When you get pregnant on your first try and carry that baby to term with no problems, you naturally assume that when you decide to try for the second, the experience will be the same. But at the age of 37, when my daughter, Isla, was three, I experienced three miscarriages in a row.
It?s been 10 years now, and I don?t really recall the first two?save for a couple of seemingly emotionless, matter-of-fact ultrasounds where a tech basically told me there was no heartbeat?but I?ll never forget the third. That?s because I held it in my hand.
I was still in my first trimester and had started bleeding. I didn?t know I was miscarrying yet?I just knew that a little bleeding in the beginning of pregnancy could be common. One evening while I was using the bathroom, something fell out of me and onto the floor?it was about the size of blueberry. I gently nestled it in a tissue and carried it downstairs to show my husband. ?Is this what I think it is"?
He agreed and called Telehealth, and a nurse told us to go to the hospital. I pulled Isla out of bed, put the tissue in a small glass bowl and got in the car. We sat in a waiting room at the hospital for most of the night, the four of us: me, my husband, Isla and our tiny embryo in a bowl.
I didn?t cry. I felt numb and in shock. When two doctors finally arrived and we showed them what we had brought in and they confirmed our loss, it felt like a waste of a night. I already knew the life inside me had ceased. They didn?t do an exam o...