Wow - what an experience and one that I really, really needed. Last night on November 15th, I went through what felt like a mini “labor.” I was cramping all day and even the day before, but last night, the “cramps” got a bit more intense. I don’t usually get cramps during my period, so I remember thinking, “Man do women actually go through this pain on a monthly basis?” Then I noticed that these cramps were coming every 2-3 minutes and had the intensity of early labor contractions. Kind of what I feel in early labor (0-5 cm). After a while, they’d get my attention enough so that all I was concentrating on was relaxing through the pain.
I remembered that some women feel like they go through a labor when miscarrying. Some also say that pain and heavy bleeding last for hours. I was just thinking that, if this was like a kind of labor, I just hope it’s like the labors I had when I delivered my full-term babies - short. The labor I went through with my son was only 2 hours, so I was just hoping this intense cramping wasn’t going to continue all night.
I thought of taking the Motrin that my dr prescribed, but I wanted to be able to feel what was going on. It felt like “something” was happening. I was afraid that if I took the Motrin, I wouldn’t be as aware of what was going on or of something about to happen.
Well about 45 minutes after I started paying attention to the cramps and how often they were happening, I passed the placenta and the gestational sac. The sac was still in tact with fluid inside. As the ultrasounds showed, I saw no fetus. But it was so good that I got to see this because it was a confirmation for me that something did happen. That this was growing inside of me trying to form a new life.
I was sitting on the toilet when this passed and I asked DH to get me chopsticks so that I could take it out of the toilet and see it. I wanted to see that this chunk that just came out of me really was the placenta. He couldn’t find chopsticks, but gave me plastic spoons instead. He also brought me a plate to put it on after I realized I needed someplace to put it if I really wanted to look at it. He brought the plate but said he didn’t think he wanted to see it. I didn’t mind that, but I had to look at it. I had to see it.
It was actually quite amazing. With my other pregnancies I never got to see the sac or the placenta. It was like, “Wow, this is what forms inside.” And there it was, my reassurance that there actually was a pregnancy. That this whole thing wasn’t just “nothing” (see my previous post about cramping). It made me cry to know, to see that it was real. My crying brought DH to the bathroom. I was sitting on the floor looking at the paper plate. When he came and tried to pull me to him I resisted because I knew he said he didn’t want to see and I was trying to block his view. But he kept pulling and I finally just let him hold on to me for a while as I finished crying. He ended up taking a look too and asked me to explan exactly what we were looking at.
Later he asked me what I was going to do with it. Knowing the drs wouldn’t test it because it was my first loss and knowing they couldn’t test it because it fell in the toilet, I knew I wasn’t going to put it in a jar and keep it or anything so I said, “Throw it away.” Then I figured out that he wasn’t asking about keeping it in the sense of putting it in a jar or plastic bag or anything, but that he was trying to ask me about burrying it. At that moment I realized I didn’t really want to just throw it in the trash, that I did want to burry it in our back yard instead. So DH went outside and dug a hole. At first I wasn’t quite ready to let go, so I just sat looked at it for a while more. When I was ready, I took it over to the hole my husband dug and put it inside.
So on November 15th, the day we found out about my SIL’s pregnancy, I “delivered” and buried my baby. It wasn’t as intense or as physically painful as my other deliveries, but it felt like a delivery just he same. November 15th is the date I will use when remembering this baby. It is the date that I will use when I get my tattoo in remembrance of my angel baby.
What happened last night made this feel complete, helped give me some closure. I wouldn’t have had this if I opted to go with a d&c from the beginning. I’m so glad I chose this route. It was the right decision for me.
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