Rosh Hashana 5770/2009 - Jewish Infertility

People try to comfort you when you have had pregnancy
losses. They desperately try to fill the silence that’s left behind
by saying something. Something like, “You’re so special
that you were chosen…The Imahos…”
SHAAREI TIKVAH/ FALL 2009
23
things were looking good. The pregnancy was proceeding
in a textbook manner. When I put on maternity clothes for
the first time in my life it was around the time my younger
sister had her first child. Everyone was so happy and excited
for me. Of course I worried about the viability of the pregnancy;
anyone who’s been through losses worries. But I had
no concrete medical information supporting my worries.
The field of infertility has changed a lot since those days.
Good infertility specialists today do a lot of investigating
rather than allowing a patient to get to three pregnancy
losses. Back then, though, my doctor let me try again without
any extensive workup being done. Because of this, there
wasn’t a serious cloud in my sky. Then, without warning, the
sky fell in.
The day of my sister’s baby’s bris I wasn’t occupied with
bagels or lox. I was a hospital bed, almost in an upside down
position- my head down and my feet up in the air. My water
had broken. My most successful pregnancy was over. It had
only lasted twenty-one weeks.
I’ve always used humor to cope. In the middle of it all, I
remember having a darkly humorous thought. Our entire
lives my sister had always been in my shadow; I was the older
one, the more outgoing one. And here I was upstaging her
again; taking away the spotlight when it was finally her moment
to shine. How totally typical it was! At her simcha all
anybody talked about was how I was doing.
The doctor prepared me for the worst. And then the
worst happened. I delivered the baby and it did not live.
I asked to see the baby- I desperately needed to see that
I could conceive and produce something that looked
human. When the bereavement people came I didn’t want
to talk to them. I told everyone I was ok, which of course I
wasn’t. Anyone who came in looking somber and morose
was sent away- I insisted that I was fine! Really!!
I do remember feeling upset that the hospital had given
me a roommate who had had a successful delivery and was
happily nursing her baby and yakking on the phone to her
relatives about all the gory details of her delivery.
What I needed most at that point was to get home and
have a good cry-but strangely enough when it came time
to actually going home I found myself delaying it as much
as possible, something I now know is perfectly normal for
someone who just experienced a loss. This is something I
have seen many times in my nursing career. When I deal
with patients experiencing a loss I make them aware of this.
I remember even stopping on the way home for ice
cream, of all things! I remember feeling strangely disconnected
emotionally while I was eating my cone of mint
chocolate chip ice cream. The contrast between what I had
just gone through and the festivity of eating an ice cream
cone seemed peculiar. There was a sense of detachment, of
dissonance. After the ice cream, we drove around the neighborhood
and parked the car far away. Neither if us was conscious
of the fact that we were trying to delay the inevitable.
But as soon as I opened the door to my apartment it hit
me. I stood there on the threshold and just broke apart. I
was sobbing hysterically. I cried and wailed, “I lost my baby,
I lost my baby.” Then my husband came in. He took one look
at me and also broke down.
There’s something about coming home that really, really
hurts. In the hospital you’re in coping mode, adrenalin
mode. Then you come home empty-handed. You think, the
last time I was here I was pregnant. I had hope. Now it’s all
over. Coming home finalizes the end.
One of the stranger memories I have of that time is of
getting company the next day. Family had come in from out
of state for my sister’s simcha and everyone came over to
see me the next day. Instead of leaving me alone to lick my
wounds they expected me to host them. They even brought
a pie of pizza along. I remember serving them the pizza
while trying to hold back the need to tell everybody to just
leave. The whole situation was completely bizarre.
Immediately on the heels of this I experienced another
blow. I lost my baby on a Friday. There was an end of year
teachers meeting on Monday. My boss told that I must attend-
I countered that I was on maternity leave; I had gone