it turns out that losing a baby can introduce you to a whole host of experiences you may not have given much thought to before. i am calling these "the firsts," and my feelings about them are very mixed.
on the one hand, there are firsts that are steps in the what i hope is the right direction: my first support group meeting. my first appointment with a therapist. these are important, helpful resources, and i know i am lucky they exist and that i have access to them. on the other hand...i don't want to need them. i didn't want to know they existed. i didn't want to need to know.
and then there are the firsts that are just horrible. i made my first postpartum visit to my OB about two weeks after my baby's birth/death. i had been bleeding a lot and i was nervous about it. it never occurred to me when i made the appointment how it would feel to make that drive - the drive that i used to look forward to, that used to fill me with excitement and hope - or to walk back into the office - the office that i had last stood in 36 weeks pregnant, so sure i'd meet my baby soon - or, most of all, to look at my doctor again, when the last time i had seen him was when i held my still, blue little girl for the first and last time.
my husband reads these posts before i post them, and he has been concerned that they sound like i blame my doctor for what happened. i don't. he did the best he could. he always made plenty of time for me and i was so sure i knew what i wanted from prenatal care, and he listened. it was my fourth healthy pregnancy. i'd never known any other kind - and i have never appreciated what a blessing that was. this pregnancy, while being physically the most difficult, was actually the least stressful in many ways: no test i had done had ever come back less than 100 percent normal, the baby always measured exactly the right size, she was in the perfect position. how were either of us to know she would die suddenly three weeks before my due date?
because i'd never thought twice about OB visits before, i didn't think twice about scheduling this appointment, either. it was only in the car, when i started down that familiar road, that i started to sob.
here i was, going back to the OB. but there would be no doppler this time. no ultrasound. no baby.
i cried through my check-in. i cried in the waiting room. i cried while the nurse took my blood pressure. i cried and cried and cried.
my OB came in and did an exam and told me everything was normal, there was nothing to worry about.
"i'm sorry," i blurted out. "i wasted your time."
he said, "please. on my list of concerns about you, the bleeding was like number five."
then he sat down and said, "how are you doing?"
i took out my notebook - i have always been that goody two-shoes from school that takes notes on everything - and said, "do you have time for me to ask you a few of the questions i have about what happened?"
"shoot," he said.
so we went through them, one by one.
was it caused by rh factor? my blood type is negative, and my husband's is positive, so i've always had to have rhogam injections during pregnancy and after to prevent my body from developing antibodies that would attack my babies.
no, he said. we tested your blood and there were no antibodies. and babies that suffer from rh factor are usually swollen - it's easier to notice at birth because it's a chronic condition. your baby looked fine.
did i drink too much diet iced tea? it was the only drink i could stomach some days.
no, he said. even if it had aspartame, which i doubt it did, i would have told you to drink it. there's no evidence that suggests that it harms fetuses.
did i exercise too much? did i lie on my back too much?
no. if babies could die from moms lying on their back too much, there would be no people left.
was it because i didn't do the diabetes test? i'd been so nervous about having to sit in the waiting room for an hour during the peak of coronavirus that i'd felt skipping it was the lesser of two evils. i'd never had diabetes before, so it seemed like a safe thing. now i wasn't sure.
no, i had that thought too, so i measured your blood sugar when you delivered. it was normal. you didn't have diabetes.
was it CMV? was it listeria? did i pick up something too heavy? was it because i took zoloft?
no, no, no and no.
was it because i wasn't paying enough attention to her? if i had noticed a decrease in movement earlier, could i have saved her?
no, he said. the tough thing about this is that i don't think we'll ever know what happened, and that means there's nothing i can tell you about how to stop it from happening again. but it's not something you did. there was nothing you could have done differently to save this baby.
that was hard to hear - but also something i desperately needed to hear. just as i desperately needed my doctor to listen patiently as i rattled off theory after theory, each crazier than the next, and explain to me why and how they were false.
i left the appointment crying, and i cried the whole way home, too. but it was a little different then: instead of being compounded by shame and self-doubt and self-loathing, for the first time i was able to weep just for the sheer pain of losing my baby, the baby i had been so close to holding, without feeling like it was all my fault.
yes, these firsts are bittersweet.