by the fact that I had woken up and didn’t run to the toilet to throw up. The morning sickness was over! I felt amazing! I was going to my friend’s son’s Christmas performance that day and was so happy at the prospect of not feeling gross all day. The next day, I had my first OB/GYN appointment, and again, I was a bundle of excitement. I would get off early from work, go to the appointment, and come home to tell my husband all about it. He was going to go with me, but he had his work Christmas party that day, so I told him not to bother. It was just a first appointment. There would be lots of opportunities to come along—no big deal.

At my appointment, my doctor was an hour late and swept into the room in a tizzy before setting about the usual routine -- family history, blood pressure, and any concerns. When I told her I was spotting on and off, she reiterated that it’s common for women to spot in the first trimester, but now that I was in the second, it would go away. She then pulled out the Doppler machine and asked if I wanted to hear the baby’s heartbeat. I remember being disappointed I didn’t bring my husband at that point, but I was still overjoyed that I could listen to the baby’s heartbeat so soon. I lay down, pulled up my shirt, and watched as she skimmed the wand over my belly in search of a heartbeat. The whooshing of the machine continued to echo in the room and, having no experience with it, wondered if that whooshing was, in fact, a heartbeat or just my stomach making those noises. She looked and looked, and as I watched her face change from smiling to concerned, I knew there was a problem. She joked -- said that the baby must be hiding -- and that it could be too soon to hear a strong heartbeat. But she wanted to be sure.

She left the room and told me to get myself together. She would meet me at the front desk. When I came out, they handed me the paperwork for an ultrasound at the hospital.

“Someone needs to go with you,” she stated, and I just nodded.

I drifted out to my car and just sat in shock, still processing what she was saying. Did an ultrasound really need someone to drive me? Why did I need my husband? That’s when my brain caught up with reality.

Something was wrong. Very wrong.

That’s when I started shaking, feeling colder than I had in my entire life. I reached for my cell and called my husband. He wasn’t at his desk. I called the receptionist. She wasn’t at her desk. I called, and I called around until I was able to find someone to track down my husband. Someone finally answered the phone, and I remembered them saying to me, hotly, that they were having their Christmas party as if I should dare interrupt it.

“It’s an emergency,” I replied, and the tone in their voice went away.

When they found my husband, I told him what happened and explained that he needed to take the next day off. He said he would. He said, not to worry. He told me it would be okay.

And for a time, the illusion comforted me. It comforted me all the way up to the next day.

It was the last Friday before the official start of the holidays. When we arrived at radiology in the hospital the next morning, they were short-staffed. There were department parties. People were missing. We were assigned a new technician. It was only a pregnancy ultrasound. He would be fine. In the semi-darkness of the ultrasound room, I watched this young man squint and grunt as he took pictures of my womb, my husband standing at my feet, frowning at the screen. Then he stood, told me he needed some help, and left the room, leaving the screen on.

And we waited. And waited. And waited for the technician to return. But he didn’t. So, I sat up and saw the grainy black and white image on the screen. The fetus. My baby. Curled in a ball at the bottom of my uterus. Tiny head and body and legs. It was all there for me to see. Unmoving. To this day, I can close my eyes and see it, vivid as if I am there.

My husband took my hand and told me lies because what else could he do at that time? It would be fine. That’s just a picture. Maybe it’s just sleeping? What did we know? We’d never had a baby before.

The technician came back, full of apologies. They couldn’t reach my doctor. They needed to check with her. Drive to her office and wait there.

And all I remember was a click in my head, and everything shut down. There were motions -- getting dressed, walking down hallways, getting in the car -- but there were no thoughts. The brain is fantastic at self-preservation.

We drove the short distance to the doctor’s clinic, only to find a sign on the door that said, “Closed for a Staff Christmas Party.” And my husband got angry, and I just laughed because what the hell else were we supposed to do.

I called my acupuncturist, and she told us to come to her and wait, and we could talk and sit, and she could do a treatment, and things would be fine. So, we said yes, but first, we needed to eat. And we found a McDonald’s and force-fed ourselves in silence and got in the car and started to drive.

And on the way down the highway, I got the call from the doctor. She was sorry she was gone. She was sorry she missed us. She was sorry our baby was dead. Merry Christmas to us. And that was all.

While I cried, my husband gripped the wheel and kept driving because no one tells you what to do when you find out your baby just died, other than just keep moving. And that’s what we did. I called my parents and broke their hearts and called my acupuncturist, and she told me she would help us. In hindsight, we could have done things differently or better or worse, but there is no handbook for this type of disaster, so we just did what people told us at the time.

The next two days just blurred into one. The hospital called. I was scheduled for a D & C on Thursday. I made jokes that at least I could drink for New Year's Eve. I had bought a gift for my husband -- his favourite cologne being held by a fluffy brown teddy bear in a little Gucci raincoat -- that I signed “from the baby.” I remembered to change the tag, ripping it into a thousand tiny pieces in anger and pain. We cancelled our annual New Year’s Eve party and ignored all the condolence replies. We debated even celebrating Christmas with our family. I wanted to hide. My husband wanted to keep going. I think he was worried that I would never get out of bed.

I dragged myself to Christmas Eve with my family and watched my parents hold back their tears all night. My mother gave me money to go to a spa, and I remember thinking how much I hated my body at that moment and being kind to it was the last thing I wanted to do. We went to my in-laws the next day, and everyone was overly kind, and my one brother-in-law kept trying to make us laugh, and all I could think was how I had a dead baby inside of me, and I wanted it all to be over so soon.

On Boxing Day, admitting called and told me not to eat starting at midnight, and they would call when things would be available. The next day, starving and sad, we watched the Food Network and waited to go to the hospital. When we arrived, I was admitted, and I was prepped and sent down to the operating room, and that’s where I waited. And listened, alone, in a bed. They couldn’t find my doctor. She was scheduled. If they waited any longer, they would have to cancel the procedure. What if I went septic? Weak from not eating and at my emotional end, I begged and cried to the nurse to please find someone to get this dead baby out of me. And that’s when the doctor miraculously arrived, which set off a flurry of activity, and the next thing I knew, I was being wheeled into surgery. When the anesthesiologist told me to count back from one-hundred, part of me wished I wouldn’t wake up. But I did.

Our New Year’s Eve was a quiet one. We went out for sushi with friends who understood -- they had been through a miscarriage too. They made us laugh, and we all got very drunk, and that night, we were told, they conceived their daughter. Because the universe is beautiful and tragic in the same instant.

By the next Christmas, we were pregnant with our son. I was on progesterone and weekly acupuncture treatments to keep the pregnancy viable, but every smiling picture of me -- big and round as Santa -- by the Christmas tree hid the absolute terror in my heart that I would lose him too, at Christmas. My son’s presence on this earth has dulled the ache of memory, but it has never taken it entirely gone. His sister was similar, and I spent the Christmas I was pregnant with her, crying off and on from the Friday before Christmas to the day after New Year’s Eve, filled with the terror that I may lose her too.

That’s why, each year, I put all my energy into making Christmas that much more magical for my children -- the ones who did survive. There are presents enough for ten children, holiday movies and stories, handmade ornaments and decorations, food and cookies, and songs and fun. There’s even a little bear, who once held cologne, sleeping with my daughter’s stuffies, underneath her bed.

I keep moving, keep focusing, on the festivities to drown out the memories that flicker in my brain. Attempting each year to keep things merry and bright. To compensate for the year that was not.

(c) Elvira Berezowsky