The doctor says, “Do not panic.” The doctor says the baby’s heart rate is low.
The doctor schedules me for an appointment only a week later, just in case.
I do my best not to panic. I hold my friends’ two-month-old son. I think of how tiny and perfect he is. I think about how my baby is the size of a blueberry. I think of how tiny and perfect blueberries are, how a piece of sweet, tart fruit feels like magic, how my older daughter loves blueberries, how she doesn’t know about the new baby. I am trying to think about anything else.
I know the baby is still an embryo. I know it’s early enough that it’s not even a true heart, or a heartbeat really, just “cardiac activity.” Still.
A week later the doctor says the baby’s heart rate is even lower. The baby’s heart sounds strange, with an extra beat where one shouldn’t be. The extra beat isn’t a fluke—it keeps happening, boom-ba-boom, boom-ba-boom. It sounds like an error message. I correct myself: it sounds superhuman. I pretend the baby is a superhero with a superhuman heart. The doctor does not tell me not to panic. The doctor says she’s sorry, but the news isn’t good. The doctor says she’s so sorry. Superheroes don’t exist.
I text everyone who knows I’m pregnant. I am very direct. I want them to feel what I feel. I tell them I am carrying a baby who is alive for now. I tell them I am carrying a baby who is probably going to die. I tell them I’m carrying a baby who is dying. Cruel fact seems the only thing I can take. I want it brutal. I am trying to write without metaphor. This is like nothing else.
Everyone says, “I’m so sorry,” so many times the words stop meaning anything.
My very alive three-year-old daughter sees me crying, says, “You’re going to be OK, Mommy.”
We take the trip we were already planning, to a cottage I’ve been going to since childhood. I think it will be a good distraction. I am sort of right. I take my dying baby on vacation: I take my dying baby on an airplane. I take my dying baby to see my family. I take my dying baby on a boat ride. I take my dying baby swimming with their sister. I feed my dying baby ice cream. It’s sweet. It’s fun. I cannot bear it.
Every cramp, I wonder if I will lose my dying baby in an airplane toilet, in a gas station bathroom, in the cottage where I once threw up after too much beer. I still feel pregnant. I suppose I am still pregnant. I look pregnant. I hate looking at myself in mirrors. I want to cover every mirror I see. I can’t stand my reflection.
Meanwhile, in the Atlantic, a submersible has gotten lost trying to explore the remains of the Titanic. Everyone thinks, How terrible to be trapped like that underwater. The world is obsessed with learning the fate of the passengers, enthralled by the torture of waiting. I get it.
When I write online about waiting, about this underwater time, I get a staggering number of responses that say they know, they’ve been in this place. Middle school friends. College acquaintances. Family. Colleagues. Former professors. Even close friends. They say one in four pregnancies ends this way. This is supposed to make me feel better. It does, and it does not. To know so many people want to talk about it but can’t, for a thousand reasons. To know the suffering that is bubbling just beneath the surface, unable to find its way out.
When we return from vacation, the doctor finds no heartbeat. I wonder when the baby died. I ask, and the doctor cannot tell me. If I wanted to commemorate my baby’s last day of life, I couldn’t. I’m carrying a dead baby. The doctor says, “I’m so sorry.” She squints at the ultrasound monitor. I see it too. “I think I see two yolk sacs,” she says. I’m carrying two dead babies.
I am purposefully writing “dead baby” as many times as I can. I think it might make me feel better, to hurt you the way I’ve been hurt. I don’t know yet if sharing is making me feel better, only that I feel like I have no choice. People say memoir is too self-absorbed, too sentimental. It’s no surprise then that many women write it. You don’t want sentimental? I will write hard facts. Does that feel better for you to read? Isn’t sentiment the whole point of writing? The facts themselves are sodden with feeling. You cannot escape it. I cannot escape it.
Pregnant women are everywhere. I can’t stop seeing them. I shut my eyes. I scroll through Instagram to distract myself, but pregnant women are there too. A friend posts about her abundant garden, and I hate her. A friend shares a picture of her nine-months-pregnant belly on a kayak, and I hate her. A friend sends me a card with a picture of the sonogram of her son, and I throw the card away.
I cannot stand it anymore. The day before the surgery to remove the fetal tissue (I cannot write “dead baby” anymore), I try to have a good day. Someone from the hospital calls and tells me the procedure will cost $1,000 after insurance. “We look forward to seeing you!” she says. I go get a massage. I expect to cry, but I don’t. My back hurts from carrying my three-year-old through the airport. Everyone keeps saying, “It’s not your fault.” I think about the word miscarry, though: like I dropped the baby. Babies. Or people say I “lost” the babies, like I just left them somewhere. Maybe that’s why my back hurts so much: I want it to be my fault. Give all the blame to me, let me sink with it.
After the massage I take myself to lunch. I eat a passion fruit tart. It’s delicious—sour and sweet both in perfect balance. Its perfection makes me angry. The filling is bright yellow. I watch my fork pick up the yellow and the crumbs. I am too focused on this tart. I wonder if I have been worrying so much that the worry muscles in my brain are now broken, permanently sharpened to a point of attention that is useless now, an ambulance siren for no one. I run into a friend at the restaurant. She asks, “How are you?” and I think I say, “Great!” She is talking about Montessori schools. It’s not her fault. I think about interrupting her to say, I’m pregnant, but my babies are dead now. I don’t do it.
They find the submersible, or what’s left of it—almost nothing. Almost. The world mostly forgets about it afterward, moves on. The wreckage will never fully disintegrate.
In the restaurant, before the surgery, I scrape up the last bite of passion fruit. Maybe the babies will like this, I think, absurdly. I’m carrying two dead babies. I carry them in my body like I wanted to carry them in my arms. I have done my best for them—or, I have tried to do my best for them. All I can do now is offer them something sweet: sugar in our three hearts, in their still blood, in the cells they will leave behind in my body, even after they are gone. The sweetness persists, despite everything.
