Black Weekend Part I

[August 10, 2009]

Carey was pregnant for two months. It's over now. Thursday, August 6th our plan for dinner was that after work I'd go to Whole Foods, pick up a rotisserie chicken, then swing by and pick up Carey from the All-Star Fitness. As I was leaving the library she called me. In a panicked tone she explained there was blood. I didn't worry, though. We read in one of those books that this is pretty common in the first trimester. When I picked her up she was on her cell with the midwife. Because Carey wasn't cramping, the midwife encouraged us to monitor, but not to worry too much. Carey broke down crying. I tried to assure her (from my expertise gathered from lightly browsing maybe two books on pregnancy) explaining that this commonly occurred and had little to no bearing on the health of the pregnancy. She was just scared is all. We carefully drove the scooter home. I dropped her off, scooted back downtown to Whole Foods to get dinner (she wanted mac & cheese, her comfort food) and then a special stop at Dick's because she also wanted a cheeseburger. The bleeding continued through the evening. Around midnight Carey called the consulting nurse who promised we'd get a call back from the midwife on duty pronto. The midwife never called that night so we went to bed. The next morning there was a lot more blood. Some clots and brown trails of blood must have pooled overnight. It all came out at once. Carey called the consulting nurse again and then we finally got that call from the midwife who didn't call the night before because she thought is was too late (!). A plan was proposed. Two blood tests. One on Friday, one two days later on Sunday to compare hormone levels. If more hormones (a higher number?) where found in Sunday's blood test, good. If not, bad. Carey would have to sit around the house, no doubt worrying up a storm until Monday to actually find out the results. Mary Kay suggested she have me learn the meaning of fetch (not helpful). But then she also recommended Carey ask for another ultrasound for a quicker answer (helpful). And they got us in that day. I marveled at the technology and efficiency and even willingness of the HMO to help us out like that. So we got an ultrasound from a midwife.

During the ordeal, the midwife was mostly quiet or would keep saying that her ultrasound skills were not that great. Not something I wanted to hear. I also didn't want to hear the midwife say she was 99% sure Carey's body had already begun the process of expelling the non-viable pregnancy. But again with the "my ultra sound skills are not that great" caveat. So while we sat in the waiting room across from a happy and very pregnant couple, Carey all teary-eyed crying and me run down and defeated, the midwife called Radiology to see if we could come in ASAP and get an abdominal ultra sound ("for a much more clearer picture" she told us). On our walk from the midwifery building to radiology we began the process of giving up. Accepting the failure and loss. Carey, with dark humor, decided we should call the embryo Alice because I had been reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland at night to her and the once future baby. Then she thought better of it and suggested we call it Cheshire Cat because first it was there, and then it disappeared. We mocked the miscarriage pamphlet the midwife gave us while waiting to get the ultrasound. It was filled with trite quotes from grieving mothers anonymously signed by the likes of "mom from Ohio". There was even a whole page and a 1/5 for fathers! The midwife warned us that radiology closed at 5, but would try and squeeze us in, see if they would stay a little late even. We felt that pressure right away when the middle-aged guy with the Moe from the Three Stooges haircut hurried us down the hall to the ultrasound room. We arrived at the dim room at 4:45pm. It was Friday and this guy's week was probably juuuust about over. And boy he was fast with the ultrasound machine! Snappin' pictures from every angle possible at a furious pace. Dodging our questions right and left reminding us that he was not a doctor. But then at one point he paused for a second asking Carey if she'd ever had a pap smear. Odd question. Of course she had and she told him that. "Did you know you have two Uteruses?" He showed us on the monitor. If he hadn't of pointed it out, we'd have never known. The screen was just snowy TV static grays. But then he outlined it for us. Kind of like a misshapen heart split down the middle and pulled halfway apart. Two sides. Two Uteri. This would take longer than he'd hoped. He took Carey to the bathroom...and you know what? I don't know what happened in that bathroom. I forgot to ask. Anyway, he came back and set up the room for another ultra sound. This time vaginal. Then he had Carey undress and get up on the table again but now propped up with a paper towel over her naked lower half. She was gonna undress right there, but he insisted that he leave first. He fetched a doctor to check out the scene. Dr. O, she called herself. And she didn't know anything that was going on. She walked in all cheerful announcing, "Are you guys ready to find some good news (meaning the baby)?" But we quickly explained this was just a confirmation of a dead end. In an instant her face morphed like those theater masks from comedy to drama. The radiologist had Carey insert the ultrasound wand into herself. And several times after he moved it around, Carey groaned in pain. He apologized and you could tell he hated doing this, but he kept hurting her. Now he was perspiring. Light bounced off his wet forehead. He was afraid to look under the sheet or even be near her privates. We thought it was kind of funny. His awkwardness, that is. Dr. O tried to explain the Uterus Didelphys to us. She said it was rare, but not unheard of. She recommended we get an MRI to map out the crazy freak show that are Carey's reproductive organs. Both the radiologist and the Dr. said that Carey's ovaries were good, at least. In all this hooplah of the carnival sideshow uterus, we still hadn't gotten a straight answer about our embryo. Finally Dr. O said it. There's no heart beat. And that's when it really sunk in like a knife to the chest. It's over. Carey was right from the start.

After Carey got dressed we walked back to midwifery. Fortunately, the same midwife was still there. She took us in another room and we talked it out. The double uterus was kind of a good thing to focus on, get our minds off the current bad situation, though both Dr. O and the midwife explained that the didelphys probably was not the cause for the miscarriage. The midwife offered Carey some pills that would expedite the process of the otherwise spontaneous abortion. They go inside her, dissolve, and within 1 to 6 hours her body will start contractions and flush out the non-viable pregnancy. She warned us there would be cramps, then blood and everything would come out and then the pain would subside. She said it very straight forward like that. First this, then that, followed by this, the end. Like it was a calisthenics plan. Do ten push-ups, twenty sit-ups...you get the idea. The midwife did do a good job of explaining that Carey's body needed to get rid of this pregnancy because something was terribly wrong. She went over that guilt is a typical response, but there was nothing that we could have done to prevent this and that it's a good thing. We understood that. She talked about the difference between understanding this intellectually and the emotions of loss involved. As we left to rent a video (The State: Season 1 & 2) I said out loud that I thought I'd never hear myself saying, "Oh, no thanks. We won't be able to go out. We're going to stay in tonight and have a miscarriage."