For anyone experiencing grief from loss…
The fetus inside me, my potential daughter, was diagnosed XXX from a tissue sample taken during an amniocentesis my 14th week of pregnancy. We’d named her Sierra, since she made it past the first trimester, after losing two of the triplets in utero the first month.
I’d had three pregnancy losses before the triplets. I was in my late 30s, maybe too late for kids I feared, which is a pedestrian way of saying I was scared out of my fucking mind I’d never have them. And for as long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted children. Sierra was wanted.
My 15th week of pregnancy another ultrasound showed us our daughter inside me. “The ghost in the machine,” my husband had said quietly. By then we’d decided raising a child — ill from birth who’d likely never survive to adulthood — was beyond our financial, parental, and emotional capabilities.
After the abortion my husband was driving us home on the icy road and I started shaking. Then I threw up all over myself, the passenger seat and the floor. We figured it was the anesthesia wearing off but it continued for days. I threw up most everything I ate. I hardly slept. I had a debilitating back ache — like someone was drilling a hole into my lower back with a power tool. And I could not stop crying.
I’ve been a staunch pro-choice supporter since I found out what it meant. Women must retain or be given back the RIGHT to control our bodies, especially since an est. 33% of men leave the woman to care for the child alone. Regardless, I’d never had an abortion, and the events of that day kept replaying, looping in my head — from crossing the line of protesters with the aid of private police hired by the clinic, to the procedure, which I was semi-conscious for throughout, and was as horrific as it sounds.
A week later my back was still killing me, waking me at night. I couldn’t sit still during the day. I figured I deserved the pain for what I’d done. The loss of my daughter was crushing. Regret consumed me. I didn’t deserve to have kids anymore. I’d wanted her so badly but was too afraid of losing her too young, of watching her suffer with little we could do to help her. I was afraid we couldn’t afford her quality care. I was afraid… And I hated myself for letting my fear rule me.
I cried waking each morning to my empty womb, then several times a day and into a restless night’s sleep through the holidays. I got up many times at night, and since I’m allergic to aspirin I paced the living room to assuage my back pain. I couldn’t sit in a car for long to go to family celebrations, and didn’t have the bandwidth to put on a face for them. Instead we stayed home and I painted an old army footlocker of my father’s in coat after coat of thick black lacquer. Took days after Christmas for the doctor to get back to my husband about the state of his wife. He prescribed me some pain medication for my back, and bed rest, and told me I’d start to feel better in a few days.
I didn’t. Days, weeks, months went by and I could not stop crying. I took the prescribed meds and it helped my back but not my state of mind. Several months after the abortion I went back to consulting and took on marketing campaigns, one of which was Toys R Us. I broke down in my car in the parking lot of the agency I’d just signed contracts, and cried throughout the two-week project in my home office. Work was not distracting enough for the self-loathing rhetoric inside my head.
Six months later and the Concord MA landscape was flush with greenery. It was my first full summer there and compared to the gray, cold winter, it was beautiful, but I didn’t really see it. It was humid, sticky, unlike California’s dry heat. It was buggy, full of mosquitos. It poured from thunderstorms and flooded our basement every time. Beyond my daily crucifixion, a gnawing hope lingered that I’d get pregnant again, so I continued working out to keep my body fit, but that was about it. We stopped going out to dinner because when I ate it was hard to swallow. I had no interest in going to the movies, seeing friends or family. Road trips stopped. Singing stopped. Listening to music stopped. If I got pregnant again, no matter what, I’d keep the baby.
I didn’t get pregnant again in the following six months. My husband and I looked into adoption. We attended a China Adoption With Love seminar, and left cautiously excited. Sort of. The black cloud did not lift. I still woke crying, and wept in quick bursts throughout most days, and often for longer in the night. My husband was rightfully concerned and asked me to see a therapist. I’ve seen many in my lifetime, starting when my mom sent me to one when I was 13. None have helped me [even remotely] to better navigate my world. I didn’t need to cry to some psychologist who’s job it is to be supportive. My husband, in his weird way, was trying to be. He’d experienced the loss of Sierra more as a matter of course — we’d decided to terminate. Move on.
I could not move on. I could not go back and do it different. Stuck in purgatory, I agreed to see a psychiatrist when my husband insisted I “do something.” I’d never seen one before, only LMHCs and LMFTs, none of which were doctors. Maybe they could prescribe something to help me stop crying all the time. Something safe for pregnancy…just in case.
A well-groomed, graying hair, bearded man in his early 60s shook my hand and introduced himself when I entered his office.
I sat on the leather couch across from his swivel chair. I’d had no contact with the man until right then as his front desk arranged the appointment. And I had no idea how psychiatry worked. Should I begin with my parents, or should I start with why I was there and what I wanted from the sessions, assuming there’d be more than one. Likely many, as therapists hope for.
“Tell me why you’re here, and what you hope to get from meeting with me,” the doctor said.
And I launched into my pregnancy with Sierra after losing three others in utero before the triplets. Took me half the session to get through the abortion since I was sobbing so hard. The psychiatrist wrote on his pad, and provided a box of tissues, but seemed unmoved by my hysteria. When I finally shut up and calmed down a bit he asked me again what I hoped to get from coming to him.
“An anti-depressant that’s safe in case I get pregnant again.”
“I’m not going to give you drugs,” he said flatly. “None are without risk if you’re trying to get pregnant.”
He gave me five, 45-minute sessions. I cried, a lot, at first. We talked about grief, about unfulfilled expectations, about loss of self, my growing thoughts of suicide — turn off, feel nothing ever again. Our last session started out as usual with me describing my week. I’d been crying less, which was good. But I continued to visualize methods to commit suicide, vacillating between a drug overdose, or carbon monoxide poisoning.
“This is our last session,” the doc said, legs crossed, his pad in his lap. Expressionless.
I stared at him sitting ‘properly’ in his swivel chair with one foot on the ground. Assessing me. I’m not sure if I was glaring at him but I didn’t look away. He was just like therapists, albeit way less supportive, though more informative with studies and statistics. And he was ending our sessions when he hadn’t helped me at all! “But I don’t feel any better,” I blurted. Seriously, what was this guy’s benefit-add for his exorbitant hourly rate.
“I’m not a therapist, here to make you feel better.” He paused, and continued to watch me. “The hard truth is it’s going to hurt every time you recall the abortion, or think about the potential child you chose not to have. It is going to hurt. As we’ve discussed, you’ll never know if you’d have lost her in utero, like you have all your other pregnancies; or you’d spared her a lifetime of hardship. Regret and self-doubt will feel overwhelming at times. When she crosses your mind in the future, it’s going to hurt. Hopefully a bit less over time, but every time you remember the events of this period in your life, it is going to hurt.” He still did not look away. But I did.
“I know,” I whispered, bawling again. “But it’s been over a year and I’m still crying all the time. I don’t know how to let it go. ‘Move on,’ like my husband has,” I said bitterly.
“Each of us processes grief in our own way and time. Regardless how long it takes you to ‘feel better’ over this loss, you’ll likely face many painful events in your life. The trick is not to let them stop you from living. Being alive means feeling — happy, sad, good, bad, whatever. And feelings are transient, sparked by circumstance. You can leave here today, go home and hang yourself in your doorway. I certainly can’t stop you.” He paused, to let it sink in, I assumed. “Or you can go live your life forward, move through the process of grieving, and further away from this loss with each new experience. Biologically, you’re still fertile, and seemingly have no issue getting pregnant. If you do, may it be healthy,” he said softly, his eyes stayed fixed on mine.
“Doesn’t matter if it is,” I proclaimed through sobs, but to this day I can’t tell you that I fully meant it knowing the chances of chromosomal damage during gestation happening again with my advanced age. “I’m going to have kids. Either birthing them or adopting them, I’m going to raise kids,” I said definitively, and in that moment the black cloud began lifting.
“I believe we’ve gone as far as we can together.”
I never saw him again. Clearly, I did not commit suicide that day. I had two healthy children — our son ten months after that last session, and our daughter two and a half years after that. As devastating the loss of Sierra, the pervasive black hole inside has filled with the inconceivably humbling love I get to feel for my kids.
Painful events will follow joyful ones throughout this process of living. Twenty plus years later, the psychiatrist’s words still resonate, helping me get through the tough times in my life now knowing that beyond recurring periods of darkness there will be times of brilliant bright light.
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