Death by a Million Cuts

TW: Pregnancy Loss

People sometimes ask or ponder what it feels like to lose a baby. There are thousands of metaphors on the internet. Grief is like the ocean, some days have large waves and some have small. Grief is like a black hole that never fills, but you build around it. Grief is like a big black ball in a jug, where the ball doesn’t get smaller, but as you heal, the jar gets bigger. I could go on and on. But most of these descriptions and similes have to do with grief, not with actually losing a part of yourself. That’s what losing a baby is. My daughter’s entire existence was within my own body, and then she was gone. If I could describe what it’s like, it’s like dying yourself, but not in one fell swoop in a large dramatic event. It’s like death by a million tiny cuts.

Obviously, there is one huge gaping wound, and I mean that physically and metaphorically. But the tiny cuts almost hurt worse because they are completely unpredictable, and it seems like they are always right behind a dark corner. Nowhere is safe.

The first cut came the same day I got home from the hospital. I went on Instagram, which is a mine field even on a good day. I saw a post from a friend who I knew was pregnant and due the same month as I was. Her lizard died and she was devastated. Her lizard. She posted a photo of it in her hand. Meanwhile it made me think about how little my baby had been. Would she have fit in my hand in an 8×8 box in a similar staged photo? What if I posted that on Instagram? This girl still had a baby in her stomach, how dare she be upset about a reptile???

The next cuts came from a doctor’s visit. Twelve hours after leaving the hospital, I had to go into the doctor’s office to have blood drawn for labs and to calibrate my meds. I was really hoping for a video appointment so I wouldn’t have to sit in a waiting room full of pregnant people, but the only availability was in-person, another tiny cut.

I was sort of prepared for the waiting room, and I was so glad Chris was with me, but I was fully unprepared for the next part. I was originally supposed to have my 26-week appointment that day and take a glucose test. Even though all of my upcoming appointments had been deleted from the system (thanks to my sister for handling this for me), there must have been a miscommunication. The nurse asked me if I drank the glucose drink. I said no. She asked if I already did the blood sugar test. I said, “I’m not doing that test anymore.” I couldn’t bring myself to say why. The nurse then handed me a packet of papers and told me there was information in there about “how my baby is acting and measuring at 26 weeks.” I looked to Chris and I said, “what the f*ck is going on??” I thought it was some sort of cruel joke. I was waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out from behind the door and say I was being Punk’d. I was speechless. Chris said, “we’re not pregnant anymore” and I burst into tears. Of course, the nurse felt horrible and ran out of the room. When the nurse came back with tissues, she handed me an EDPS survey to measure post-partum depression. Another small cut – how could I be post-partum with no baby?? She proceeded to take my blood pressure and of course it was sky-high.

Then, I had to get more blood taken (a physical small cut), and the phlebotomist asked which arm I preferred. My arms were COVERED in bruises, so I said, “how about I show you my arms and you can decide which is better.” She told me she was pretty confident in her skills and had seen some bad bruising in her time, but when I freed my arms from my long sleeves, I believe her exact words were, “damn girl! Those are impressive!” I had green, yellow, blue and purple gnarly bruises spreading from my tops of my hands, to my wrists, all the way up my arms almost to my shoulders. Looking at them through the phlebotomist’s eyes took me immediately back 7 days to my initial few minutes in triage where 8 nurses and doctors were running around trying to get a needle in my arm as fast as possible, trading off to the next nurse after each one failed. Over the next few months, every time I had blood drawn at the doctor’s office, that same phlebotomist remembered me and my bruises.

10 days later, more metaphorical small cuts came at the doctor. I checked my chart online first, to make sure it wasn’t showing a 28-week appointment or anything like that. Instead, it was coded as “post-partum,” which, technically, was correct. I was hopeful there wouldn’t be any mishaps. Again, I waited in a room full of pregnant people and sat in the corner with sunglasses on, listening to a podcast, trying to breath normally. Again, Chris was with me to try and allay a panic attack. We were called into the room, and the nurse started asking all these questions about my delivery, how I was doing with the baby etc. This time I was able to say out loud “there’s no baby” and of course immediately started crying and losing control of my breathing. Again, she felt awful. And again, she proceeded to take my blood pressure and it was sky high. When the doctor came in, I asked her to PLEASE put in caps in my chart that there was no baby and I started crying again.

Two days later, another tiny cut came in the form of stomach problems. One of the main side effects of the medication I was on was stomach issues. Thankfully, I hadn’t had any. Until now. It felt cruel that just as my body was starting to normalize and stop bleeding, it would let me down again. I canceled all of my weekend plans because I felt terrible. And to be honest, I didn’t want to go anywhere anyway. There is nothing worse for your mental health than when your physical health is bad as well.

I was pretty sure my doctor had to be sick of hearing from me, but I messaged her again asking how to fix my stomach. She wrote me back the next day and good news (irony) was that since I wasn’t pregnant anymore or breastfeeding, I could basically take anything I wanted. While I was thankful and hopeful it would work, I remember chugging the medicine and crying, extremely angry that I was even allowed to take it. Another cut.

At least my body wasn’t bleeding anymore, right? Wrong. My body just continued to blackmail me. Two weeks later, I was bleeding again. And again, I messaged my doctor, “is this normal?” Good news: it was “within the range of normal.” Bad news, the doctor said “normal” was that my body could be messed up and out of whack for three months. EYE ROLL.

I took two weeks off work, but I was going stir crazy at home. I wasn’t allowed to work out, which was another tiny cut. I decided I should go back to work because being alone with my thoughts wasn’t helping. But the second week back to work, I opened a Zoom and boom, it was a woman holding her 3-month-old baby. I felt like I was stabbed. In my job, I help people find new jobs, so she was lamenting to me about all of the terrible things that had happened to her in the past year, and why she wanted to look for a new job. All the while, she was bouncing and holding her (very alive and healthy) baby on camera. I’m not sure if she could sense my silence or uncomfortability but she added “of course having this little guy was amazing and the best part of our year.” Then she made some baby noises at him. At that point I just blacked out. I have no idea what I said to her. I was just trying to survive and get through the call. Eventually it ended and I gave up on work for the rest of the day so I could cry.

I haven’t even mentioned the endless tiny cuts caused by social media. As a 35-now-36-year-old female, I know a LOT of people getting pregnant. It felt like a new person every single day. A bump pic. A pregnancy announcement. I only have four cousins, and one of them had a baby the exact same day we lost ours. So of course I saw photos from them and from other cousins. Also, from my aunt and uncle, proud grandparents 3 times over. Just when I thought the social media barrage was done, all of a sudden somehow my baby cousin was 1 month old, and I saw more pictures and a reminder that it had been exactly one month since we lost our daughter. I realized that for the rest of that child’s life, every single milestone would be a reminder of what we don’t get to have. I immediately muted my cousin’s social media.

One of the issues with losing a baby so far along in a pregnancy is that people know and word travels quickly. Soon, it’s not just the people you told, but the people they told. That also means that you don’t necessarily know who knows or when it will come up. Danger is around every corner and you’re left with two options: mention it first and create a very awkward situation, or don’t mention it and hope it doesn’t come up or hope that they don’t know. A million cuts waiting to happen.

Two months to the day after I left the hospital, I was in the elevator in my building with a friend of my neighbor and her 4-year-old daughter. The doors closed and she excitedly said, “you’re having a baby!” I was stunned and momentarily speechless. Then I finally said, “I’m not.” And she said “Oh!” Another awkward silence. Then I said, “I was, but now I’m not.” Thankfully, the doors then opened on my floor, and I walked out.

In a twisted sense of fate, I had told my neighbor we were expecting the week before I went into the hospital. Of course. The universe has a sense of humor sometimes. When I came home from the hospital, I didn’t tell her what happened. I didn’t have the words to tell anyone, but I had asked a few friends and family to spread the news on my behalf. Of course, they didn’t know to tell my neighbor. After my elevator run-in, I walked into my apartment and collapsed on the couch to cry. It was so unexpected and that made it even worse. I was mad at myself for letting my guard down and leaving the house. Nowhere was safe, not even the elevator to my home. Worse, I knew I’d eventually hear from my neighbor once her friend wrote her and probably yelled at her, “how could you not have told me! I felt so bad!” I just curled up into a ball and waited for her text, another small cut.

Sure enough, an hour later my neighbor wrote to me and was so sweet and empathetic. She really couldn’t have written a better message, but it still wrecked me. She said she was so sorry and that she had no idea we were mourning a horrible loss, meanwhile she was picturing us nesting and getting ready for a baby on the other side of our shared wall. I couldn’t stop thinking about that: what could/should have been happening versus what actually was. I started thinking about what was happening with my other friends who were due the same month as me. Instead, in our apartment, it was just Chris and me and a silent house filled only with blank spaces where baby things used to be and punctuated by sounds of my cries instead of a baby’s.

The little cuts never stop coming. It’s the lake house my family booked for a week that was driving distance to New York City, because we thought we’d be driving with our baby. It’s the trips we can now take because we have no reason not to. It’s the weekend mornings when I sleep ‘til 11 am, and wake to an empty and silent room. It’s my friends asking to go to happy hour, and me knowing I can drink as much as I want because I’m not breastfeeding. It’s every friend who has a baby who will now be older than any future baby of mine for the rest of their lives.

I wish that this was a one-and-done loss, but unfortunately it seems like the gift that keeps on giving. Just when I think one cut has started to scab over and heal, I hit something else sharp, and a wound opens again. I hope a time comes when the cuts are fewer, and I have more healed scars than open wounds, but that time is not now.