On The Death of Our Unborn Child

Today Sherri and I spent the afternoon between doctors to find out why she had begun to bleed again only two weeks after we’d seen the gynecologist, who told us things looked good. She lost the baby. And it has been killing us. I’ve not shed so many tears in such a long time.

I keep thinking over and over about all the cute things Sherri would say and how we’d talk to the baby at night as we lied in bed together. And every week we would read another chapter from a book we’d been reading which is sectioned by weeks and what you’d be experiencing during each of them. I kept imagining the big, goofy stork we were going to rent and put out in the front lawn in May when the baby was due.

I also keep thinking back to the first scare she had when she’d been spot bleeding. She said that she had been talking to baby and telling it that it needed to stay and be with us, but if it had to go that was okay, too. It was loved by mommy and daddy and we didn’t want to see it suffer.

I kept imagining my baby, my wife, sitting on the couch at work all alone having to deal with the fear and speaking to baby life this between sobs and tears and its just too much for me to take. I cried then, but I cry now so much more. All I wanted was to give my wife the one thing she every really wanted. And now that’s gone.

Yes, we’ll try again, and we have to be strong to get through this, but right now it doesn’t feel like we will. Yet we have to. I cannot lose my wife and she cannot (and will not) lose me.

We are profoundly sad but I find that its comforting that we find comfort in one another. We’ve not been apart this entire time and we’ve cried together and we’ve hugged and kissed and have talked at length, and of course we’ve been crying together and crying some more. Its very hard to think about things. We’d imagined that this Christmas she’d be round with child and that it would be a wonderful thing to be pregnant for the Holliday.

The wind is kicking up very fiercely outside. I can hear it pass my window and at times rush against it, like a punch. Its supposed to be bad this evening…rain and then snow. And its supposed to snow tomorrow and I think Friday. Sherri has taken off work next week so starting tomorrow she’ll be at home with me. She’s going to have a DNC scheduled for early Friday morning. We were so upset by all the news that we’d forgotten to ask the doctor if he could prescribe something for her cramps, which come and go, but are painful. I think her father will bring her some tomorrow when he comes over. Its going to suck for her to have to wait an entire day with what still feels like a tiny child within her womb before she can have the DNC, which will, no doubt, be traumatic. They are going to put her under, and I’ll of course be driving her home. I imagine that they would prescribe some sort of pain medication. I don’t know. I do know that I could certainly use some for this terrible headache I’ve gotten from the worry and the crying and the anguish I’ve been feeling. I wish I still drank because I would have bought a fifth of something on my way home from the hospital. But, for Sherri’s sake as well as for the sake of my liver, I am glad that I no longer drink.