The D&C Santa brought

The body knows more than we ever will. It knows when we are sick, days, months and even years before we suspect, or have a symptom. It sends in it's warriors to combat illness, turns down the temperature and tells us that now, is not the time for another baby...

When I couldn't bring Cody home from the hospital, when he was sick, when I "did it wrong," I began the quest to "do it right" and have a healthy baby, as soon as possible. We found out we were pregnant November 1996, Cody was 2 and a half months old... Cody and the new baby.... Irish twins!

I was in the hospital visiting Cody. He was doing another stint in the ICU and I began to not feel well so I called my OB/GYN. He told me to go down to the ER and have them take a look at me. My husband and I went to the front desk in the ER and as this woman began to ask me ridiculous and rude questions. I got myself more and more upset and down I went, right there in the ER at Metro Hospital, I passed out cold!

The ER did an ultrasound and of course wouldn't tell me anything. She said I would be ok and to see my OB/GYN on Monday. "They would send the results to my doctor."

My OB/GYN informed me that I had lost the baby and that it would be best to do a D&C (take the baby out).

I couldn't believe it...ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? I AM 24 YEARS OLD! WHY AM I BROKEN! WHY IS MY FIRST BABY SICK AND MY SECOND BABY GONE!! Why can't I make a baby that isn't sick, isn't dead, isn't broken like me? WHY, WHY, WHY ME!!

I "did it wrong" again. Again, I wouldn't be bringing home a baby, how could this be happening?

The OB office called and scheduled the "surgery," and to put the cherry on top, they scheduled it for Christmas Eve morning. I was sick as a dog by this point. My body was beside itself trying to cope with this death inside of me. I was seeing yellow spots, I was blacking out, I was REALLY sick. I could barely get down the steps to go to the hospital that morning.

When it was all over I went home and (physically) felt 100% better. My body was ok now. I was sad, but my body knew it wasn't time to have another baby, no matter what I THOUGHT I wanted.

We had genetic testing done to see if there was any genetic problems and there weren't. I was home alone when they called. They called to tell me the results of the tests and they asked if I wanted to know the sex of the baby. It was like in the movies when the director makes the camera jump away, back, back, back until the person is so small you can't see them anymore. That was me, small, broken and alone on that couch. If I told her I wanted to know, then my baby became a person, it was a sex, it wasn't a blob, it wasn't just gone.... If I said no, I would wonder forever. I said "yes" and she said "a boy." I hung up.

I sobbed, I screamed, I cried... and I fed Cody through a tube in his stomach with his pulse ox machine and medicines and blue food coloring and oxygen in the next room ...kill me now...

I named him Jacob.

Cody spent the next 2 and a half years in and out of the hospital. It would have been a complete disaster having another baby and God and my body knew it. I had another miscarriage on my 25th birthday. No doctors, no hospitals, no names, just a plane old miscarriage. I cried over that one to, wisdom comes once the emotion and the experience is over and you can see clearly. When the want leaves and clarity moves in.

I never forget them. You aren't allow to. Every time you go to the Gynecologist, have a baby anything, they ask you "how many children?" "How many pregnancies" and you have to tell them. I have to remember the time when I felt broken, when I felt incapable. Now I know I wasn't broken or incapable, I was perfect. My body was handling everything, my body was taking over when I couldn't.

I NEVER want to say that anyone else's experience with loss, inability or anything, is like mine. This is my experience. This is how it worked out for me. This is my clarity, my rationalization, my situation.

I had to have someone watch Cody that morning when I went to the hospital. When I came home, that afternoon, we exchanged Christmas presents. They got me a maternity dress. They actually GAVE me a maternity dress. They told me I could keep it for the next one, I will assume they meant the next baby, not the next miscarriage. They could have said, "look, what I got you isn't appropriate so I owe you something else" or "here's $10, get yourself a little something" or "I hate you more than life itself and I wish you were dead," but instead they gave me a maternity dress...the day.. a few hours after I had my baby removed from my body.

I chalk it all up to experience, character building exercises, a good story, a day in the life of...It is what it is. It is a journey, like everything. You build, you grow, you learn and understand and sometimes your body and God know better... and some times you just keep the inappropriate gift in the car.