Entry 007

When most pregnant women think about the last time doing something with their child in their womb, it’s because they’re about to give birth. I haven’t been so lucky.

It’s been a month since my fourth baby was surgically removed from my body. One month ago, I woke up, showered and got dressed with my baby. I got in the car, drove to the hospital and checked in with my baby. I sat in the patient room, got an IV and was wheeled to pre-op with my baby. All while knowing those were the last hours I’d have with him. I knew when I woke up from surgery, there would be only one heart in my body instead of two.

I noted everything I could think to after the elevator doors opened on the way to the pre-op room. I didn’t want to forget that last things I saw while he was with me. I was wheeled one way while my husband went the other. I wonder what he was feeling in the moment his wife and child were being taken in a direction he couldn’t go. I can replay that scene in my mind like it was this morning.

I was in a wheelchair with an IV piercing the vein on my left wrist. There was dried blood under my fingernails because the IV was done improperly the first time and the blood made thin with saline ran down my hand quicker than the nurse could clean it up. I was rolled down the dimly lit hallway and watched those big, heavy white doors open in my direction. They barely missed my hospital-socked feet on the rests of the wheelchair as they parted in front of me. I was pushed into the pre-op room and moved from the wheel chair to the bed with only curtains between me and all the other patients.

Laying there, everything looked a little fuzzy because I had to leave my glasses upstairs—it was like the screen in a movie when someone’s going in and out of consciousness, except I was fully coherent because the first dose of IV medication didn’t make me sleepy like it was supposed to. My vitals were taken for what seemed like the 10th time and the nurse adjusted the inflatable wraps on my calves that were supposed to prevent blood clots. The doctor came to see me and so did the anesthesiologist, who compared the anesthesia to taking two shots of vodka straight—I didn’t find that very funny being that I should’ve been pregnant. After a while, I was taken into the operating room on that hospital bed. My doctor stopped me in the hallway because I had to sign another form that allowed him to have my baby sent for testing in hopes of learning why he died. I was rolled into my operating room and saw the stirrups. And all men. I don’t think I heard a single woman’s voice. I felt so, so vulnerable physically at a time when I was already emotionally exposed. But I pulled myself from the stretcher to the operating table anyway. I wondered how long I’d be laying there since I just saw my doctor down the hall.

Everyone said they’d take good care of me, but nobody mentioned anything about my baby. Like even in the final stages of this miscarriage, even though they were about to suction my child out of my body, they didn’t want to talk about it. Maybe they didn’t want to remind me why I was there. But all I was thinking about was how these moments of them stretching my arms out on the table, placing the heart monitors on my skin and that big blue oxygen mask over my face were the last I’d have with my fourth baby.

I woke up in the recovery room from the force of my body shivering. I’ve never felt so cold. The nurse came to me with two warm blankets; one she left folded and placed over my abdomen and the other was laid over my body. The warmth and weight of the one over my newly empty uterus helped fill the void of where my baby had been for weeks. And it turns out mesh undees—you know, those ones new moms complain about because of their lack of sex appeal—aren’t just for after birthing live children. They also aren’t very good for catching blood, by the way.

You shouldn’t have to leave the hospital without your baby. It just isn’t fair. But after sitting in the patient room—the same one in which we sat with our baby just hours before—until I proved I could pee and keep down buttered toast, that’s exactly what we had to do. Just like we did with our third.

Emily Lindquist