Wild Strawberry Elegy

Warning: the following contains graphic descriptions of pregnancy loss, reproductive disorders, and general misogyny. Proceed with care.

No one tells you how long it will take to be over. Or about how painful it can be. Or how the hormonal fluctuation makes you feel. No one warns you about the nausea, the dizziness, the diarrhea, the lurching, contracting cramps. No one is honest about the indignity of a transvaginal ultrasound. No one tells you anything at all because no one fucking talks about pregnancy loss.

What is said when one has a miscarriage? “1 in 3 pregnancies.” “Decreasing hCG levels.” “Products of conception.” “Similar to a heavy period.” Misoprostol. Dilation & curettage. Conservative management. “At least you have your other child.” “At least it was early.” “At least you’re young.” “At least you can have fun trying again soon.” At least. At least. At least.

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On Twelfth Night, as my firstborn unwrapped her final Christmas present (a replica of the Mister Rogers Neighbourhood Trolley), I knew I was miscarrying. I had spent the previous day waiting for 8 hours to be seen at our local emergency department. Repeat labs were ordered for Epiphany, but the dark clots that settled in the bottom of my toilet bowl were confirmation enough. I spent most of that twelfth day of Christmas curled around a hot water bottle, crying intermittently between bouts of feeling nothing at all.

The bleeding persisted through the day on January 6th. I chose to allow the process to conclude naturally, without medication or surgical intervention. It seemed like the lesser of three evils. I hope to God I never know the difference. It’s difficult to articulate how desperate and humiliating and visceral it is to flush pieces of the baby you will never get to hold down the toilet. To stare at the piece of gestational sac caught on a wad of TP, feeling yourself dissociate or else you’ll start screaming and maybe never stop. When I finally made myself press the button on the back of the toilet tank, I looked up and closed my eyes. I saw the Blessed Virgin taking these pieces into her arms with tenderness and compassion, a recognition of shared sorrow in her eyes.

Today, the Eve of the Conversion of St. Paul, which should have been the end of my first trimester, I had my final ultrasound and round of bloodwork to confirm that my uterus is empty. Despite having moved gradually back into my normal personal and professional routine, the grief comes in waves of breathlessness and groaning. On this particular day, it also meant sobbing loudly in the middle of a LifeLabs while a bewildered and guilt-ridden phlebotomist tried to make small talk.

I have a long relationship with loss, but this type of grief is singular. It’s the sudden realization of emptiness, the bottom falling out, the remembrance that the source of all human life is also a place of death. It’s like I can feel the sadness sink through my body and settle in the pit of my stomach, over my empty womb. I felt it acutely whilst celebrating Mass on my first Sunday back. I wonder if it’s what all mothers of dead children feel, if it’s what the Mother of Our Lord felt when she beheld her Son on the Cross.

I hate that miscarriage happens. I hate that it happened to me. And mostly I hate that these moments of gut-wrenching, soul-crushing hopelessness are so often the instruments of God’s grace. But there isn’t an easier or more comfortable way because the ultimate mediation and example of God’s grace poured out for us is found in the death of a Beloved Son.

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1 in 3 pregnancies end in miscarriage. I knew this fact, found it disturbing, and foreclosed the possibility that it could happen to me. And then it did. And then friends and acquaintances and colleagues stepped forward to disclose their losses to me. Stories of profound tragedy and heartbreak, cloaked in shame and silence. They shared their complex, unique stories, each different and horrible in its own way. I felt my heart tenderly attach to theirs, grateful for what I have begun terming The World’s Shittiest Club. Then I found myself fixating on the women who have done this alone, in secret, without community but had to make myself stop. I was at risk again of screaming forever.

When I was pregnant and newly postpartum with my daughter, I noticed how my body transformed into a public object, that people felt entitled to my birth story, to my newborn, to comment or suggest. To have the inverse experience and lose a pregnancy generated the inverse reaction. People want to change the subject, to ameliorate and equivocate, to politely but tactlessly offer advice. Really, they’re just not prepared to confront death. Life is affirming, a sign of biological roles being fulfilled successfully. Death is disruptive, death is failure. But for as inconvenient as death is, it must be confronted.

I am ready to confront death because the material conditions that many, many, many women live under are subsumed with death, pain, and terror. I’m simply not interest in concealing the body horror of womanhood any longer. I cannot go on ignoring the medical negligence, the polycystic ovaries and abdominal cavities full of endometriosis, the miscarriages and stillbirths, the haemorrhages, the precocious puberties, the botched abortions, the cancers, the hysterectomies, the denial of pain, and the complete disinterest in finding something better than the fucking speculum to perform a pelvic exam.

There is so much to be exposed and brought into the light of day, claimed and reclaimed, fought for and against. I need other women to be with me and with each other in the worst way. I need the solidarity of shared sorrow and of female rage.

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The pregnancy tracker app I was using estimated my baby’s size to be equivalent to a wild strawberry. In the warm months, wild strawberry grows between the flagstones of the backyard where my toddler plays and we host friends for beer and Kirkland Signature hot dogs. I’ll see them again in the summertime.