But that morning it had all stopped. No more blood. No more cramps. No more worry. Optimism crept back in — my baby was okay. I didn’t know for sure, but I felt like I was carrying a boy and I felt like he would be fine.
He wasn’t fine.
My hands caught him before he hit the water.
In my hands was my baby — the size and shape of a small water balloon and the deepest shade of scarlet. Holding my bundle, carefully swaddled in toilet paper, I pushed open the door and leaned out. My eyes frantically searching for my husband because this time I didn’t want to be alone.
Our eyes met and he rushed back to the restroom door. He looked down at my hands and lifted his eyes to meet mine. There, reflected back at me, I saw my fear and my heartbreak and my last grasp at denial. Maybe this was something else.
I wanted it to be anything besides the end of another pregnancy.
We had already dreamed so many new dreams for this baby and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to those dreams. Not there.
But, we did. Again, I stood on an unremarkable tile floor and said goodbye. I watched as everything I ever wanted swirled around and around … and down.
I shuffled out of the convenience store, traumatized by what had just happened. At the time, thinking I was traumatized because I chose to flush. Now, knowing I was traumatized for a different reason.
I was traumatized because having a miscarriage is traumatic.
The trauma does not just lie in the horrors of watching dreams and children die; the trauma comes in the questions we face and the decisions we must make about the most difficult moments a person will endure.
I wish I had an eloquent answer for why I flushed. I don’t. I just flushed. And because I don’t have the answers and because those moments hurt so very much, I choose to tell my story.
Hoping that somewhere another woman will read this. Hoping it will be a person who can say “I flushed too.”
**This post originally appeared at An Unexpected Family Outing, published with permission.
