May 6, 2025
i lost my pregnancy, here’s my hand.
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The following is my experience over the last 3 months in losing my pregnancy. I’ve repeatedly been told how common it is to have this happen-and yet again, I find myself in a “common” place with such a minimal amount of context for it. Grasping for hands to hold in this hushed common ground has been critical, I hope my voice becomes a hand you’ll never need to hold. get the visual version here: https://biancaleamorra.substack.com/
The following is my experience over the last 3 months in losing my pregnancy.
I’ve repeatedly been told how common it is to have this happen-
and yet again, I find myself in a “common” place with such a minimal amount of context for it.
Grasping for hands to hold in this hushed common ground has been critical,
I hope my voice becomes a hand you’ll never need to hold.
get the visual version here:
https://biancaleamorra.substack.com/
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Hello and welcome to another episode of Help Me See, this is an episode I wish I didn't have to record.
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I have taken a, a break, um, taken some time and space from.
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Recording and just general creative output because I've been going through a tough time and it feels really important, really necessary to share now that I have some semblance of life force back in my body.
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Um.
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the trigger warning for this is that it's about pregnancy loss.
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And if you're not in a place where you feel comfortable hearing about it, then I would suggest you skip this one.
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But I do believe that talking about the uncomfortable and the hard things, um.
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Is what gives us space and the ability to, I, I guess, not heal.
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I don't know if feels the right word.
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I think it's more that talking about it feels like revering it, it feels like giving the experience a voice because it's so transient and the world keeps moving when you feel like yours has just ended and, I just wanna do my part in sharing and, um, processing.
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So usually I do not read, uh, the podcast at all, but, um, before hitting record for the past few weeks I've been.
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Writing here and there and um, so this is going to be shared on my substack, as always.
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The note is, or the link is in the show notes and, um, yeah, I'm just going to read The ground no longer feels capable of holding the weight of me.
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It feels like my whole life is a thin rug floating midair, just waiting to be ripped out from under me.
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At any moment, there is a switch that flips in me.
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When I go through something difficult, I feel this undeniable urge to share it.
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The scarier it feels, the more pressing the need.
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I can't explain it.
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Nor can I really explain any of the most important things.
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Those are the things that are both unsayable and also specifically worth the excavation.
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It feels like a subconscious knowing that if I don't let it move in whatever way, it will turn to poison.
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Like the way stagnant water becomes dangerous if it doesn't flow or vomit that is coming up, whether you like it or not.
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Sometimes explaining things like this seems frowned upon like a low brow, too literal attempt to communicate something, somehow cheapens it as if it's only allowed to be talked about conceptually with poetic or elusive language or visual art.
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But just in the same way, there are things that can only be expressed and experienced in art.
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There are things that demand cold, hard, colorless words.
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It's hard to name something that doesn't look pretty or feel palatable, as if saying my plain truth is crude or offensive or less than.
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But ironically, sometimes the lack of considered approach feels more like art to me than anything else.
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The deciding factor between the two, you.
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Your own internal need, honor it and respect it.
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So today for me, I don't want this to be open for interpretation.
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In fact, right now I cannot stand one more goddamn open-ended thing.
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I want to be bound to specificity.
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I need to name, I need to not feel fucking helpless in one area of my life.
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It feels impossible to exist in the space I'm in now.
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Both the liminal and the aftermath of losing a baby.
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I found that some women feel shy or shamed about the extent of their pain for their loss because of how early in the pregnancy it happened, or knowing others who have had it worse, or the fact that it's so common.
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One in four, every loss is as different, significant and intimate as the person bearing it.
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From the second you see that pink line, everything changes.
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A love is born without needing birth, biologically, emotionally, physically, spiritually.
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At the time of this recording, I'm almost two weeks post the procedure.
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I did not want to have to have, I was around three months pregnant.
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The only thing that has helped me in this process is a few women who have shared intimate details of their experience with me.
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I'm grateful for their love, honesty, specificity, transparency, and most of all, their willingness to recall some of their darkest hours to help light mine when it felt like all of the air was sucked out of the sky.
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And stillness felt violent, silence, impenetrable.
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The knowing of their hard truths was a hand to hold, a hand to squeeze in the dark.
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Here's my hand in early February, I found out I was pregnant in absolute shock, unplanned, and I was so very happy.
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It was even more shocking for my partner who doesn't have the hormones and biological predisposition to more quickly acclimate to the reality right out of the gate.
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The complexity of holding my own joy and my partner's struggle felt like an intense experience, but one that awakened me to the importance of holding my truth sacred.
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A heightened awareness in not making my love and compassion for someone else means sacrifice to myself.
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All it took was that pink line to change everything.
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Well, many pink lines because it took a lot of tests.
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I didn't know if we would have a third child, but I always knew there was another.
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I've always said that it just feels like there's another, it's not that I have this overabundance of energy and patience and bandwidth for the two I have now.
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It just always felt like there was a presence making space for itself before even being here.
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In the eternity Before first seeing the doctor for my first ultrasound, I had a lot of time to think about this new season.
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One of the things I felt most strongly about was the idea that this was my chance to be in a pregnancy without being consumed with fear and worry.
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This was my chance to feel grounded and at peace during this experience.
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I was absolutely horrified in both of my previous pregnancies, the first, because it was my first and the second because there were some scary test results that led us to having to see many specialists and learning about very scary possibilities.
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Only to find out in the end, once he was finally born, that he was totally fine.
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Thank goodness I am such a different person now than I was six and four years ago.
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I know so much more.
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I.
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I am so much more connected to myself now is my chance to live this experience in a new way.
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We told our parents within a week or so, finding out, I feel very uncomfortable when something significant is happening and the prominent people in my life don't know about it.
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I have no poker face and I feel most comfortable with transparency.
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Going into my first appointment, I knew it was going to be hit or miss to be able to see the baby.
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It's still so early, but regardless of how common it is to not be able to see it, yet I had to be classified with unknown viability.
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I cried as soon as I left the room.
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Immediate fear, but no.
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This time I wanna be different.
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I told myself I had so many weird pregnancy symptoms.
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I rested in the discomfort.
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With hope that those must be positive signs.
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I had to wait 11 days for the viability confirmation ultrasound.
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I waited 11 long days to lay on this paper.
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You move the wand inside of me.
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You saw my insides on a screen.
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Did you think you knew more than I about me and mine? I wait.
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Your straight face makes me sick.
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I wait.
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I unfairly hate you more and more each minute, your silence glows grim in that dark room.
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Worse than anything you could ever say.
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And still, I must wait, and you walked in the room after a disrespectful wait.
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And yet I wish you'd never come.
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I flinched as your words assaulted me.
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Your blank eyes seemed perfectly fine.
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With letting me twist in pain as you pulled life from mine.
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And while I wait those closest to me innocently compete to say the worst possible words, their version of comfort, so much more their reality and nothing of mine, wait and prepare for the worst.
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Will it somehow hurt less? If I tell myself to hurt sooner? Will those words feel easier if I sit inside them longer? Wait, and then you can try again.
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As if the life inside of me here and now can be there and then wait and see.
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But this is likely an early loss.
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That data makes me sick.
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Averages and statistics meant to predict the outcome of a once in a lifetime, one of a kind you.
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I wait.
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Er, golf ball, clots, filling pads front to back.
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Side side.
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Any questions? I want to run away from my own body so badly and also not at all, because there's a baby in there.
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My baby is there.
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You are there.
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So I must wait, wait, wait, wait.
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11 days.
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Two weeks, eight weeks, wait and see.
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Wait to bleed, wait and bleed.
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How can this be meant to be against all odds and gone with odds? I wait.
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I lay here, scared to pee, afraid of what I will or won't see.
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Wait.
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I go to work through tears and cramps.
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I count the drawer five 10.
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15, 20, 25, 30.
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I squeeze shut.
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35 40, 45, 50.
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Trembling Chin, 55, 60, 75.
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Shuttering breath.
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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 6 weeks of pain.
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Try to escape, but they can't be here.
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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
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Maybe that's why I'm here.
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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
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I'm afraid not to be here.
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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
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Relieved that I'm not allowed to feel here.
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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
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Feelings don't have permission under the fluorescent lights here.
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1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
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Are you still here? I love you.
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I love you.
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I love you forever.
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Please stay.
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25, 50, 75 a dollar.
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I'll stay.
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I won't even drink water.
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Will that help you stay? 25 50, 75 a dollar.
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Then can you stay 10, 20, 30, 40, 50? I wish my mother had the right thing to say.
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I was born of her somehow meant to be.
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Why can't you be born to me? It is not my fault, but somehow easier if it would be something to point to, something to know, something to see.
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But there's nothing to point to.
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Nothing to know.
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Evaporated lines and dreams and memories and what feels like what's left of me.
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And still I wait.
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'cause it always going to happen like this.
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I just couldn't see.
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And the weight of the color pink brings me to my knees.
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In the bathroom, in the bedroom, in the laundry room, I plead, brought to my knees because the weight was over and it was here and now, but here and now three days later and still just pink here and there.
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Again, I wait holding breath as if it holds you here.
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I wait in the quiet before the storm everyone tells me is coming, but each day red doesn't come.
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Begs me to wonder if you're okay.
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Did you change your mind? Did you decide to stay? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10? Is this denial or is it faith? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
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I want to say I trust what's meant to be will be, but I know I only mean it if it gets you here to me.
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After that horrific appointment, I had convinced myself that so many other things could be at play.
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The timeline could be messed up, it could be so many other things, things, anything other than the worst thing.
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A few days later, I started to bleed.
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And I didn't even recognize the sound of the howl that came out of me as my own.
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I knew it could still be normal by technical rationale, but I knew I was brought to my knees in almost every corner of my home.
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The laundry room, the kitchen, the bedroom, my kids' room Brought to my knees without warning.
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Each time the knowing blew through me.
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I continued to bleed at my next.
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Scan.
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They were able to hear heartbeat.
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Less than half the rate.
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It should have been in two weeks.
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Smaller than expected in measurement.
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Nothing to do but wait.
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Nothing.
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Weeks of drowning in a nightmare.
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I could not wake up from.
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The rage I have felt in the last couple months has been more than ever before in my life.
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Rage for my baby, rage for my family, rage for myself, rage for my body, and rage for how many women I know and love and don't know and still love.
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That know what this impossible pain feels like.
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During the time, I was unsure for how much longer I would be pregnant.
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I desperately tried to find some form of resolution, some form of knowing or understanding I could rest on in order to find peace.
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Peace, not for myself, but so that I could be a nice place for her to be.
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I don't know the gender, but I feel like it was a her.
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She deserved to rest in a place of peace and not total and utter grief and rage.
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But the more I tried to force an understanding, the more I spiraled anything that even remotely sounded comforting, just ended up making me angry, and I ripped it away from myself and scolded myself for trying to make myself feel better.
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I even looked up soul contracts.
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Somehow I could deal with the fact that there is something I have to learn in this life through this experience, but I could not deal with the thought of a baby, my baby not getting a chance at life.
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A friend of mine offered that perhaps she came to give me something and it's not about what I can or can't give her.
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I don't know.
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I feel so spiritually ungrounded.
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I cannot fathom anything at this point.
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I've been living and breathing a level of helplessness and despair for what seems like so long yet, only a couple months.
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I can't make sense of anything anymore.
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It feels like I can't remember life before this.
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Indestructible love, born of the faintest line.
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A lifetime born in that single line.
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A pain that takes your breath away, your words away.
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An impossible silence that cannot stay.
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Scream your lungs out of the same mouth gasping for reason, an unreasonable ask and unreasonable season.
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To bear the weight of a loss so big you can't remember who you were without it to real, to be called a hope or a dream, an ache of a memory.
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Never made one that never took place, never took its place on the physical plane.
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A miracle taken a womb forsaken.
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How could it? Why can't it? Why won't it? How dare it.
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Unconditional love, imprisoned by physical conditions.
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Silence, shaky, salty air.
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Sit with me, see with me.
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Stay with me.
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Wear.
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I see you in moments you'll never be like the saddest ghost story I deeply believe.
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Will the searing anger ever turn to peace? What is it that makes a memory it needn't to ever be? It isn't something you need to see.
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It's both active and passive in who you be.
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It's in the breath.
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I breathe a lifetime, already lived in a single short line, your lifetime with me.
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I see it at dinner at bathtime and bedtime in leaves and water and sun.
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I see it in places and spaces, traces of love.
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Your memory doesn't need permission to live unbound by condition or vision or reason.
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This season won't pass.
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I refuse, but we will move.
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In every leaf and raindrop and ray of sunshine when I eat and clean and sleep and cry, a memory so deep it never needed to be made.
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Unconditional love rejects conditions of the physical plane.
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With every breath I breathe, you will always be.
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Well, I cannot say that I have made even an inch of progress in making sense or finding peace of this experience.
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I am undeniably and forever changed.
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I now need to relearn my insights.
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To be changed by something that pierces the deepest core of your being and not be able to understand or come to any sort of terms with.
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It is a special kind of abyss, a throb that doesn't let up.
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It makes me question everything else in my life.
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It makes life altogether feel too fragile.
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It reminds me of the hard edge of our time here.
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It feels like that notion is supposed to be a gift, but right now it just feels like hell, it feels like a reason to vilify remembering over, forgetting a short word on my choice of SSRI support.
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'cause I think it's important to talk about.
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When I found out I was pregnant, I weaned off Zoloft.
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I first started taking it after a scary period of postpartum anxiety and depression with my firstborn.
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I tried to wean during my second pregnancy, but with the intensity of the baby's health in question, I just wasn't able to.
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I was surprised at how easy it was to get off it.
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With this pregnancy, I didn't even notice a difference.
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Getting back on, it felt like a difficult decision, one that I resisted until I knew I had to get the DNC procedure.
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Ultimately, I knew the importance of that type of support and going through hard times for myself from the first time, more so than any feeling of relief.
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What I remember most, once the fog started to thin after I started taking.
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The meds was the disturbing realization of how bad it really was.
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In looking back on my resistance to seek help, I would go outside in the cold San Francisco Knights in a tank top just to feel something I felt like a baby deer, staring at headlights about to be hit, but frozen in place.
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This time around, my resistance felt different.
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It felt like some warped loyalty, a pledge to feel everything.
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As if seeking relief or help was a betrayal to my baby or meant that I refused to feel what was happening.
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But night after night, the boogeyman came and closing my eyes felt even scarier than being awake.
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At the end of the day, it was a complete hollow shell of a human, and in that place, not only could I not honor my baby that couldn't stay.
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But I was taking a whole mother, partner, daughter, friend, and any other identity I have away from myself and those I love being back on Zoloft has put nightlights around my mind.
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I, before I go, I need to talk about the pictures, the lack of pictures and seeing of the unseen and looking away.
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I looked away at the moment, it mattered most.
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I looked away when I went in for that viability ultrasound and the technician was doing the scan.
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After two minutes or a lifetime of her searching for measurements, I couldn't take it anymore, and I looked away.
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I looked at Ben, still looking at the screen.
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I kn and needed his hand.
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I couldn't look directly at the source, so I was searching for reassurance through his eyes.
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His gaze stayed steady for a while, but when he looked away, I instantly flung my arm up over my eyes and squeezed them shut tighter than ever in my life.
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She said nothing until the very end when she asked, is it possible you mistook the date of your last period? I could barely whisper, no.
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The doctor will be with you shortly.
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When she left the room, I crumbled into a ball on the loud paper table and sobbed, and the only thing I could utter was.
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She didn't print a picture.
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She didn't print a picture.
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A few days later when I started to bleed, the only thing I could do was call the hospital and find someone to access the archived image of my ultrasound from that appointment that day.
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I needed that picture.
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I desperately needed that picture.
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I didn't even want to look at that picture, but I needed that picture.
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They printed it on a disc and mailed it to me.
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After that appointment, I had other scans and was more proactive in requesting the prints.
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In the moment I learned my lesson.
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Perhaps they assume when things aren't, well, you don't want the pictures, but the image on the disc.
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I don't even have plans to look at it, honestly.
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I just feel relieved to know it's there.
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I spend a lot of time thinking about how all the pictures I take aren't the point.
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The immense satisfaction I feel when I make an image that feels right is so fleeting, everything and nothing at the flip of a coin.
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But when you're on the ledge of this or nothing, no more opportunities to see, let alone pictures, to take the pictures, take on a haunting magnitude.
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The picture becomes a life itself because it has to.
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'cause it has no choice.
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Now the very images I flinched at are the only ones I have left to hold.
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I now attempt to love my baby through creative conversation with the few images I have of her bittersweet, abbreviated existence.
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I think a lot of people miss the insane superpower of photographs writing video.
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Just documentation in general and the way of self-care, photographs of self-preservation over memory preservation.
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We are not constrained to only document things we want to remember.
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In fact, I believe it's even more crucial to document the things we wish to forget.
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We don't always need to want to reflect on what it is we're seeing and making and living.
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An acknowledgement, a reverence, a testament to the significance of all of life.
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Your life never before or never again.
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The documentation we might never look at for the rest of our days, but somehow the knowing of it being there settles our soul, although I can now have compassion for myself in that painful moment.
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I still find myself thinking, how could I not look at my baby? I know I could hold onto that moment and make it mean something that cripples me for a lifetime.
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It would be so easy to drink in the shame of that reaction, especially as someone who has spent a lifetime showing and exploring love through my eyes.
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But the fact is I didn't have to see her to love her.
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Looking away wasn't a withholding of love, but a knee-jerk reaction of self-protection.
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I felt like seeing in that moment would end me.
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But the knowing that there are these picture portals to bring me closer to her when I can bear it when I need it, that cradles my psyche.
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That creates space to wrap my mind and heart and soul around a piece of her again and again and again.
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And if I didn't have those scans, well, I would make new pictures that felt like her.
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I still will.
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I actually already do because it's impossible to separate her from anything I do forever on.
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There are times where I don't give a shit about making images and times where images are the only thing that I can be with vital as air.
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When we have no words, there are pictures, and pictures aren't enough.
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We search for words in all of them.
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We find ourselves.
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Right now I'm reading It's Okay To Not Be Okay by Megan Devin.
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She highlights how important it is to witness and tell stories that don't end in triumph or some grand profound learning and growth that gets tied up in a bow of well learned wisdom.
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Otherwise, we have no idea how to even begin living inside of our own grief, our new reality.
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It's not something to overcome or climb over or burrow through.
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It's a continuation of love that can hurt forever.
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It's not pretty and it's gorgeous and something no one would ever choose, but we can make space for ourselves inside of it.
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As impossible as it may seem.
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So, no, I'm not okay.
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I'm living in a reality that I desperately wanna wake up from, but I cannot.
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I ache for the baby.
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I'll never hold.
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I, and also, I'm deeply committed to holding her in all of the ways I can possibly find.
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I am both involuntarily and voluntarily beholden to being with all of life, allowing it to do what it must inside of me and outside of me seeing all that I can and forgiving myself when I must blink forever.
00:00:01,950 --> 00:00:11,190
Hello and welcome to another episode of Help Me See, this is an episode I wish I didn't have to record.
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I have taken a, a break, um, taken some time and space from.
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Recording and just general creative output because I've been going through a tough time and it feels really important, really necessary to share now that I have some semblance of life force back in my body.
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Um.
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the trigger warning for this is that it's about pregnancy loss.
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And if you're not in a place where you feel comfortable hearing about it, then I would suggest you skip this one.
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But I do believe that talking about the uncomfortable and the hard things, um.
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Is what gives us space and the ability to, I, I guess, not heal.
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I don't know if feels the right word.
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I think it's more that talking about it feels like revering it, it feels like giving the experience a voice because it's so transient and the world keeps moving when you feel like yours has just ended and, I just wanna do my part in sharing and, um, processing.
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So usually I do not read, uh, the podcast at all, but, um, before hitting record for the past few weeks I've been.
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Writing here and there and um, so this is going to be shared on my substack, as always.
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The note is, or the link is in the show notes and, um, yeah, I'm just going to read The ground no longer feels capable of holding the weight of me.
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It feels like my whole life is a thin rug floating midair, just waiting to be ripped out from under me.
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At any moment, there is a switch that flips in me.
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When I go through something difficult, I feel this undeniable urge to share it.
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The scarier it feels, the more pressing the need.
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I can't explain it.
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Nor can I really explain any of the most important things.
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Those are the things that are both unsayable and also specifically worth the excavation.
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It feels like a subconscious knowing that if I don't let it move in whatever way, it will turn to poison.
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Like the way stagnant water becomes dangerous if it doesn't flow or vomit that is coming up, whether you like it or not.
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Sometimes explaining things like this seems frowned upon like a low brow, too literal attempt to communicate something, somehow cheapens it as if it's only allowed to be talked about conceptually with poetic or elusive language or visual art.
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But just in the same way, there are things that can only be expressed and experienced in art.
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There are things that demand cold, hard, colorless words.
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It's hard to name something that doesn't look pretty or feel palatable, as if saying my plain truth is crude or offensive or less than.
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But ironically, sometimes the lack of considered approach feels more like art to me than anything else.
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The deciding factor between the two, you.
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Your own internal need, honor it and respect it.
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So today for me, I don't want this to be open for interpretation.
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In fact, right now I cannot stand one more goddamn open-ended thing.
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I want to be bound to specificity.
33
00:04:46,950.50873734 --> 00:04:53,40.50873734
I need to name, I need to not feel fucking helpless in one area of my life.
34
00:04:55,620.50873734 --> 00:04:58,710.50873734
It feels impossible to exist in the space I'm in now.
35
00:04:59,355.50873734 --> 00:05:01,905.50873734
Both the liminal and the aftermath of losing a baby.
36
00:05:03,705.50873734 --> 00:05:16,905.50873734
I found that some women feel shy or shamed about the extent of their pain for their loss because of how early in the pregnancy it happened, or knowing others who have had it worse, or the fact that it's so common.
37
00:05:16,905.50873734 --> 00:05:25,605.50873734
One in four, every loss is as different, significant and intimate as the person bearing it.
38
00:05:28,440.50873734 --> 00:05:31,350.50873734
From the second you see that pink line, everything changes.
39
00:05:33,450.50873734 --> 00:05:41,160.50873734
A love is born without needing birth, biologically, emotionally, physically, spiritually.
40
00:05:43,860.50873734 --> 00:05:47,670.50873734
At the time of this recording, I'm almost two weeks post the procedure.
41
00:05:47,670.50873734 --> 00:05:52,350.50873734
I did not want to have to have, I was around three months pregnant.
42
00:05:54,735.50873734 --> 00:06:02,985.50873734
The only thing that has helped me in this process is a few women who have shared intimate details of their experience with me.
43
00:06:05,175.50873734 --> 00:06:21,555.50873734
I'm grateful for their love, honesty, specificity, transparency, and most of all, their willingness to recall some of their darkest hours to help light mine when it felt like all of the air was sucked out of the sky.
44
00:06:21,630.50873734 --> 00:06:26,760.50873734
And stillness felt violent, silence, impenetrable.
45
00:06:27,960.50873734 --> 00:06:34,680.50873734
The knowing of their hard truths was a hand to hold, a hand to squeeze in the dark.
46
00:06:37,500.50873734 --> 00:06:49,675.50873734
Here's my hand in early February, I found out I was pregnant in absolute shock, unplanned, and I was so very happy.
47
00:06:50,820.50873734 --> 00:07:00,900.50873734
It was even more shocking for my partner who doesn't have the hormones and biological predisposition to more quickly acclimate to the reality right out of the gate.
48
00:07:00,930.50873734 --> 00:07:09,360.50873734
The complexity of holding my own joy and my partner's struggle felt like an intense experience, but one that awakened me to the importance of holding my truth sacred.
49
00:07:10,500.50873734 --> 00:07:16,20.50873734
A heightened awareness in not making my love and compassion for someone else means sacrifice to myself.
50
00:07:17,850.50873734 --> 00:07:20,640.50873734
All it took was that pink line to change everything.
51
00:07:21,0.50873734 --> 00:07:23,580.50873734
Well, many pink lines because it took a lot of tests.
52
00:07:25,620.50873734 --> 00:07:29,190.50873734
I didn't know if we would have a third child, but I always knew there was another.
53
00:07:30,390.50873734 --> 00:07:40,380.50873734
I've always said that it just feels like there's another, it's not that I have this overabundance of energy and patience and bandwidth for the two I have now.
54
00:07:40,860.50873734 --> 00:07:45,990.50873734
It just always felt like there was a presence making space for itself before even being here.
55
00:07:48,495.50873734 --> 00:07:55,155.50873734
In the eternity Before first seeing the doctor for my first ultrasound, I had a lot of time to think about this new season.
56
00:07:57,345.50873734 --> 00:08:04,755.50873734
One of the things I felt most strongly about was the idea that this was my chance to be in a pregnancy without being consumed with fear and worry.
57
00:08:06,255.50873734 --> 00:08:10,5.50873734
This was my chance to feel grounded and at peace during this experience.
58
00:08:12,180.50873734 --> 00:08:25,650.50873734
I was absolutely horrified in both of my previous pregnancies, the first, because it was my first and the second because there were some scary test results that led us to having to see many specialists and learning about very scary possibilities.
59
00:08:25,650.50873734 --> 00:08:30,180.50873734
Only to find out in the end, once he was finally born, that he was totally fine.
60
00:08:30,450.50873734 --> 00:08:38,10.50873734
Thank goodness I am such a different person now than I was six and four years ago.
61
00:08:38,760.50873734 --> 00:08:39,870.50873734
I know so much more.
62
00:08:40,620.50873734 --> 00:08:40,650.50873734
I.
63
00:08:40,965.50873734 --> 00:08:46,785.50873734
I am so much more connected to myself now is my chance to live this experience in a new way.
64
00:08:50,295.50873734 --> 00:08:58,365.50873734
We told our parents within a week or so, finding out, I feel very uncomfortable when something significant is happening and the prominent people in my life don't know about it.
65
00:08:58,965.50873734 --> 00:09:02,685.50873734
I have no poker face and I feel most comfortable with transparency.
66
00:09:04,665.50873734 --> 00:09:08,985.50873734
Going into my first appointment, I knew it was going to be hit or miss to be able to see the baby.
67
00:09:09,870.50873734 --> 00:09:19,680.50873734
It's still so early, but regardless of how common it is to not be able to see it, yet I had to be classified with unknown viability.
68
00:09:21,660.50873734 --> 00:09:23,190.50873734
I cried as soon as I left the room.
69
00:09:25,440.50873734 --> 00:09:28,620.50873734
Immediate fear, but no.
70
00:09:28,620.50873734 --> 00:09:30,90.50873734
This time I wanna be different.
71
00:09:30,90.50873734 --> 00:09:35,160.50873734
I told myself I had so many weird pregnancy symptoms.
72
00:09:35,850.50873734 --> 00:09:37,530.50873734
I rested in the discomfort.
73
00:09:38,385.50873734 --> 00:09:40,995.50873734
With hope that those must be positive signs.
74
00:09:42,975.50873734 --> 00:09:46,665.50873734
I had to wait 11 days for the viability confirmation ultrasound.
75
00:09:52,95.50873734 --> 00:09:55,275.50873734
I waited 11 long days to lay on this paper.
76
00:09:55,995.50873734 --> 00:09:57,855.50873734
You move the wand inside of me.
77
00:09:58,305.50873734 --> 00:10:00,435.50873734
You saw my insides on a screen.
78
00:10:01,275.50873734 --> 00:10:06,615.50873734
Did you think you knew more than I about me and mine? I wait.
79
00:10:07,380.50873734 --> 00:10:09,210.50873734
Your straight face makes me sick.
80
00:10:10,50.50873734 --> 00:10:10,710.50873734
I wait.
81
00:10:12,210.50873734 --> 00:10:18,300.50873734
I unfairly hate you more and more each minute, your silence glows grim in that dark room.
82
00:10:18,990.50873734 --> 00:10:20,910.50873734
Worse than anything you could ever say.
83
00:10:21,900.50873734 --> 00:10:28,650.50873734
And still, I must wait, and you walked in the room after a disrespectful wait.
84
00:10:28,860.50873734 --> 00:10:30,510.50873734
And yet I wish you'd never come.
85
00:10:31,740.50873734 --> 00:10:33,690.50873734
I flinched as your words assaulted me.
86
00:10:33,690.50873734 --> 00:10:36,120.50873734
Your blank eyes seemed perfectly fine.
87
00:10:36,960.50873734 --> 00:10:40,440.50873734
With letting me twist in pain as you pulled life from mine.
88
00:10:41,880.50873734 --> 00:10:56,10.50873734
And while I wait those closest to me innocently compete to say the worst possible words, their version of comfort, so much more their reality and nothing of mine, wait and prepare for the worst.
89
00:10:57,360.50873734 --> 00:11:09,735.50873734
Will it somehow hurt less? If I tell myself to hurt sooner? Will those words feel easier if I sit inside them longer? Wait, and then you can try again.
90
00:11:11,85.50873734 --> 00:11:19,485.50873734
As if the life inside of me here and now can be there and then wait and see.
91
00:11:20,85.50873734 --> 00:11:22,245.50873734
But this is likely an early loss.
92
00:11:22,905.50873734 --> 00:11:24,405.50873734
That data makes me sick.
93
00:11:24,735.50873734 --> 00:11:30,585.50873734
Averages and statistics meant to predict the outcome of a once in a lifetime, one of a kind you.
94
00:11:32,85.50873734 --> 00:11:32,685.50873734
I wait.
95
00:11:34,725.50873734 --> 00:11:37,305.50873734
Er, golf ball, clots, filling pads front to back.
96
00:11:37,305.50873734 --> 00:11:38,25.50873734
Side side.
97
00:11:38,25.50873734 --> 00:11:47,25.50873734
Any questions? I want to run away from my own body so badly and also not at all, because there's a baby in there.
98
00:11:47,745.50873734 --> 00:11:48,825.50873734
My baby is there.
99
00:11:50,805.50873734 --> 00:11:51,525.50873734
You are there.
100
00:11:52,665.50873734 --> 00:11:58,605.50873734
So I must wait, wait, wait, wait.
101
00:12:00,620.50873734 --> 00:12:01,400.50873734
11 days.
102
00:12:02,40.50873734 --> 00:12:05,910.50873734
Two weeks, eight weeks, wait and see.
103
00:12:05,910.50873734 --> 00:12:08,610.50873734
Wait to bleed, wait and bleed.
104
00:12:10,80.50873734 --> 00:12:14,700.50873734
How can this be meant to be against all odds and gone with odds? I wait.
105
00:12:15,270.50873734 --> 00:12:19,620.50873734
I lay here, scared to pee, afraid of what I will or won't see.
106
00:12:21,390.50873734 --> 00:12:21,930.50873734
Wait.
107
00:12:23,10.50873734 --> 00:12:25,20.50873734
I go to work through tears and cramps.
108
00:12:25,20.50873734 --> 00:12:28,80.50873734
I count the drawer five 10.
109
00:12:28,695.50873734 --> 00:12:30,885.50873734
15, 20, 25, 30.
110
00:12:30,975.50873734 --> 00:12:31,935.50873734
I squeeze shut.
111
00:12:32,175.50873734 --> 00:12:34,275.50873734
35 40, 45, 50.
112
00:12:34,275.50873734 --> 00:12:37,635.50873734
Trembling Chin, 55, 60, 75.
113
00:12:41,115.50873734 --> 00:12:42,195.50873734
Shuttering breath.
114
00:12:45,585.50873734 --> 00:12:49,185.50873734
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 6 weeks of pain.
115
00:12:49,185.50873734 --> 00:12:51,315.50873734
Try to escape, but they can't be here.
116
00:12:52,395.50873734 --> 00:12:54,315.50873734
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
117
00:12:55,185.50873734 --> 00:12:56,625.50873734
Maybe that's why I'm here.
118
00:12:56,640.50873734 --> 00:12:59,460.50873734
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
119
00:12:59,790.50873734 --> 00:13:01,410.50873734
I'm afraid not to be here.
120
00:13:02,370.50873734 --> 00:13:04,350.50873734
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
121
00:13:05,400.50873734 --> 00:13:07,620.50873734
Relieved that I'm not allowed to feel here.
122
00:13:09,480.50873734 --> 00:13:11,430.50873734
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
123
00:13:11,940.50873734 --> 00:13:15,120.50873734
Feelings don't have permission under the fluorescent lights here.
124
00:13:16,585.50873734 --> 00:13:18,600.50873734
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
125
00:13:19,380.50873734 --> 00:13:22,710.50873734
Are you still here? I love you.
126
00:13:22,710.50873734 --> 00:13:23,280.50873734
I love you.
127
00:13:23,280.50873734 --> 00:13:24,360.50873734
I love you forever.
128
00:13:24,360.50873734 --> 00:13:24,960.50873734
Please stay.
129
00:13:26,535.50873734 --> 00:13:28,545.50873734
25, 50, 75 a dollar.
130
00:13:29,445.50873734 --> 00:13:30,45.50873734
I'll stay.
131
00:13:30,45.50873734 --> 00:13:31,335.50873734
I won't even drink water.
132
00:13:31,365.50873734 --> 00:13:35,475.50873734
Will that help you stay? 25 50, 75 a dollar.
133
00:13:36,495.50873734 --> 00:13:43,305.50873734
Then can you stay 10, 20, 30, 40, 50? I wish my mother had the right thing to say.
134
00:13:43,935.50873734 --> 00:13:46,335.50873734
I was born of her somehow meant to be.
135
00:13:46,935.50873734 --> 00:13:56,190.50873734
Why can't you be born to me? It is not my fault, but somehow easier if it would be something to point to, something to know, something to see.
136
00:13:56,940.50873734 --> 00:13:58,200.50873734
But there's nothing to point to.
137
00:13:58,200.50873734 --> 00:13:59,100.50873734
Nothing to know.
138
00:13:59,100.50873734 --> 00:14:03,810.50873734
Evaporated lines and dreams and memories and what feels like what's left of me.
139
00:14:05,400.50873734 --> 00:14:06,540.50873734
And still I wait.
140
00:14:08,250.50873734 --> 00:14:10,290.50873734
'cause it always going to happen like this.
141
00:14:11,370.50873734 --> 00:14:12,390.50873734
I just couldn't see.
142
00:14:13,710.50873734 --> 00:14:16,470.50873734
And the weight of the color pink brings me to my knees.
143
00:14:17,820.50873734 --> 00:14:30,960.50873734
In the bathroom, in the bedroom, in the laundry room, I plead, brought to my knees because the weight was over and it was here and now, but here and now three days later and still just pink here and there.
144
00:14:30,960.50873734 --> 00:14:36,30.50873734
Again, I wait holding breath as if it holds you here.
145
00:14:37,200.50873734 --> 00:14:43,470.50873734
I wait in the quiet before the storm everyone tells me is coming, but each day red doesn't come.
146
00:14:43,470.50873734 --> 00:14:45,625.50873734
Begs me to wonder if you're okay.
147
00:14:47,370.50873734 --> 00:14:59,340.50873734
Did you change your mind? Did you decide to stay? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10? Is this denial or is it faith? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
148
00:15:00,750.50873734 --> 00:15:06,650.50873734
I want to say I trust what's meant to be will be, but I know I only mean it if it gets you here to me.
149
00:15:11,627.06020015 --> 00:15:16,397.06020015
After that horrific appointment, I had convinced myself that so many other things could be at play.
150
00:15:17,297.06020015 --> 00:15:27,17.06020015
The timeline could be messed up, it could be so many other things, things, anything other than the worst thing.
151
00:15:31,97.06020015 --> 00:15:32,692.06020015
A few days later, I started to bleed.
152
00:15:33,662.06020015 --> 00:15:37,922.06020015
And I didn't even recognize the sound of the howl that came out of me as my own.
153
00:15:39,332.06020015 --> 00:15:49,262.06020015
I knew it could still be normal by technical rationale, but I knew I was brought to my knees in almost every corner of my home.
154
00:15:49,772.06020015 --> 00:15:54,432.28424396
The laundry room, the kitchen, the bedroom, my kids' room Brought to my knees without warning.
155
00:15:54,462.28424396 --> 00:15:56,352.28424396
Each time the knowing blew through me.
156
00:15:57,432.28424396 --> 00:16:00,442.28424396
I continued to bleed at my next.
157
00:16:00,462.28424396 --> 00:16:01,2.28424396
Scan.
158
00:16:01,32.28424396 --> 00:16:02,382.28424396
They were able to hear heartbeat.
159
00:16:03,642.28424396 --> 00:16:04,782.28424396
Less than half the rate.
160
00:16:04,782.28424396 --> 00:16:06,522.28424396
It should have been in two weeks.
161
00:16:06,522.28424396 --> 00:16:08,382.28424396
Smaller than expected in measurement.
162
00:16:09,852.28424396 --> 00:16:10,962.28424396
Nothing to do but wait.
163
00:16:12,687.28424396 --> 00:16:13,137.28424396
Nothing.
164
00:16:15,297.28424396 --> 00:16:16,767.28424396
Weeks of drowning in a nightmare.
165
00:16:16,767.28424396 --> 00:16:18,27.28424396
I could not wake up from.
166
00:16:18,597.28424396 --> 00:16:24,357.28424396
The rage I have felt in the last couple months has been more than ever before in my life.
167
00:16:26,7.28424396 --> 00:16:37,947.28424396
Rage for my baby, rage for my family, rage for myself, rage for my body, and rage for how many women I know and love and don't know and still love.
168
00:16:38,457.28424396 --> 00:16:41,517.284244
That know what this impossible pain feels like.
169
00:16:46,227.284244 --> 00:16:50,37.284244
During the time, I was unsure for how much longer I would be pregnant.
170
00:16:50,487.284244 --> 00:16:57,837.284244
I desperately tried to find some form of resolution, some form of knowing or understanding I could rest on in order to find peace.
171
00:16:59,517.284244 --> 00:17:04,287.284244
Peace, not for myself, but so that I could be a nice place for her to be.
172
00:17:05,712.284244 --> 00:17:08,22.284244
I don't know the gender, but I feel like it was a her.
173
00:17:12,162.284244 --> 00:17:17,292.284244
She deserved to rest in a place of peace and not total and utter grief and rage.
174
00:17:18,672.284244 --> 00:17:31,932.284244
But the more I tried to force an understanding, the more I spiraled anything that even remotely sounded comforting, just ended up making me angry, and I ripped it away from myself and scolded myself for trying to make myself feel better.
175
00:17:34,197.284244 --> 00:17:36,237.284244
I even looked up soul contracts.
176
00:17:37,347.284244 --> 00:17:51,267.284244
Somehow I could deal with the fact that there is something I have to learn in this life through this experience, but I could not deal with the thought of a baby, my baby not getting a chance at life.
177
00:17:53,727.284244 --> 00:17:59,817.284244
A friend of mine offered that perhaps she came to give me something and it's not about what I can or can't give her.
178
00:18:02,172.284244 --> 00:18:02,772.284244
I don't know.
179
00:18:04,422.284244 --> 00:18:06,372.284244
I feel so spiritually ungrounded.
180
00:18:06,372.284244 --> 00:18:08,562.284244
I cannot fathom anything at this point.
181
00:18:11,742.284244 --> 00:18:19,452.284244
I've been living and breathing a level of helplessness and despair for what seems like so long yet, only a couple months.
182
00:18:20,262.284244 --> 00:18:22,32.284244
I can't make sense of anything anymore.
183
00:18:24,702.284244 --> 00:18:27,342.284244
It feels like I can't remember life before this.
184
00:18:34,587.284244 --> 00:18:37,557.284244
Indestructible love, born of the faintest line.
185
00:18:37,917.284244 --> 00:18:40,17.284244
A lifetime born in that single line.
186
00:18:41,67.284244 --> 00:18:44,667.284244
A pain that takes your breath away, your words away.
187
00:18:45,447.284244 --> 00:18:47,847.284244
An impossible silence that cannot stay.
188
00:18:48,987.284244 --> 00:18:55,167.284244
Scream your lungs out of the same mouth gasping for reason, an unreasonable ask and unreasonable season.
189
00:18:56,247.284244 --> 00:19:05,847.284244
To bear the weight of a loss so big you can't remember who you were without it to real, to be called a hope or a dream, an ache of a memory.
190
00:19:05,847.284244 --> 00:19:12,597.284244
Never made one that never took place, never took its place on the physical plane.
191
00:19:14,37.284244 --> 00:19:16,677.284244
A miracle taken a womb forsaken.
192
00:19:17,997.284244 --> 00:19:20,757.284244
How could it? Why can't it? Why won't it? How dare it.
193
00:19:23,637.284244 --> 00:19:26,847.284244
Unconditional love, imprisoned by physical conditions.
194
00:19:28,137.284244 --> 00:19:30,207.284244
Silence, shaky, salty air.
195
00:19:30,207.284244 --> 00:19:31,557.284244
Sit with me, see with me.
196
00:19:31,557.284244 --> 00:19:32,397.284244
Stay with me.
197
00:19:32,637.284244 --> 00:19:33,177.284244
Wear.
198
00:19:34,317.284244 --> 00:19:39,597.284244
I see you in moments you'll never be like the saddest ghost story I deeply believe.
199
00:19:43,461.3686795 --> 00:19:54,531.3686795
Will the searing anger ever turn to peace? What is it that makes a memory it needn't to ever be? It isn't something you need to see.
200
00:19:54,531.3686795 --> 00:19:57,171.3686795
It's both active and passive in who you be.
201
00:19:58,251.3686795 --> 00:19:58,971.3686795
It's in the breath.
202
00:19:58,971.3686795 --> 00:20:05,871.3686795
I breathe a lifetime, already lived in a single short line, your lifetime with me.
203
00:20:07,71.3686795 --> 00:20:12,411.3686795
I see it at dinner at bathtime and bedtime in leaves and water and sun.
204
00:20:13,221.3686795 --> 00:20:16,731.3686795
I see it in places and spaces, traces of love.
205
00:20:18,321.3686795 --> 00:20:23,428.3686795
Your memory doesn't need permission to live unbound by condition or vision or reason.
206
00:20:25,496.3686795 --> 00:20:27,106.3686795
This season won't pass.
207
00:20:28,866.3686795 --> 00:20:31,41.3686795
I refuse, but we will move.
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In every leaf and raindrop and ray of sunshine when I eat and clean and sleep and cry, a memory so deep it never needed to be made.
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Unconditional love rejects conditions of the physical plane.
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With every breath I breathe, you will always be.
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Well, I cannot say that I have made even an inch of progress in making sense or finding peace of this experience.
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I am undeniably and forever changed.
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I now need to relearn my insights.
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To be changed by something that pierces the deepest core of your being and not be able to understand or come to any sort of terms with.
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It is a special kind of abyss, a throb that doesn't let up.
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It makes me question everything else in my life.
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It makes life altogether feel too fragile.
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It reminds me of the hard edge of our time here.
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It feels like that notion is supposed to be a gift, but right now it just feels like hell, it feels like a reason to vilify remembering over, forgetting a short word on my choice of SSRI support.
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'cause I think it's important to talk about.
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When I found out I was pregnant, I weaned off Zoloft.
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I first started taking it after a scary period of postpartum anxiety and depression with my firstborn.
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I tried to wean during my second pregnancy, but with the intensity of the baby's health in question, I just wasn't able to.
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I was surprised at how easy it was to get off it.
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With this pregnancy, I didn't even notice a difference.
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Getting back on, it felt like a difficult decision, one that I resisted until I knew I had to get the DNC procedure.
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Ultimately, I knew the importance of that type of support and going through hard times for myself from the first time, more so than any feeling of relief.
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What I remember most, once the fog started to thin after I started taking.
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The meds was the disturbing realization of how bad it really was.
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In looking back on my resistance to seek help, I would go outside in the cold San Francisco Knights in a tank top just to feel something I felt like a baby deer, staring at headlights about to be hit, but frozen in place.
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This time around, my resistance felt different.
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It felt like some warped loyalty, a pledge to feel everything.
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As if seeking relief or help was a betrayal to my baby or meant that I refused to feel what was happening.
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But night after night, the boogeyman came and closing my eyes felt even scarier than being awake.
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At the end of the day, it was a complete hollow shell of a human, and in that place, not only could I not honor my baby that couldn't stay.
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But I was taking a whole mother, partner, daughter, friend, and any other identity I have away from myself and those I love being back on Zoloft has put nightlights around my mind.
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I, before I go, I need to talk about the pictures, the lack of pictures and seeing of the unseen and looking away.
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I looked away at the moment, it mattered most.
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I looked away when I went in for that viability ultrasound and the technician was doing the scan.
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After two minutes or a lifetime of her searching for measurements, I couldn't take it anymore, and I looked away.
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I looked at Ben, still looking at the screen.
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I kn and needed his hand.
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I couldn't look directly at the source, so I was searching for reassurance through his eyes.
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His gaze stayed steady for a while, but when he looked away, I instantly flung my arm up over my eyes and squeezed them shut tighter than ever in my life.
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She said nothing until the very end when she asked, is it possible you mistook the date of your last period? I could barely whisper, no.
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The doctor will be with you shortly.
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When she left the room, I crumbled into a ball on the loud paper table and sobbed, and the only thing I could utter was.
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She didn't print a picture.
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She didn't print a picture.
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A few days later when I started to bleed, the only thing I could do was call the hospital and find someone to access the archived image of my ultrasound from that appointment that day.
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I needed that picture.
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I desperately needed that picture.
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I didn't even want to look at that picture, but I needed that picture.
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They printed it on a disc and mailed it to me.
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After that appointment, I had other scans and was more proactive in requesting the prints.
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In the moment I learned my lesson.
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Perhaps they assume when things aren't, well, you don't want the pictures, but the image on the disc.
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I don't even have plans to look at it, honestly.
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I just feel relieved to know it's there.
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I spend a lot of time thinking about how all the pictures I take aren't the point.
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The immense satisfaction I feel when I make an image that feels right is so fleeting, everything and nothing at the flip of a coin.
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But when you're on the ledge of this or nothing, no more opportunities to see, let alone pictures, to take the pictures, take on a haunting magnitude.
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The picture becomes a life itself because it has to.
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'cause it has no choice.
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Now the very images I flinched at are the only ones I have left to hold.
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I now attempt to love my baby through creative conversation with the few images I have of her bittersweet, abbreviated existence.
267
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I think a lot of people miss the insane superpower of photographs writing video.
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Just documentation in general and the way of self-care, photographs of self-preservation over memory preservation.
269
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We are not constrained to only document things we want to remember.
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In fact, I believe it's even more crucial to document the things we wish to forget.
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We don't always need to want to reflect on what it is we're seeing and making and living.
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An acknowledgement, a reverence, a testament to the significance of all of life.
273
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Your life never before or never again.
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The documentation we might never look at for the rest of our days, but somehow the knowing of it being there settles our soul, although I can now have compassion for myself in that painful moment.
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I still find myself thinking, how could I not look at my baby? I know I could hold onto that moment and make it mean something that cripples me for a lifetime.
276
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It would be so easy to drink in the shame of that reaction, especially as someone who has spent a lifetime showing and exploring love through my eyes.
277
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But the fact is I didn't have to see her to love her.
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Looking away wasn't a withholding of love, but a knee-jerk reaction of self-protection.
279
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I felt like seeing in that moment would end me.
280
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But the knowing that there are these picture portals to bring me closer to her when I can bear it when I need it, that cradles my psyche.
281
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That creates space to wrap my mind and heart and soul around a piece of her again and again and again.
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And if I didn't have those scans, well, I would make new pictures that felt like her.
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I still will.
284
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I actually already do because it's impossible to separate her from anything I do forever on.
285
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There are times where I don't give a shit about making images and times where images are the only thing that I can be with vital as air.
286
00:30:39,336.3686795 --> 00:30:44,586.3686795
When we have no words, there are pictures, and pictures aren't enough.
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We search for words in all of them.
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We find ourselves.
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Right now I'm reading It's Okay To Not Be Okay by Megan Devin.
290
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She highlights how important it is to witness and tell stories that don't end in triumph or some grand profound learning and growth that gets tied up in a bow of well learned wisdom.
291
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Otherwise, we have no idea how to even begin living inside of our own grief, our new reality.
292
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It's not something to overcome or climb over or burrow through.
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It's a continuation of love that can hurt forever.
294
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It's not pretty and it's gorgeous and something no one would ever choose, but we can make space for ourselves inside of it.
295
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As impossible as it may seem.
296
00:31:48,21.3686795 --> 00:31:49,491.3686795
So, no, I'm not okay.
297
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I'm living in a reality that I desperately wanna wake up from, but I cannot.
298
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I ache for the baby.
299
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I'll never hold.
300
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I, and also, I'm deeply committed to holding her in all of the ways I can possibly find.
301
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I am both involuntarily and voluntarily beholden to being with all of life, allowing it to do what it must inside of me and outside of me seeing all that I can and forgiving myself when I must blink forever.
