The Momoir Project

Published in Island Parent Magazine, August 2009, as Part 1 in a four part series on motherhood, writing and healing.

I sat on a gray stone bench
ringed with the ingénue faces
of pink and white impatiens
and placed my grief
in the mouth of language,
the only thing that would grieve with me.
from “When I am Asked” by poet Lisel Mueller

The day before Mother’s Day, while walking through the farmer’s market under a May sun, I began miscarrying what would have been the second child with my husband and the third child from my body. I knew the six week old fetus inside my forty-one year old uterus was gone. I knew fourteen days earlier, getting ready for a scheduled ultrasound to determine the exact dates for my amniocentesis, there would be no baby.
For one thing I felt fine, a problem since I had been living on stoned wheat thins and apple juice for most of my mornings, but now the nausea was gone. Second was the air that seemed so heavy in our master bedroom. Outside the tall pines that line our property’s edge stood eerily motionless, even at the tops where the Little Qualicum winds rarely relent. My little boy was still asleep, my big boy long gone to the bus, my husband in the thick of things at work, so I had time to myself to shower and change. It was quiet….too quiet.
“Something’s wrong”, said my reflection in the mirror, mascara wand in hand. The breeze picked up finally with a gentle swoosh and it seemed to me the universe answered.
‘Yessss…” it hushed into my ear.
The ultra sound technician didn’t tell me what she saw on her screen that day and so the seven minute wait in the dim exam room ticked by in silence. Sitting on the papered table watching the shadow of the curtain against the glow off the equipment confirmed what instinct had already told me in my heart.
“There’s no activity,” the radiologist worded gently, his horrid pink-striped tie snaked into his crisp cotton shirt.
“I had a feeling this morning,” I answered flatly.
Pink- striped tie wasn’t surprised. “Most women do.”
My third baby dreams were over. However, my body took another two weeks to catch up with the ultrasound findings. Although the wait to miscarry was a tough one emotionally, some of my dreams were sad and dark in those fourteen days, I felt relief that nature was finally showing up to see it done. That she showed up on Mother’s Day weekend didn’t bother me so much despite the loss. I was still a mother after all. The two boys I’ve been blessed to mother are worthy of celebration on their own.
That Saturday at the farmer’s market I managed to get myself and my two year old son home safe and sound. Right before the turn-off to our road, at the top of the hill at the gas station, I had to pull over for just a moment but other than that I just took it slow and steady.
“What ya doin’ Mama? “my wee lad asked from his car seat as I brought the Mazda to a gentle stop on the shoulder.
“Just looking for something, honey,” I gasped doubled over into the steering wheel as a twisting cramp hit my belly. “Mommy dropped something and as soon as I find it we’ll keep going.”
Once home I popped a movie in the DVD player, grabbed the fleece blanket from the back of the couch, and snuggled up to my little boy to await the end of this brief pregnancy. After an hour it was clear I needed help, not for myself but for the two year old growing bored with movies in the middle of a sunny day. So I made the call my husband by this time thought might never come - l he was at the point of insisting on medical intervention if something didn’t happen soon.
“I think you need to get home as soon as you can,” I said shakily into my cell phone. “It’s happening.”
The pain in my belly was at its peak when I heard his truck rumble down the driveway followed by the pitter-patter of our little boy running across the hardwood to greet Daddy at the front door. As my husband entered the bathroom to check on me I felt his helplessness as clearly as I felt it the night our son was born two and a half years before. Except this time there was no joy in his concern just sadness and worry. Only when he spoke did the tears come to my eyes and their salty flow seemed to quicken my body’s efforts.
“Tell me what I can do to help you,” he said eyes wide and watery.
“Just keep Lyam out of here,” I managed. “I’ll be fine just keep him out of here.”
Roughly three hours later the worst was over and as I drifted off to sleep in our bed, hot water bottle nestled in the small of my back, ice cold water at my bedside, I felt my husband’s hand on my head now resting on the cool pillow.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through this,” he said quietly as I drifted off.
Me too, I wanted to say, but didn’t find the strength.
I woke as the sun was falling across a Mother’s Day eve sky and the mirror on our wall reflected the same tall pines that stood so still two weeks ago when I first felt something shift. A robin perched on one of the huge branches, its piercing good-night song urging me back to sleep, before it flew off leaving the swaying branch behind.
“It’s all over,” I said into the reflection and the soft cooling breeze drifting in the window answered….Yessss.
Following a solid sleep I woke in the wee hours of Mother’s Day with only one thought. I had to write. Before being ‘consumed by their own smoke’, as author L.M. Montgomery has described of her journal, my thoughts needed somewhere safe to land other than the corners of my mind where life, marriage and motherhood made things pretty crowded. I rose from my bed, sat down with pen and paper, and put my story down while the rest of the house slept.
The words that found their way out were, like the act of miscarrying itself, twisting, bloody and raw. Reading it through when I was finished was a bit unsettling. Some of the stuff I rambled on about, like the horrifying thought of my dead fetus ending up in our septic tank, was a tad too candid I thought. Even so I left nothing out and by the end I had a couple of thousand words.
For me, writing an experience down pins my thoughts to a page, clearing my head so I can keep my wits about me. Grief and happiness are just a few more pages of words, rearranged and placed together to form a story, of loss and love and moments of joy and sorrow and the life that no one said was going to be easy. More than just blood and tears flowed from me the morning after the miscarriage. Everything that left me that day; blood, tissue, tears and words, needed to be released for my own physical and mental good. Only then could I heal.
Looking back I’m glad I allowed nature to take its course rather than force the issue from my womb via medical intervention. I’m glad for those two weeks I had to prepare myself, to ensure the hot water bottle was always handy, to stock the bathroom and the car with the biggest maxi-pads known to woman-kind, and to write down how sad I was to lose a baby but how thankful I was for the two I have been blessed with. It was all an experience worth taking note of.
“Give yourself time to heal,” my doctor advised after calling me at home to check my progress.
“We’re sending warm healing thoughts your way so take your time,” a colleague wrote in an e-mail.
“Heal well and heal strong,” a good friend whispered in my ear as she hugged me close upon hearing the news.
I took their advice, the thing one should do with words from the wise after all, and gave myself the time, welcomed the healing thoughts from those who sent them, and wrote all about it to heal well and heal strong like I knew I could. My body would mend and the rest of me would as well – day by day and word by word.