One More to Mark.
On January 25th of 2005, I knew for certain that I was pregnant. A few weeks later, the saints at our church worshipped without us as the emergency room doctor offered congratulations, and after she left the room, I tentatively stroked my belly and whispered a hesitant "I love you, baby mine." I'd arrived via ambulance, after collapsing in the bathroom of the bloodwork office early Sunday morning, whisked away without giving the blood that was intended to confirm the state of my pregnancy. When the pain returned that night, I called the on-call doctor as I'd been instructed, and when I asked about the possibility of an ectopic pregnancy, he glibly assured me that the ultrasound showed the baby in the right place.
I tried to suppress the rise of excitement, the knowledge of life within, those surges that pierce through everyday tasks to fill one's heart. I'd been bleeding since the day I knew I was pregnant, but even so, those little thrills kept rising up, and I'd shove them down again. At the first appointment weeks later, my new doctor reviewed my charts and learned that the emergency room ultrasound had actually shown a bare womb, common in early pregnancy; she ordered another ultrasound and discovered that the baby was growing, unaware of any error, inside a fallopian tube. I told her I didn't want the "abnormal pregnancy removed" and for the next ten minutes muttered a constant refrain: yes, I know what ectopic pregnancies are, yes, I know the baby has no chance of survival, yes, I know the tube will eventually rupture, filling my spaces with blood that will kill the baby and without surgery, me, too; yes, I know, I know, I know.
I walked outside to close my eyes in the cold car, eventually breaking the silence to call John and to ask my mother, a nurse, for advice. In God's providence, results showed that the baby was not alive, though the remains continued to grow, so that same day, John, the girls, and I drove to pick up the antimetabolite drug. We immediately delivered it to the doctor, in whose room I then stood, pale and shivering, awkward, as she emptied the needle into my backside. Minutes later, I listened with half an ear as she explained the dry and matter-of-fact, and surrounded by the static of silence, I gave the appropriate "of course" when she paused.
Two weeks later, nearly two months after the first red appeared and with that red still constant-- a sign not of life's sustainment nor life beginning but of a life already ended-- I understood the tiniest glimmer of the woman's desperation who grasped the edge of Jesus's garment. Her mysterious ailment caused her to live cut off and alone for twelve long years with no change in sight and with no hope until He came.
The methotrexate was unsuccessful in coaxing my body to shed our child's shell. On March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, I again curled on an emergency room bed, waiting for news of surgery. A nurse wearing green scrubs and a green headband, all green glitter with impossibly unsteady antennae, wheeled me to the operating room where I handed over my wedding ring, breathed deeply, and fell asleep while they took the baby's remains.
Thankfully, the baby's placement didn't require my tube to be removed, and one of the last statements the surgeon made after examining me the next morning was a jaunty, "I was able to do it with just a few, small scars. You're still a bikini babe!" I truly was thankful that he was a skilled and competent surgeon.
I wanted to cry or punch him but did neither.
What is the moral choice? I ask this wanting no answer, as we spent enough time during those months and the following explaining, defending, and occasionally agreeing with others about this difficult issue. In our bones, we have no doubt that even if God allowed my death, it would have been wrong to end our baby's life-- a baby with a certain, brief reach of days-- even through a "secondary effect" death caused by removing the compromised tube. If we were in this situation again, nothing would change.
I've always been reticent to allow others too much knowledge of the more vulnerable aspects of living when it comes to my own life. Though I babble like nobody's business and have always been overmuch of a loudmouth, I've also always been an extremely private person in certain areas, close-mouthed about both the highest and lowest points. This may sound self-important, but I don't mean it to be, because lots of us are like that.
I didn't share all this on my blog then and didn't plan to. In fact, I didn't write about it at all, so why the sudden openness? Two years have passed, and today I sat thinking of lives whose earthly span is contained entirely within the world of their mother's body-- lives that end here so quickly after they've begun-- of those mothers and children and love and loss. Nearly all mothers have experienced or will experience the loss of a child, and I thought of mothers who lose babies before they even know a baby is within them to lose, after two weeks, after two months, mothers who lose children big enough to cradle and cry over, and mothers who lose children grown too big to hold in any place but their heart. Our family's moment of grief was so small and even tender compared to those latter, but because life is shot through with the results of Sin and Grace, we can expect greater griefs (and joys) to come and probably more heavenborn children, too.
I talk here about Mildred, Annika, and Susannah constantly, marking their steps, no matter how insignificant, with wordstones. I thought that this child of God, whom I will greet as a no-longer-stranger in Heaven, deserved a bit of the same, and today seemed as appropriate a day as any in which to give it.
I love you, baby mine.
