by Anitra Lahiri

Created on: December 30, 2008

I was fourteen weeks along and had that radiant glow that only a mother-to-be could possess. I was the picture of perfect pregnant health; after all, I practiced Yoga, meditated, and ate well. My belly was starting to expand, I had already gained 8 glorious pounds, and I was oh-so-ready to be fully pregnant, give birth, and live happily ever after. But life had a different plan for me. Life wanted to challenge everything I had so stubbornly and self-righteously believed. Life wanted to humble me. And it did.

I was so excited to hear the baby's heart beat for the first time that I had pangs of excitement that had stretched from my wildly maternal heart to the tip of every digit on my body (pre-8th-grade-dance-party-pangs, times a million). I lay there with the midwife's trembling hand on my arm, the cold stethoscope being moved about on my tummy frantically. Silence. More frantic re-positioning of the stethoscope. More silence. She told us not to worry- that the baby was probably just awkwardly positioned, but she would order an ultrasound just to make sure. Two days later, I lay on another bed, feeling vulnerable and terrified with my slightly round belly all gooped up. The ultrasound monitor screen flashed on, the darkness of my organs began to light up, and there was my uterus, my beautiful miraculous uterus...and it was empty. The nurse glared down at me, told us there was no pregnancy, flicked off the screen, and scampered away. Nik and I exchanged looks of shock and confusion (medicine without compassion truly is cruelty).

We later learned that I had had a blighted ovum, a miscarriage in which the pregnancy takes place, with its raging hormones, creation of a sac, and ever-expanding uterus, but the baby never actually develops. Yet, inside me, there were still these remnants of what could have been a human life, what would have been a child, our child. My stubborn little body, being as strong-willed and rebellious as the spirit who resides inside of it, refused to expel this non-existent life. This empty sac was inside of me, floating about, my body completely unwilling to surrender to the fact that sometimes life does not unfold as planned. So, the doctor induced me, forcing my body to expel what it had fought so hard to cling to for 14 weeks. Within 12 hours after the induction, sharp pains wrapped the organs of my body like the great roots of a giant Sycamore tree. There I was on my bathroom floor, about to give birth to death.

Now that time has passed and I have grown and healed in a million and one ways, I know those fourteen weeks of pregnancy were not fruitless. Those were not labor pains of failure. No, not at all. Those labor pains led to the birth of an entirely new me. They were the entryway into a passage of my life that would mature me, humble me, and change me forever.

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