I Thought There Would Be More Blood

I thought there would be more blood.

Don't get me wrong, the blood came. The pain, the guilt, the confusion, rage, sadness, guilt- hell; the whole smorgasbord of emotions piled on top of me until I couldn't take a deep breathe without every mote of willpower I had.

But, at the beginning, in that first moment of clarity that something terrible had just happened, when I hoped through my my disbelieving certainty; I thought there would be more blood.

~

I'd just moved into the comfy-pants midpoint of my second pregnancy. You know that point? It's when you still gag at the smell of, well for me it was the smell of everything but for normal people usually just one or two strong smells. Like maybe raw meat, or chili. So; you still gag but sometimes you can keep down food for, what? maybe ten minutes at a time before it comes roiling back up.

But people; your friends, your mom, your doctors- they all tell you it's fine. That the baby gets everything that it needs even if you feel like rubbish 24/7. So you smile and carry on because you know it will be all worth it. You've done this before and isn't she beautiful? Your two year old toddler, the imperious princess of the house, she-who-never-sleeps, your firstborn jewel.

Between the exhaustion and the nausea, and the tugs along your back and sides that shows you your body remembers this from the time before, you know you're halfway to home already. And now that the comfy pants and loose tops are back? Well now, you've got this.

And, honestly, the nausea has eased up a bit over the past few days. Maybe, just maybe, it won't be so bad this second time around.

And that. That thought? The one where you welcomed the easing of pregnancy? That part when you were glad your body wasn't putting up a fight during this pregnancy? That thought would haunt you for years, wouldn't it? You chewed on that selfish, if unknowing, thought for years, tormented yourself for the ignorance of what was happening/had already happened.

You thought things were better but likely they had already become so much worse.

~

It was the back, wasn't it? No; maybe it was the stomach? The ache in the thighs, maybe; the ones that felt so familiar and appeared like clockwork every month for the past 8 years? Whichever and whatever it was I woke from a doze snatched during the princess's naptime and did what a pregnant woman does when she wakes- I went to the bathroom. And I felt it happen.

I thought there would be more blood.

A pulling, not painful, perhaps pressure is more correct? A pressure and I knew. I reached my hand between my legs and felt the slight presence and warmth in the palm of my cradled hand.

Then I looked.

I thought there would be more blood. But there was, then, just watery pink. Watery pink and a translucent ruffle of.. of what? Of something that should not be in my hand. Of something that had been carried under my heart, swaddled in my depths, knitted inside my body, lived a life imagined in my dreams.

I thought there would be more blood. But what there was, then, was our last moment with just the two of us. Before frantic calls and rushed car drive, before finding a neighbor for the princess and filling out forms, before the calling of friends and the asking of why, before the sleepless nights, the tears, the emptiness; there was a moment with just the two of us.

I didn't know, and I still don't: was that you, there, in my hand? Or was it a part of your home, faulty, defective, traitorous, my body torn and tearing, following the path out of my body as discarded cells had poured out over the years in rivers of red?

I do know I cradled that slickly gossamer bit in my hand all the way to the hospital. I surrendered it on intake with one last teary thought of 'I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.'

What happened then? Was it tested? Discarded? Catalogued? Labeled? Photographed? Smeared on a slide? Burnt with the refuse of the ward? Matched against the evacuation of my body the next day to empty me of the only home I ever gave you? I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

Still today, all these years, I feel the ache of you in my joints, across my back, the implausible weight of that tiny scrap in my hand. The magnificent hopes for you. The inhospitable instability of my treacherous body to complete you and keep you safe until you could be properly launched into life.

I see you in your sisters’ faces, hear your echoes in the stories of women confiding their pain, touch you again in my deepest dreams when carrying your weight cupped in my hands.

You were mine, once. You were and then you weren't, and all the tears I could ever cry wouldn't wash away my grief.

I thought there would be more blood.

~

Even this abbreviated life, one that passed through my life like a boat that almost set shore, changed me. I am not the same person that wept on that car ride to the hospital, not the same person that gave birth to another princess the next year. All lives that we encounter leave their mark.

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