Hummingbird

Week thirteen of pregnancy I began spooning a serpentine pillow that my husband, Caleb, gave me. Uncoiled, it stretched from my feet to my face and took the pressure off my hips and chest. I was thirty-five-years old, and although Nurse Becky labelled me “a geriatric mother” at my pap smear appointment, I felt on time to motherhood. At this pace I could have a pair of children before I turned forty: a pepper for the table salt.

I had just returned from a trip that would be considered ambitious for anybody, much less a pregnant body. I ricocheted across middle America: a cousin’s baby shower in Nashville; a team-building event in Madison. Then I visited family in Virginia, before flying back across the continent to my small-plane destination in Oregon.  

 I had been home for two days: long enough to slink in bed with the snake pillow, shop for nursing bras with Caleb, and inform my boss that I was pregnant.

I thought, Sure, the trip was hard. Yes, I am exhausted, but the first trimester is behind me. I am out of the danger zone. And according to my research on websites like ClevelandClinic.org, that is statistically true: Eighty percent of miscarriages in American women happen in weeks one through twelve—weeks 13-20, odds dip between one and five percent.

 And so, it came as a shock when at week thirteen, my body began to bleed. And as I stood on the precipice of miscarriage, I confronted the possibility of losing my first child. I sensed it, the same way I sensed a full moon coming or my cycle beginning. In the moments that elapsed between the time I launched off the couch and rushed into the downstairs bathroom, I had bled through my underwear and onto my pajama pants. It was a flow heavier than any period I have ever known. I sat on the toilet and stared at the red splotches on the crotch of my clothing.

“Caleb!” I cried out.

When he arrived in the doorway, he looked scared, but he said something to dispel the fear, “It’s okay to bleed. Some women do that.”

But it was not okay to me. And this was not spotting, this was a heavy flow. I willed my body to stop, stop bleeding out—yet my body had its own constitution. I was a faucet with no handle. It must be a similar horror for a person suffering a dire flesh wound—not ready to die where they lay.

I covered my eyes with my hands and remembered the sorrow in the eyes of a friend when she’d confided that she was having a miscarriage. I saw the uncharacteristic handwringing of my cousin as she disclosed that she was going in for surgery to mitigate the risk of another miscarriage and, hopefully, enable her to carry a baby to term. I heard the sobs and screams of eons of women who had lost children. It filled my ears and echoed off the walls around me. It was the call of a sisterhood I was not prepared to join. I lifted my hands off my face, my body off the toilet seat, and as I shakily stepped forward, I saw their dead embryos in my own splatter on the hardwood floor. I collapsed and felt the dread rise in my throat, the ghost of nausea, and I lifted my hands to cover my mouth.

A hot flash passed over me. It felt like a dozen funeral pyres burned on my scalp—one for every healthy week of my pregnancy. I tore off my clothes. I yelled, “No, no, no!” as if my voice would direct my body, but nothing changed. I was scorching and my mind searched for relief. I pictured the cold river flowing through the canyon nearby, and I longed to wade in, to submerge myself.  The Deschutes River poured over lava rocks and pallbearing fallen trees. It never stopped. My body flowed uncontrollably too, no matter what I said or did.

I sank into sadness, sweaty palms on the hardwood planks, until I was too deep to crawl out and the sight of my own loss too devastating to consider. I hobbled back to the toilet and shivered. I was helpless. Caleb was helpless. How do you reason with a body? Caleb got me upstairs, got me maxi pads, and we made a pact to make it through the night. To see if it stopped by morning.

I didn’t leave the bed or sit upright, except when I changed pads, which were swollen and girthy like a toddler’s soggy diaper.

That’s too much blood, I thought.

The next morning, with no change, Caleb called his mother. She casually told him she had a miscarriage at a movie theater.

I raided Caleb’s altar. I was desperate for amulets. I held a cross like the one I’d prayed to growing up. I pressed a chunk of rose crystal into my palm and thumbed a raw ruby necklace. I repeated a mantra: “We are healthy. We are healing.” I said a prayer: “Lord protect us.” I spoke so low that only a god and the baby, if it was alive, could hear it.

Caleb lay in bed with me that day. Our forearms and fingers wound together at times, in eagle pose. I watched my tears fall on the white bedsheets making grey splotches, then watched them vanish.

Other times, Caleb offered strawberry smoothies and coconut water. He delivered them with tender eyes and an encouraging grin, but his body had a tell. It was in the quiver of his bottom lip. And when his lip quiver would spread to his hands, I’d see his eyes glisten and he’d turn to leave the room.

Mid-afternoon, he called Jeanette, the midwife at the Bend Birth Center. He paced in the hallway as they talked.

“She wants to know how much blood you’re losing. Is it like when you have your period?” he asked.

“More,” I mumbled from fetal position.

“How many pads are you going through per hour?”

“One.”

Jeanette could hear me. I couldn’t hear her. Caleb held the phone to his ear and cupped his mouth. He hunched. And then leaned on the hall banister. He put Jeanette on speaker phone and aimed it in the bedroom.

“I want to be honest with you,” she said somberly. “Because of the amount of blood you are describing, the duration, and because you are at thirteen weeks, it is symptomatic of a miscarriage.”

I shut my swollen eyes.

“But it could also be a placental hemorrhage.”

I opened them again to catch Caleb’s reaction.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“If the placenta does not have a strong connection with the walls of the uterus, it will move and try to forge a better connection in another location.”

The word “try” was unnerving.

“Do we need to go to the emergency room?” Caleb asked.

“You could,” she said. “They will do an ultrasound to check the baby’s vitals.”

It felt obligatory to inquire, but there was nothing in me that was motivated to go. Caleb looked at me, opened an arm to gauge my response. I shook my head.

“I don’t think we’re up for that. Is there anything we can do here?” he asked.

“She needs to take it slow. Rest. And tomorrow morning, you could come into the clinic. Sophia will be here.”

“What’s she gonna do?” I heard an unfamiliar frailty in my voice.

“She’ll listen for a heartbeat. If the baby is alive, we’ll hear it.”

Caleb looked at me and cocked his head. I nodded, pulled the duvet around my shoulders and a pillow over my head. Then I sank into darkness.

We are healthy. We are healing.

 *

The next morning, I arrived at the Bend Birth Center like a grieving guest at a wake, unable to make pleasantries. I have no memory of how Caleb looked.

Without hesitation, Sophia, who was slight of frame but full of warmth, led me into Jeanette’s office and asked me to lie on the vintage examination table. I lifted my sweatshirt and she rubbed a cool gel on my skin.

“We’ll just take it slow, and listen, okay?” she said.

I nodded, took a deep breath, and my eyes involuntarily released tears. Caleb reached for my hand.

Sophia guided the Doppler over my uterus in slow hovering strokes, reminding me of the way my dad used a metal detector on the beach when I was growing up. We never found treasure: only pennies, rusty keys, and bottle caps. Sophia paused near my left hip. We heard swooshing, bubble sounds, and fuzz. It sounded oceanic and reminded me of listening for orcas in the Puget Sound. Sitting in a wobbly boat, hiding from the sun’s glare, with scant hope of life under the surface — until the volume was raised on a mic in the water, and suddenly our world was teeming with commotion. I begin to tremble. Caleb and I threaded our fingers together. Sophia encircled my uterus with the wand. Nothing. No orcas. No heartbeats. No gold.

“Huh,” said Sophia, “Let’s give it another go. Sometimes we miss the babies when they’re still small.”

The teardrops streamed off my cheeks and made crackling sounds when they hit the wax paper on the exam table. It sounded like brushes on a muted snare. Inexplicably, a peace washed over me there, in the white noise of the Doppler, the drumroll of tears, and the supine position of surrender. I thought, There is nothing I can do. For the first time I can remember, I recognized that I was not in control of my body, and that my physiology had its own logic.

Then, out of the fuzz, came the sound of a hummingbird, hovering like it had found sweet nectar. And like a hummingbird, as soon as it arrived, it was gone.

My eyes met Sophia’s.

“There!” she said. “That’s a heartbeat.” She adjusted the Doppler to follow the sound of a faint and rapid whirring.

We listened for several minutes. I felt relief wash over me, and a wave of euphoria.

“That’s a healthy, fast rhythm,” she said. It was only the second time I’d heard the heartbeat, Caleb’s first.

Sophia gave me a paper towel to wipe my belly and helped me to sit up.

“That’s very promising. Rest when you get home. Jeanette will check on you tomorrow.”

I nodded and felt the tug of exhaustion.

“Is it alright if I leave some trash in here?” Caleb asked, motioning to the trash bin beside the exam table. “It’s from the first night…”

He pulled a folded maxi pad from the wide front pocket of his hoodie.

I stared at it. Then him.

Caleb shrugged. “I got it out of the trash downstairs. I thought we might need to bury it in the yard. You know, if the baby was in there.”

 -Shelby Little

Shelby Little is an aspiring author and multimedia storyteller who grew up in Lakeland, Florida. She spent her formative years barefoot: biking old brick roads, singing on street corners, and climbing citrus trees. Though naturally nomadic, Shelby calls Bend, Oregon home. Here, she shares a ranch with her husband, Caleb; daughter, Josie; a few yard chickens; and a cat named Jr. Prank. Her poetry, editorial work, and non-fiction essays have been featured in Jump! Magazine at The College of William & Mary, The Source Weekly, and MothersRest.com. Shelby blogs at TheShelbyLittle.com.