The bottom.

I’ll hit the bottom
Hit the bottom and escape
Escape

I’ll hit the bottom
Hit the bottom and escape
Escape

-Radiohead, Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

There isn’t really much to say. I’m sure you’ll find too that your tongue is tied.

Three weeks ago, we found out I was pregnant. We experienced that whole range of emotions that one normally experiences. Some fear, mainly joy. Even though things were never quite right, the longer it went on, the more we started to really believe it. We knew things might go wrong, but we couldn’t help but hope.

We struggled, as all couples do, with whom to tell and when. We started with just our immediate families, until we knew with some added certainty that things were okay. Until we had heard a heartbeat.

I read somewhere that you should tell anyone that you would tell if you did have a miscarriage. Now that I’m having one, I’m glad we only told those five people we did tell. Even though I’m sharing the news of the miscarriage now with my close friends, it feels so much easier to lead with the bad. Instead of knowing that they, like we, are falling from a much higher place of joy and expectation.

And then there’s that word, miscarriage. God. I never wanted to be associated with that word. I never thought I would. I know, I know. It’s so common. It happens to so many women and couples. But I never thought it could be me, us. That we’d join that club of those who have loved and lost.

Our story is such: I was six weeks along. I had been spotting for the past three weeks, pretty consistently. But we’d had bloodwork done, we’d had a previous ultrasound, and all signs pointed to everything being okay, despite the spotting. Then yesterday we went in for another ultrasound. At the last ultrasound, there was no fetal pole, which essentially means: no baby. But the OB’s office assured me that was because it was too early. So they asked me to come back in a week.

Andreas and I went in together. At the last ultrasound, he was on a business trip. I was glad he was getting to come to this one. We thought we’d hear a heartbeat. I charged my camera. I wanted to take a video for my parents.

The ultrasound technician this time though was a different person from last time. A much less likable person. Not that you’re really going to love the person who gives you that kind of news, but her first words to me were, “so have you actually had the miscarriage yet or…?”

Um, what? No. What the hell, lady. Last we heard, everything was fine. I still wonder if they were somehow stringing me along last week. If they knew then that I was on my way to this terrible place. But no, why wouldn’t they tell me? The nurse specifically said, “if it is a miscarriage the [gestational] sac would look misshapen or abnormal. Yours looks fine.”

We watched on the monitor as everything came into view. It looked just the same as last week. My eyes and heart searched for a tiny fetus. But it looked just the same. Just a black circle. The room got very quiet. Still I didn’t realize. I thought she hadn’t done the magic zoom-in feature yet. It didn’t dawn on me that I was looking at nothing. That that was what we had here. Nothing.

Finally, she broke her silence. “I’m sorry, I’m just not seeing any development here. I’m really, really sorry.” “Are you sure?” (How sad. I knew how small I sounded when I said that but I had to. I had to.) “I wish I wasn’t but unfortunately, I am.”

Then, she wouldn’t shut up. She started talking about how common it is, how if we had waited until three months “like they used to do in the old days,” it would have passed like a regular period and we wouldn’t have known any better. How all these new “home tests” are letting people know they’re pregnant the moment they conceive. How modern technology might actually be hurting us.

We didn’t want to hear any of that. Not from her. I know it sounds petty, I know it sounds like we’re projecting, but we can’t help hating that woman. Even though I know she was just trying to cope with this hardest of moments.

After that I was crying. Andreas was helping me get dressed. We were hugging. They moved us in to another room to wait to talk to a midwife. We needed to discuss our options. We waited in that room together. Hugging and crying and looking out the window. Feeling that loss together and that disappointment.

Eventually, a midwife came in and talked about where we go from here. She explained how it could happen naturally, how we could help it along, or how we could go in there and get it over with. We had never thought about any of this before. We didn’t know what would be the best option. As we were talking and asking questions, Andreas suddenly says, “I’m not feeling so well.”

The midwife was going for the chair as he went down. A head-first faceplant onto the doctor’s office floor from a standing position, landing on his face with a dull thud. His arms were by his side, he had nothing to break his fall. It was the singlemost terrifying moment of my life that I can remember. It didn’t take long to wake him, even shorter for a pretty sizable egg to develop on his forehead. We ended up going to the ER, just to make sure everything was okay, and spent the day there, waiting around for a CT scan, calling family, calling work. Coping.

It was a startlingly hard fall.

Right after he fell, he told me that he remembered hearing Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes” while he was out. As he was coming to, he remembered thinking, “Why are we listening to Radiohead? And what am I doing on the floor?” Later we went home and looked up the lyrics and they’re eerily dead on for the moment.

And now, the healing begins.

In the deepest ocean
The bottom of the sea
Your eyes
They turn me
Why should I stay here?
Why should I stay?

I’d be crazy not to follow
Follow where you lead
Your eyes
They turn me

Turn me on to phantoms
I follow to the edge of the earth
And fall off
Everybody leaves
If they get the chance

And this is my chance.

I get eaten by the worms
Weird fishes
Picked over by the worms
Weird fishes
Weird fishes
Weird fishes

I’ll hit the bottom
Hit the bottom and escape
Escape

I’ll hit the bottom
Hit the bottom and escape
Escape

——————————-

Written March 5th, 2010.