Number of Pregnancies? Three. Live Births? Two.

By: Liz Sheffield

My husband and I sit in our car outside the fence of the hospital’s parking lot. His hands grip the steering wheel even though the motor is not running. He watches me carefully, letting go of the wheel only to stroke my hand.

“I think I’m okay now. I don’t think we need to go in, really. I’m sorry,” I tell him and my voice cracks.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Let’s just sit here for a while. See if anything changes; if not, we’ll go home.”

We both feel safer in close proximity to the hospital. So we sit. We leave the radio off. My mother is at our house taking care of our 1-year-old son. Sitting here, we know that if something does go wrong, if this is a tubal pregnancy, if my fallopian tube ruptures, if my life is in danger, we can get medical help quickly. That even with all the ifs, because of our close proximity to the emergency room, maybe I won’t die.

But we don’t say any of these things out loud. We think our own thoughts. We talk about the landscape of the hospital grounds, about the need to vacuum the car’s interior and when to get the oil changed. We grumble about the thoughtless doctor on call who knew nothing about my trip to the emergency room the day before and who wouldn’t believe me when I said I didn’t know when I got pregnant. Her saving grace, we agree, is that she finally reacted with kindness when I reminded her that one year prior she was the doctor on call when I gave birth to our son.

Sitting in the car, I can’t get over how nothing about this experience resembles my first pregnancy. Rather than rushing to the local grocery store with my husband to purchase not one, but two, pregnancy tests, and holding up the positive test results for a digital photo in our pink bathroom, this time I had been oblivious. Suffering from extreme abdominal pain the day before, I went to the emergency room. In the stark hospital, attached to a heart monitor and with an IV dripping into my arm, I found out that I was pregnant, that it was potentially not normal and that I could lose the baby.

Now we wait, hoping for some sign that I am okay, that this will have a happy ending. After sitting in the car for an hour, I am feeling better and we decide to drive home. We leave the safety of our spot near the hospital, knowing there is still the possibility that something might happen – that the pain in my abdomen could become unbearable. That the baby and I could potentially not survive.

We walk in to see my mother anxiously waiting for us on the couch. Our son is asleep in his room. He is, thankfully, unaware of the apprehension that hangs around the adults in the house.

“We didn’t go in. I think I’m okay,” I say.

I sit down next to her. The three of us decide to watch a movie, Spanglish, on DVD. I immerse myself in the movie’s plot, attempting to forget my own fear and pain by watching the anguish of the family on the screen. By the end of the movie I am sobbing. My mother and husband sit on either side of me. All I can muster between sobs is
“I love you.”

After three days of waiting, another ob/gyn confirms that my numbers aren’t good. As they had suspected, this is an ectopic pregnancy that cannot survive. My husband and I exchange looks. How did we get here? Only a few days earlier we were singing happy birthday to our son, glowing with pride as we watched him eat his first bite of birthday cake. Now we are staring at each other in a small examining room listening to the doctor explain our options. As quickly as it began, my second pregnancy is over.

Two months later, in desperation my husband and I meet with a professor at the local university who specializes in the grief of miscarriage. I tell her that I feel sheepish about taking her time for our meeting. I explain that my husband and I hadn’t even planned this pregnancy, that my body didn’t suffer as a result of the ordeal and most importantly, that we are the parents of a beautiful, healthy toddler we adore. Compared to so many other women whose pregnancies end in miscarriage, I tell her, I really have nothing to be upset about. If anything, I feel guilty for feeling sad.

“You’re right, you do have a lot for which you can be thankful,” she says. “But, that doesn’t mean you aren’t grieving. Even if you didn’t plan this pregnancy, you are still experiencing the loss of what could have been.”

Yes. Her words give me permission to wonder what could have been. This baby could have been our second child, a sibling, a sweet baby to embrace. Our life would have been busy and crazy, but it would have been full of joy. Now, there is an emptiness that I hadn’t expected to feel.

In the safety of her office, my husband and I are able to grieve for the many things that changed so quickly for us. I feel inadequate – what is wrong with my body that prevented the fertilized egg from reaching the uterus? We feel scared – will we be able to conceive another child at some point, as we always planned? I admit that I am afraid to get pregnant. I fear that this terrible experience could happen all over again. Now the thought of trying to get pregnant creates a dark shadow of doubt in my mind: I could lose a baby and I could die as a result of a ruptured fallopian tube.

“Are you afraid she’ll die, too?” the professor turns to ask my husband.

His answer is in the tears streaming down his face.

A year later, the memory of the miscarriage lingers as we attempt to conceive again. Each month I wait for any sign of unusual abdominal pain. I stock pregnancy tests in the closet and track my cycle with dedication. Finally, my urine produces a positive test result. This is my third pregnancy, I tell myself. My ob/gyn schedules an early ultrasound to confirm the location of the fertilized egg.

Reviewing my chart, the technician asks, “You’ve been pregnant two times before?”

I nod, and look to my husband for reassurance.

“How many live births?”

“One.”

She covers my still-flat abdomen with gel and begins her work in earnest as my husband and I silently stare at the screen next to the examining table.

“It’s there. It’s in your uterus,” she smiles. “Congratulations.” Wiping tears from my face, I finally allow myself to embrace my third pregnancy. I commit to do everything in my power to make sure that this fertilized egg – this fetus – this baby – will not only survive, but that he will thrive.

Now, for every new doctor I visit, I am forced to recall the painful facts as I fill out my medical history. Number of pregnancies? Three. Number of live births? Two. On paper, these numbers are correct: subtract one from three, you get two. But in my mind and in my heart, this equation still fails to make sense. I have two wonderful children for whom I am deeply grateful; but I will always know that between them, there was space for one more.

Liz mothers, writes and works Seattle. Her writing has been published in Literary Mama, The Sun and Seattle Woman. She blogs at motherlogue.wordpress.com.