Issue #60: Why getting pregnant won't be on my summer bucket list

My miscarriage story — a part one.

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Written by

Aliza Sir

. Edited by

Aja Frost

& my husband, Sam.

Aja and I had been talking about writing a summer bucket list  — something I’d loved doing last year — but I wasn’t able to summon the enthusiasm. I realized that I have no bucket list. That the summer I’d envisioned had disappeared… and that it would’ve felt dishonest to omit the pain and anxiety that I’ve been consumed by the past several months. The expectations and milestones I’m forced to give up. 

I’ve learned having a miscarriage — much like having a child — is a complex and radicalizing experience. It’s one I’m only now able to open up about, especially since I’ve so rarely seen any stories here like my own, and I still don’t know where my journey will go.

But if you’re not in a space to read this now, I couldn’t understand more.

I walked into my ten-week doctor’s appointment relaxed, nonchalant — Sam and I had just started to talk about how we could rearrange the furniture in our two-bedroom duplex to accommodate a baby in the fall. “It’s okay if you can’t make it,” I’d told Sam a few days before the appointment. But he’d insisted on coming. 

For the past month and a half, I’d felt so pregnant — all the familiar symptoms from my pregnancy with Jude coming back. I lamented to friends about first-trimester exhaustion. Jude and I now shared the same schedule, culminating in a long and luxurious afternoon nap where I’d wake from a deep slumber dry-mouthed and groggy. 

Several weeks earlier, I’d taken the first positive pregnancy test. “There’s a line!” I said. We’d joked how the fear and trepidation Sam had felt when I got pregnant with Jude two years earlier had overshadowed the initial wave of joy. This time, we were both ecstatic. 

When we got to the exam room, I hopped up enthusiastically and laid back on the table. The nurse began asking us a series of routine questions (Had we thought about doing any genetic testing? Did we want to learn the baby’s sex?) as she pressed against my skin with the cold gel and transducer to search for a heartbeat. 

“Sometimes, it takes a few minutes,” she said, still searching. I nodded, serene.