Sometimes it was too painful to look at them, but at other times it was too painful not to, and Garv and I used to eyeball them with hungry gazes, thinking We nearly had one of them. Then Garv usually whispered, ‘We’d better stop, we’re being weird, the mother will call the peelers on us.’
My instinct was to get pregnant again immediately, so that we could almost pretend that the first loss had never happened, and Garv said he wanted to do whatever made me happy. So I went straight out and bought a temperature thing, because I wanted to leave nothing to chance. My life was pared down to just one all-consuming need, and terrible fear tormented me. What if this time it took a year? What if – unthinkably – it never happened? But we were lucky: I’d miscarried at the start of October, and I was pregnant again by the middle of November. It’s hard to describe the giddy mix of relief and happiness I felt when the blue line appeared on the stick; we’d been given a second chance. Breathless, we squeezed each other and we both cried, as much for the loss of the other child as the joy of the new one.
But almost straight away the joy was overtaken by anxiety. Blind terror, actually. What if I lost this one too?
‘Lightning doesn’t strike twice,’ Garv said, even though it does, and it wasn’t lightning anyway.
I became so very, very careful; I stopped going to pubs, because I was afraid of inhaling cigarette smoke; I drove at about fourteen miles an hour (quite fast for Dublin, actually), so there’d be no danger of any sudden braking; I refused to give cream cheese house-room, and I never permitted myself the luxury of a belch – quite understandable when you consider that I even worried about breathing too hard, in case it dislodged the baby.
Horrible dreams dogged me: one night I dreamt that the baby had died and was still inside me, another night I dreamt I gave birth to a chicken. And this time round, there was no skiving off work and buying handbags from JΡ Tod’s; we’d been so badly punished the last time for being happy that we were scared of doing anything that smacked of celebration. Mind you, I wasn’t at all as sick the second time – apart from when I found something very funny (almost never), and my laughter segued seamlessly into dry-retching. (I was a model dinnerparty guest.)
We cautiously took the reduced nausea as a good sign. Though there was no medical basis for it, I said to Garv that the terrible sickness the first time round had probably been a sign that something was wrong. Then he repeated it back to me and thus we tried to reassure each other and ourselves.
But every twinge in me could indicate the onset of disaster. One night I got a really bad pain in my armpit and I was absolutely convinced that this was it. Garv tried to restore calm by pointing out that my armpit was miles from my womb, but I countered defiantly, ‘Yeah, but when people have heart attacks they get a pain in their arm,’ and then I could see I’d put the fear in him too.
But we survived that night, and in the seventh week we went for our first scan, where anxiety stripped the event of the joy we’d had with the first baby. I kept asking if everything looked OK and the nurse said over and over that it did.
But how could she tell? If I was completely honest, the picture they gave us looked more like a poor black-and-white photocopy of ‘Starry, Starry Night’ than a baby.
As we approached the ninth week, the tension built and built. During the ninth week itself, time slowed down to the ticking of each individual second. We breathed as though the air was rationed. Then – unbelievably – it had passed without incident and we’d moved into the clear blue waters of the tenth week. The cloud lifted and suddenly we were gulping breaths like the air was chocolate-flavoured – you could actually see the change in us. I remember smiling at Garv and watching him smile back at me and being shocked at how unfamiliar it was.
Week ten passed. Week eleven arrived and we went for our second scan, where we were a lot giddier and lighter than at the previous one. Then something happened which upped the ante more than I could ever have imagined – as I was lying on the table, the nurse indicated that we should be quiet, she flicked a switch, and the sound of our baby’s heartbeat filled the room. A lightish pitter-patter, so fast it was absolutely belting along. It is impossible for me to convey the depth of my wonder and joy. I was transported with it. As you might expect, we both cried buckets, then we had a little laugh, then shed a few more tears. Our awe just knocked us sideways. And the relief was glorious: it had a heartbeat. Things must be fine.
And just as soon as we were over week twelve, we’d really be in the clear. ‘Two days to go,’ I said that night, as we squeezed hands before we went to sleep.
The pain woke me. There hadn’t been pain the last time, so I wasn’t immediately alerted. Then when I understood what was happening I went into a dreamscape: I cant believe this is happening to us.
When bad things happen, I’m always taken by surprise. I know some people react to disaster by stomping around shouting, ‘I knew it, I just fucking KNEW this would happen!’ But I’m not one of them. Bad things are supposed to happen to mythical ‘other people’, and it comes as a shock when I discover that I am one of the ‘other people’.
As we hurried out to the car, I looked up to the night sky, silently begging God not to let this happen. But I noticed something that seemed like an omen. ‘There are no stars tonight,’ I said. ‘It’s a sign.’
‘No, baby, it’s not.’ Garv slid his arms around me. ‘’The stars are always there, even in the daytime. Sometimes we just can’t see them.’
The sense of dßjé vu as we drove to the hospital turned reality into a nightmare. Then we were sitting on the orange chairs again, then someone was telling me that everything would be OK, and once again it wasn’t.
It was still too early to tell the sex, not that I cared. All that mattered was that this was the second time I’d lost a child: a ready-made family, gone before it had arrived.
This time it was far, far worse. Once I could live with, but not twice – because the one thing we’d had the last time, that we didn’t have now, was hope. I hated myself and my defective body that was failing us so terribly.
People provided stories that were supposed to be comforting. My mother knew a woman who’d had five miscarriages before carrying to term and now she had four fine children, two boys and two girls. Garv’s mother could go one better: ‘I know a woman who had eight miscarriages and then she had twins. A lovely pair of boys. Mind you,’ she added doubtfully, ‘one of them ended up in prison. Embezzlement. Something to do with a pension fund and a villa in Spain…’
My instinct was to get pregnant again immediately, so that we could almost pretend that the first loss had never happened, and Garv said he wanted to do whatever made me happy. So I went straight out and bought a temperature thing, because I wanted to leave nothing to chance. My life was pared down to just one all-consuming need, and terrible fear tormented me. What if this time it took a year? What if – unthinkably – it never happened? But we were lucky: I’d miscarried at the start of October, and I was pregnant again by the middle of November. It’s hard to describe the giddy mix of relief and happiness I felt when the blue line appeared on the stick; we’d been given a second chance. Breathless, we squeezed each other and we both cried, as much for the loss of the other child as the joy of the new one.
But almost straight away the joy was overtaken by anxiety. Blind terror, actually. What if I lost this one too?
‘Lightning doesn’t strike twice,’ Garv said, even though it does, and it wasn’t lightning anyway.
I became so very, very careful; I stopped going to pubs, because I was afraid of inhaling cigarette smoke; I drove at about fourteen miles an hour (quite fast for Dublin, actually), so there’d be no danger of any sudden braking; I refused to give cream cheese house-room, and I never permitted myself the luxury of a belch – quite understandable when you consider that I even worried about breathing too hard, in case it dislodged the baby.
Horrible dreams dogged me: one night I dreamt that the baby had died and was still inside me, another night I dreamt I gave birth to a chicken. And this time round, there was no skiving off work and buying handbags from JΡ Tod’s; we’d been so badly punished the last time for being happy that we were scared of doing anything that smacked of celebration. Mind you, I wasn’t at all as sick the second time – apart from when I found something very funny (almost never), and my laughter segued seamlessly into dry-retching. (I was a model dinnerparty guest.)
We cautiously took the reduced nausea as a good sign. Though there was no medical basis for it, I said to Garv that the terrible sickness the first time round had probably been a sign that something was wrong. Then he repeated it back to me and thus we tried to reassure each other and ourselves.
But every twinge in me could indicate the onset of disaster. One night I got a really bad pain in my armpit and I was absolutely convinced that this was it. Garv tried to restore calm by pointing out that my armpit was miles from my womb, but I countered defiantly, ‘Yeah, but when people have heart attacks they get a pain in their arm,’ and then I could see I’d put the fear in him too.
But we survived that night, and in the seventh week we went for our first scan, where anxiety stripped the event of the joy we’d had with the first baby. I kept asking if everything looked OK and the nurse said over and over that it did.
But how could she tell? If I was completely honest, the picture they gave us looked more like a poor black-and-white photocopy of ‘Starry, Starry Night’ than a baby.
As we approached the ninth week, the tension built and built. During the ninth week itself, time slowed down to the ticking of each individual second. We breathed as though the air was rationed. Then – unbelievably – it had passed without incident and we’d moved into the clear blue waters of the tenth week. The cloud lifted and suddenly we were gulping breaths like the air was chocolate-flavoured – you could actually see the change in us. I remember smiling at Garv and watching him smile back at me and being shocked at how unfamiliar it was.
Week ten passed. Week eleven arrived and we went for our second scan, where we were a lot giddier and lighter than at the previous one. Then something happened which upped the ante more than I could ever have imagined – as I was lying on the table, the nurse indicated that we should be quiet, she flicked a switch, and the sound of our baby’s heartbeat filled the room. A lightish pitter-patter, so fast it was absolutely belting along. It is impossible for me to convey the depth of my wonder and joy. I was transported with it. As you might expect, we both cried buckets, then we had a little laugh, then shed a few more tears. Our awe just knocked us sideways. And the relief was glorious: it had a heartbeat. Things must be fine.
And just as soon as we were over week twelve, we’d really be in the clear. ‘Two days to go,’ I said that night, as we squeezed hands before we went to sleep.
The pain woke me. There hadn’t been pain the last time, so I wasn’t immediately alerted. Then when I understood what was happening I went into a dreamscape: I cant believe this is happening to us.
When bad things happen, I’m always taken by surprise. I know some people react to disaster by stomping around shouting, ‘I knew it, I just fucking KNEW this would happen!’ But I’m not one of them. Bad things are supposed to happen to mythical ‘other people’, and it comes as a shock when I discover that I am one of the ‘other people’.
As we hurried out to the car, I looked up to the night sky, silently begging God not to let this happen. But I noticed something that seemed like an omen. ‘There are no stars tonight,’ I said. ‘It’s a sign.’
‘No, baby, it’s not.’ Garv slid his arms around me. ‘’The stars are always there, even in the daytime. Sometimes we just can’t see them.’
The sense of dßjé vu as we drove to the hospital turned reality into a nightmare. Then we were sitting on the orange chairs again, then someone was telling me that everything would be OK, and once again it wasn’t.
It was still too early to tell the sex, not that I cared. All that mattered was that this was the second time I’d lost a child: a ready-made family, gone before it had arrived.
This time it was far, far worse. Once I could live with, but not twice – because the one thing we’d had the last time, that we didn’t have now, was hope. I hated myself and my defective body that was failing us so terribly.
People provided stories that were supposed to be comforting. My mother knew a woman who’d had five miscarriages before carrying to term and now she had four fine children, two boys and two girls. Garv’s mother could go one better: ‘I know a woman who had eight miscarriages and then she had twins. A lovely pair of boys. Mind you,’ she added doubtfully, ‘one of them ended up in prison. Embezzlement. Something to do with a pension fund and a villa in Spain…’
