You remember that Gwyneth Paltrow movie, right? Back when she had the cutest short haircut in all the ever, and before she made us all feel bad about not having a pizza oven in our backyards?
Sliding Doors. A little movie about the big changes in your life that can happen based on the seemingly tiny decisions you make or are made for you. I think about it more than most. And not just because of her (again) fucking excellent haircut.
I think about it because it’s how I compartmentalize and examine the miscarriage I had two years ago. The tiny thing that happened that has blazed a burning trail through my life in its wake.
The pregnancy started like my first one had. A pee-soaked stick held aloft in the bathroom in victory. A tumbling of words and limbs as my husband and I expressed our excitement all over each other.
We had already made a perfect little human. Now here was stage two of the plan. The next step in the adventure. The part where we add pages to the baby book, look at different housing options, and double click to open the exhaustive lists of names we had passed on the first time.
The part where I am so tired it feels like the air is drugged, where I sleep in the back seat of my car on my lunch break, where the toilet and the surrounding area of the bathroom is pristine because that’s where I hang my hat for most of the day.
The part where the thickness of the secret makes it hard to tuck in your cheek and not tell everyone you know because, truly, their excitement helps with the nausea. It buoys you. And your friends will make you big dishes of dinners so you can lay comatose on the couch at night and not feel like a shitbag wife and Mom.
But we didn’t get to that part.
From the first doctor’s appointment, there was a seed of uncertainty planted. The numbers that detect the chemical in your blood that signifies pregnancy were suspiciously low. And they weren’t changing fast enough to satisfy my doctor.
I spent the next few weeks with a heavy heart, slumped back and a gut full of rocks, sneaking away on lunch breaks to sit in clinics and have vials of my teasing blood drawn. The labs had a new website where you could see the results instead of having to bug the Doctor, and I would log in and look every hour, like a dopesick fiend so anxious for the fix of confirmation. GROW, you sonofabitch.
The numbers sluggishly got higher but not enough to satisfy the doctor. After an ultrasound and more follow up appointments, it was determined that my body was just confused. This wasn’t a viable pregnancy. Whatever clump of cells that was wearing a Groucho mustache and waggling a cigar, impersonating a baby, would soon be flushed out and end the story that I had written in my heart with a sad but quiet punctuation.
We told our Moms and our friends. The hugs were hard and lasted a beat longer than they should. I stayed busy and cried only in that vulnerable time right before you fall asleep, where you can lose the tears in your pillow and wake up feeling a little lighter.
A week later a call came in from my doctor. She had spoken to a colleague and they thought it best I have a D & C as my numbers still indicated my body was just as lost as I was.
I sat in the hospital waiting room, frantically emailing clients that I was sick, but rest assured I would schedule their social media and there would be no disruption in service. If I kept this strictly business, an interruption but nothing more, this is how I could get through this. I cracked a joke to the last nurse I saw who asked me why I was there before I signed some paperwork. Something along the lines of “because my body is an idiot.” He didn’t laugh.
I spent the night in the hospital riding out the post-IV drugs fatigue. I went home and hugged my husband and hugged my kid and told my Mom and friends I was okay. I had to be. It was only real for such a small window of time. How could I possibly justify mourning it in a big way?
At my follow up appointment weeks later, my doctor assured me, in a stern and confident way, that I would be fine. The chances for another viable pregnancy were great.
My body disagreed. Since the miscarriage, my menstrual cycle has been laughably irregular. I’ve wasted so many pregnancy tests; wrapped them in toilet paper in a hurried rush of shame and disappointment, and stuffed them deep in the trashcan.
Hours, weeks, months and years passed. Our marriage cracked. Our kid grew. I filled every second of every day with work to the point where I now feel like I’m constantly readjusting my body so that I don’t tip over.
I could have been the Mom of two kids. I could have doubled the ammunition for my blogging. I could have given my kid the sibling she deserves. My brother is one of my very best friends. What kind of asshole only has one kid? How selfish I am. How guilty I feel. When that door shut behind us at the hospital we took a left and it never ever felt right.
I’m smart enough to know that a second kid doesn’t solve anything. But even as the days pass and I get older and more comfortable in this one kid routine, and understand that the tangible reality of having another baby seems more frightening than fun, I still sometimes have to dig my fingernails into my palms to not cry.
The life that got away, the life that was meant to be mine and ours and then some, that life is always going to be gently tapping on the other side of a door that I just don’t know if I have the key for.