Come back, Cassidy

I woke up face down on the floor in a pool of blood with my underwear around my ankles.

The last thing I remembered was being woken in the middle of the night by the wetness of my blood-soaked pajamas, then wobbling down the stairs to the bathroom where I sat on the toilet sobbing and afraid as the remaining tissue passed from my body. That’s when I fainted, hitting my forehead on the tile floor. 

I had been 8 weeks pregnant. The spotting had started earlier that day, light at first then gradually getting heavier. My husband took me to the ER where we waited in anguish until the doctor brought back the prognosis that I already knew in my body – I was miscarrying. I still remember the doctor’s face as he delivered the news. He was smiling as he said it, perhaps in an effort to soften the blow. But the odd incongruence of his facial expression and the words he was speaking gave me the impression that I was the butt of a bad joke. We had already picked out a name for the child. My hopeful expectation of a new baby gave way to horror, grief and shame. 

Apparently without noticing my grief-stricken wails, the doctor, still smiling, instructed me to go home and wait it out because there was really nothing they could do. He had the nurse give me some extra thick pads and sent me on my way. We had come down there and waited for hours for what, I wondered? For this doctor’s amusement and free sanitary pads? 

Now, helpless and bloody on the floor of my mother-in-law’s bathroom where we were staying at the time, the image of the doctor’s perverse smile flashed in my mind. He could have prevented this. He could have helped me. I had sought out medical support and was sent home to suffer on my own.

I then took another ride to the hospital, this time in an ambulance. 

I don’t remember too much about the second visit. I was frightened, in shock and humiliated. I know I had a different doctor this time, and she was kinder than the first.  

However, the first physician, horrid though he was, taught me a valuable lesson. I learned to take doctors off of a pedestal and to trust myself more. 

During my first pregnancy (this was my second), my ObGyn had responded to my desire to have a drug-free birth with condescending dismissal. “Do you take Tylenol for a headache?” she had asked, to which I admitted I did. “Then, you’re going to want to take something for this pain.” No follow-up questions about why a drug-free birth was important to me, no resources offered, no consideration or support for my wishes whatsoever. I was taken aback, but deferred to the doctor’s expertise and didn’t investigate the issue any further on my own. And, sure enough, when labor came, having no other coping mechanisms available to me, I absolutely accepted the epidural thus fulfilling the doctor’s prophecy. 

However, although initially thankful for the pain relief, being numb from the waist down left me feeling detached and disconnected from the experience of birthing my son. The part of me that knows life through feeling didn’t register whether it had actually occurred at all. I was overjoyed to see my baby, of course, but the birth had a surreal, dream-like quality to it. I felt robbed of the visceral experience. I regretted not taking a stronger stand for my desire for a drug-free birth. 

After the miscarriage, I mourned the loss of my baby in solitude. No one beyond my close family even knew I was pregnant and it seemed futile to share the news now. So the whole experience had a veil of secrecy about it. I discovered that early miscarriage is a fairly common event, but no one really talks about it. It wasn’t really clear why the secrecy exists, but ​​it seemed to carry a sense of shame, as if I had failed in some way. This compounded my isolation as I struggled to process my mourning without any clear path or ritual. 

One day, I instinctively wrote a letter to my lost baby. I told her I was sorry and that I hoped she would come back some day. And for a brief moment, I felt the presence of her spirit and the soft whisper of her response – she told me she would come back, when the time was right. 

And so it was through felt experience that I discovered I had access to a kind of knowing beyond that which doctors or experts can offer. Overall, I respect doctors and scientists and their work very much. However, as my own intuition came forward, I started to honor and trust it just as much and later, even more.

Cassidy did come back. A year or so after the miscarriage, I became pregnant again. The timing was better. We were making more money and we had our own place. This time, I decided to proactively prepare myself for a drug-free birth. I felt there was more to this momentous life event than the sterile, surreal version I had experienced before. For me, it was important to feel it in my body, to know it experientially. So I studied and practiced the Hypnobirthing technique, and it was very effective. I was so calm and my labor was so fast that I barely made it through the hospital doors before Cassidy was born in the lobby. But that’s a story for another time. 

My experiences with pregnancy, birth and miscarriage taught me that we are portals to an invisible, spiritual realm. During birth and death, the veil between the spiritual and physical realms seems to thin, and we can catch “glimpses” of the other side. But once we know it’s there, we can sense it and call upon it anytime. 

I share this story to encourage and empower women to lean into their inner knowing and to trust it at least as much, if not more, than they trust doctors, experts, and other outside sources. Our bodies  hold wisdom that goes back many lifetimes if we’re open to it.