Would be but

Dot would be 4 but I still remember driving to my midwives' office. That awful combination of dread, and stupid hope, and incredulous intuition. Was I stupid to have doubts, or stupid to hope? Stats were on my side that the baby was fine. 11+6. Healthy ultrasound at 8. "Perfect heartbeat," my midwife said only a week before.

But I knew what the back cramps meant. I had the same ones 5 months earlier. I remember making that last turn into the parking lot and thought, "this is the last time I can pretend my baby is alive."

Dot would be 4 but I remember the nurse making small talk as she took my vitals, commenting on how she felt like she just saw me. I told her that I just wanted to hear the baby's heartbeat before the weekend-- that I had a bad feeling. She joked that I should buy a doppler to use at home so I wouldn't need to come back every week. 

God, she must have felt awful when I passed her with red eyes on my way out. She's taken my blood pressure and weighed me, and handed me cups to pee in for two full term pregnancies since then. I always wonder if she remembers that day.. and her words.. and my face.

Dot would be 4 but I remember when my midwife's chipper, "hop on up here and let's listen to your baby" turned into the deafening sound of the doppler. It was so loud. But maybe it wasn't? Maybe it just *felt* like a fog horn blaring that my swollen belly was nothing more than a tomb.

I remember the viability ultrasound. Why do they have to call it such an awful name? Dot was so still. The ultrasound tech didn't need to say anything. She hastily took the measurements she needed, sensitive to the fact that I was staring at a baby that I would never get to hold. Like it was too painful for both of us. But I didn't want it to end. I wanted my midwife to sew my cervix shut so I could keep my dead baby forever. 

Dot would be 4, but I still have this recurring dream from time to time, that I died before I miscarried, which, as macabre as that sounds, the dream is a comfort-- to keep her tucked away with me. I wish the tech asked if I wanted to take the last grainy pictures of my baby, but instead she asked if I wanted to take the box of Kleenex's across the hall to my midwife's room.

Even still, I ended up soaking my midwife's shoulder in tears and snot. She told me how sorry she was and I remember saying, "it's ok." And she said, "it's ok not to be ok."

Dot would be 4, but the cramps gave way to contractions that evening. I remember sprinting to the bathroom unable to keep the baby inside any longer. I pushed. There was so much tissue. So much blood. It was the middle of the night and I could hardly see. I turned on the light, realizing what I had just done. In a moment of insanity I almost stuck my hand in the toilet to try and pull out my baby. I flushed the toilet instead and closed the bathroom door.

Dot would be 4 and it's still raw. I hold on to the details because it's what I have to hold, like the blood-stained skirt that hung in my closet for years after my first miscarriage. The screen shot of my NFP chart with it's perfect triphasic thermal shift, the ultrasound picture where her heart was beating, the picture I snapped of Mary Allison the next day at the library when, as fate would have it, the first book she pulled off the shelf was called, "What's inside your tummy, Mommy?"

Nothing, I remember thinking. A twice-empty tomb. 

Dot is not 4 today and I even though I have more kids than I can possibly wrangle at the moment, I still feel Dot's absence. But just like the macabre dream, I'm grateful to feel her absence-- a reminder that she lived, and she lived within me.

Art by Samantha J. Hahn

what I did and what I couldn't

No one is impressed with what I did or remembered before 8am. I'm the only one who even knows how long my list was, or that it begins the moment the last kid falls asleep each night, and even I can only see the things I didn't do.

The daycare teacher called to remind me to please put the blue tape on the baby's bottle caps. I remembered to write his full name and date on the blue tape that sticks to all three of his bottles, and the red band to note that it's human breast milk. And all that milk? I pumped all 15oz in the middle of my work day while catching up on emails and, at the same time, falling behind on the work that used to be easy for me.

I remembered her Chromebook and its charger. Two spirals, both math workbooks, a pencil pouch with all the things, pink head phones and matching pink mouse, a dollar bill for the snack she wants to buy, the Expo markers, the play-doh, the ADHD medication and her activity schedule and motivational system that I made her myself, the lunch I packed the night before, the mask, the extra mask. I filled out her covid-screener, my covid screener, took everyone's temperature, and made sure she had plenty of time to tie her shoes by herself. I even sent off that email to her neurodevelopmental ped about her 504 renewal meeting this month. But she wanted to chew gum on the way to "school" but the pack was empty. She wanted a different Taylor Swift song that wouldn't load, and wanted her dad to drop her off. And despite my very best efforts for a seamless morning, I had already yelled and she had already cried. It's only 7:40am.

Maternity leave is so far gone, but my hair still comes out in clumps e v e r y d a y, my hormones still feel wildly out of my control, my breasts still soak my shirt from time to time, and the baby blues I had with my others feel nothing like the ugly postpartum anxiety and depression that took over this time. I wish I was the weepy kind of depressed mom. Maybe it would feel good to cry? Instead I'm the rage-y kind which only makes the guilt worse. Will this postpartum ever end?

There is so much for parents to carry, especially this year. An enormous invisible load on top of the number of children people can see spilling out of our arms. But nobody seems to care.

That's not actually true, I know; I'm so lucky to have the friends, family, and colleagues that I do. Heck, even the stranger at Target who heard me scream the darkest scream to stop my three-year-old from being hit by a car, offered her empathy as she passed us: "I almost had a heart attack," she said to me as I grabbed my kids' hands, pulling one who is stomping her feet, still holding a grudge about the toy I wouldn't buy her, and another who was scared shitless because he had no idea his mom could scream that kind of scream reserved for parents who think they can't stop their child from being killed. Even if I could have reached him to pull him back, I was wearing his baby brother, and in that instant I chose the baby. (I wonder how long I'll hold onto that guilt?) But even the woman who saw us drowning didn't offer to help-- how could she during this pandemic? We passed each other, our faces covered in masks. Mine wet with stinging tears.

But I remember when strangers would tell me how amazing I was to be out grabbing coffee with my newborn, back when I gave his age in days. Like it was a true feat that I'd showered and stood there holding my perfect sleeping babe while someone else made my latte and my kids were safely at school. 

This shouldn't need to be said, but 8 months later the baby is still here, and rather than impressing people that I put on pants and left my house, the world has moved on. All expectations of what it is to be a good mother and a good working mother are just as high as before... even during a pandemic.

My midwife reminds me that I need to pace myself after she asks which pharmacy to send my anti-depressant prescription to. But the world doesn't see the dogged pace that mothers run. Or maybe they do see it, as they say, "I almost had a heart attack," and pass by our full arms.

day 4