My Baby is Dead.

I've always wanted to be a mother. 

Yes, I will never be hired by the Government because of my liberal views on this facist society, but I have also always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and raise children with my spouse. 

After 4 years of ultrasounds, blood tests, different medicines, fertility treatments, surgery, a cancer scare, and so many procedures; we were finally pregnant. A baby! We were going to have a BABY and I got cravings for burgers and fruit and was so excited to be pregnant alongside my sister who was about 4 weeks ahead of us in her pregnancy. We were so happy. 

When someone gets pregnant when they are older they have a higher chance of having twins and since we did IUI, it increases the chance of twins as well which seemed daunting, but exciting! Maybe twins, but definitively pregnant! Yay, maybe two BABIES!

I had some cramping a few weeks in, but my beautiful wonderful husband has developed a needed habit of talking down my anxieties and we had faith that everything was okay and continued on our happy journey. 

However, on week 11, March 14th, I started spotting along with having cramps. AJ did his best to talk me down from thinking of the worst as I went in for an emergency ultrasound, but there was no heartbeat. 

Our baby, just one- not twins, was dead. 

I could see them in the ultrasound, tiny and dead. They had stopped developing a few weeks earlier and my body hadn't realized until that day. We had been walking around telling our family that I was pregnant and already had the baby shower gift list and decorations selected. We already had a design ready for redecorating the baby's room. We already had names ready for any gender. We had everything, except for a baby.

I felt like an incubator of death. I had been walking around with my cravings and big belly all the while being tricked by my uterus into thinking it was a safe haven for our child, but it wasn't and they were dead. Not growing, no heartbeat, just death inside me until the bleeding started. 

So. Much. Blood.

So. Much. Pain. 

The Dr that did the ultrasound's first statement after confirming that there was no heartbeat was, "Well now you know you can get pregnant for next time." As if it was just another day at work for her and not the worst day of my life. She then said I would experience a heavy period and sent us on our way. 

It was not just a heavy period. 

I have felt pain before. Pain of all kinds. Domestic abuse pain. Sexual abuse pain. Broken bone pain. Car accident pain. Hiding queerness pain. Religious trauma pain. Death of family members pain,

but this pain was different. 

It hurt.

They say that heavy period pain is comparable to having a heart attack. The pain I felt was not even "just a heavy period." It was contractions, full-on "One more push and you'll see your baby" pain except there was no baby, only death. Over and over and over again as blood clots squished out of me. Every day for weeks I had contraction after contraction and bled endlessly. Oxy was not enough to control the pain. AJ had a chart of the four different pain medications I was on to try and survive through pushing out the womb that killed our child. 

If it had only been pain, I might have been able to handle it to an extent, but I was grieving. We were in mourning and each burst of pain was a reminder of the life, and then death of the person we had been waiting for for so long. It hurts. More than that, we lost them, our little one. Our baby is gone. 

I'm on week seven of recovery of my miscarriage and I am still dealing with hip pain, muscle pain, uterine cramps, and a broken heart. 

Around week two, I was hurting so bad from the contractions that all I could do was beg AJ, "I want my siblings. Please, I need my siblings." My three closest-in-age siblings were able to make it over as fast as they could with exactly what I needed. Stacey arrived first, she held me as I shook from pain and sadness and helped me ground myself from the panic/pain attack I was feeling. Steven came next and helped distract me from the pain with goofy jokes and suggestions for pain management since he has experienced chronic pain, and then Tita came with pan dulce to help us all feel the comfort that only our second-mother and someone who has lost a child herself could bring. 

I won't forget AJ's face when we got the news. His sweet, gentle face held a pain I hope he never feels and I never ever witness again. He told me he wished that he could take the pain away from me when I cried that I never wanted to go through this again. He would have been an amazing father. 

I want to be a mother, but it is incredible that women all over the world experience miscarriages, but no one talks about it. Yesterday I went to the first family function I felt good enough to go to and I felt like I was acting the whole time. "Damn, I'm a good actress." I told myself as I cracked jokes and gave out words of encouragement and compliments as if I was not hollow inside. As if I was not bleeding and cramping and dizzy. As if my entire being doesn't now have to change because if I can't be a mother, what am I? 

Growing up in a conservative religion I was happy to accept that a woman's divinity was tethered to her motherhood-ness. Of course, I have my sobrinos and I will always love them dearly, but I am not their mother. I am not a mother so how does that relate to everything I was taught growing up?

I am a bit lost. I'm here writing a blog post instead of continuing my job search and I am resting my body so that I can, what, get my period again and just continue living my life as if all I have ever wanted was not ripped out of me with unspeakable anguish? 

I hate this. I don't want to feel sad anymore, but the grief comes and I miss my baby. I miss them and all I can hope for is that in the short time they were in my womb, they felt the love that their parents had for them. We loved them so much and maybe the 11 weeks I held them in me was all the motherhood I will get to experience in this life. Maybe not, but if so, AJ and I were so happy for the short experience of parenthood we did get. 

Ew. I'm trying to think of some moral of the story, but I don't have anything. I don't have any wisdom for some future almost-parent that looses their child because all I want is for these past seven weeks to disappear so AJ and I could go back and look forward to our little one. I don't have anything helpful to say other than, "I feel your pain."