It doesn't hurt anymore

Seven years ago (today), I had a D&C to remove the baby boy I'd lost. The pregnancy had come as a major surprise, but was amazing, nonetheless. I was around 15 weeks pregnant and had started spotting around lunch time. I called my doc and was told to take it easy for a day or two and if things changed, to give him another call.

By that night, the bleeding was much worse. A second call to my doc resulted in a trip to the Emergency Room. As I waited for the ER doc to come back into the room to tell me what was happening, I stared at the clock. It seemed like hours before he finally walked through the door. The look on his face told me it was bad news. He explained to me that I was having a miscarriage. Not that I had had one, but was having one. It was not yet completed. I begged him to do something to stop it, to make things better. According to him, there was nothing to be done and it would be a few hours before it would finally be complete.

He spent the next several minutes reassuring me that this was not my fault, that things like this happen all the time and I should understand that my body had a way of knowing that it was not ready to go through birth again. I went home that night and cried for hours. Naturally, I did not sleep a bit. I was losing my baby. He wasn't gone yet, but as I lay in bed, he was dying. And there wasn't a damn thing I could do to stop it.

Two days later, I walked back into the ER for the D&C that had been scheduled during my conversation with the ER doc. My mother was with me as I checked in and stayed with me until they took me to the Operating Room. The procedure, I am told, went just as expected. Recovery would be minimal, a day in bed, then light duty the next day.

As I lay in the bed, just after surgery, I felt empty. He was gone. They had taken him from me. For a moment, I thought I heard someone else in the room with me. It sounded like someone told me "He's ok now, you don't have to worry". I looked around, but never saw anyone. I closed my eyes and cried.

Since then, this day has been a painful one for me. Until this year, that is. Today, I feel no pain. As I watch my two little girls laughing and playing together, I realize that I have something a lot of people wish they had. I now know, that I wasn't ready for another baby seven years ago.

So even though I remember the pain losing Joshua caused, it doesn't hurt anymore.