Fragments, Part Five

Ten weeks.

I had known I was pregnant for approximately ten weeks – ten hopeful, beautiful weeks that tortured me and terrified me and changed my life.

As I had for the last ten weeks, I awoke and thought of the babe in my belly.  As I had for ten weeks, I asked myself if this was too good to be true – could I really be pregnant with our second child?  And today the answer rang in its finality – I was pregnant today, but tomorrow would be different.

I cried.

According to the plan the on-call doctor and I had established on Sunday, I called my doctor’s office when I awoke.  My on-call doctor said they’d attempt to fit me in for surgery on Monday, but that it could be Tuesday or Wednesday before the surgery could take place.  If I had started miscarrying on my own they would have immediately taken me for an emergency D&C, but otherwise they’d do their best.  When I called – full of dread and hopefulness all the same – I felt relieved to learn that not only could my surgery be scheduled for that afternoon, but the doctor who had seen me last week, the one with whom I had “fallen in love,” would be my surgeon.

I think I cried again.

Because my surgery was scheduled for just after lunch and I needed a pre-surgery consult, we rushed to get ready, showering and packing the things I’d need throughout the day.  In the shower, I washed my belly with care, tears mixing with water as surrealism punctuated my every breath.  I couldn’t believe I was preparing to go to the hospital to have my baby surgically removed from my body six months too soon.

I finished my shower and walked into the bedroom to continue getting ready.  Tahd, thick in his own grief, stopped me at the door and rested his hand on my belly, crying.  He hugged me, and the longer we stood the more I felt like his pain was squeezing the air out of my chest.

I.

Could.

Not.

Breathe.

This couldn’t be happening!  When he finally let go, I struggled to regain my breath, let alone the momentum to continue getting ready.  But it had to be done, so I did it, but only because I was afraid of what might happen if I didn’t.

We were beyond late, but I still paused long enough to take one last photo of my belly.  Fearing we’d become inert if I asked Tahd to take it for me, I quickly set the timer, put the camera on my dresser, and grabbed one shot and then another, just in case the first didn’t turn out.  As it was, neither shot was stellar, but they still mean the world to me.

On our way to the hospital, I took out the sweater I had worked on – the sweater in which I had hoped to bring home the baby.  It wasn’t elaborate and it wasn’t perfect, but it was made from my own hands, delicately and lovingly knit.

Carefully, I disassembled the pieces – the front from the sleeves, and the sleeves from the back.  It seemed wrong to disassemble something in which I had poured so much love, but I pieced it apart, remembering the work that had gone into it, and I put as much love into disassembling it as I did when I knit it in the first place.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, this sweater would become a pivotal part of my healing process, an ebenezer stone, if you will.  It was beautiful, beyond what I ever could have orchestrated or imagined.

I was going to write about the details of my surgery and the rest of the day, but when I went back to read what I had written at the time, I find it to be much more thorough than what I could write six months later.  Rather than repeat myself, I’ll link to it here and will post one final follow-up in this series soon.