Love, Marriage, Dreams,
and a Miscarriage

Photo by Bob Le Bel, professional photographer

July~31~1999

 

Connection is the first word, to begin to get my series of thoughts on paper. When I think of the word connection I feel part of my own. I can sense the life rhythms of the world that I am a part of. I am rooted deep within my center. Every vein and nerve plants me as my awareness grows. I am aware and sure of my body. I am intimate with my soul.

A pamphlet on my kitchen table read "we make your voice heard." I thought that must be rather nice because mine needs to be. Then, I think which voice? I am aware on my inner voice. I am aware of the voice that speaks through dreams. Finally, my awareness moves to the voice that connects my thoughts with the outer world. Disconnected.

Following the rhythms of connection, I have married the balance of my life. He is my balance of the zodiac. He is also in touch with the balance of life. He takes care of the dead as he lives the life of a funeral director. An awareness of this balance is my connection to Earth, Mother, and Woman. I am conscious of the open grave and relation of the uterus. Connection, birth from the womb is a circle, completed as a body is born into the grave. The maternal return to the earthen womb.

The divine connection of the feminine charged through my being as my daughter came into the world. I was absorbed in the micro cosmos of colors and bliss. The tune of opening as a gate of life for my child roots me deeper to the spiral of center. To mother, is the manifest of instinct and interconnection.

My awareness has brought me to a place to reflect on the circle of a conscious conception and a conscious death. Early this spring we had put the question out to the universe asking if another child was meant to be. The whisper of my inner voice tickled my ear with the news of the child in my womb. I was delighted to practice my yoga again with child. I walked and grew. I planted the seeds of our vegetable garden as our little seed grew. I remember asking our dear friend who is a midwife if "she was ready to catch a babe come snow fly". We came to know him as "Baby Winter".

With the image of centering clay on a potter’s wheel I was in the groove. I grooved those three months. I began to loose that groove as I subtly stopped growing. I lost my child along with the groove when I awoke from a dream that I had given birth. I have always been a heavy dreamer. Spells of deja vou are a favorite pass time, but this was different. I questioned the dream. I thought it was odd that I experienced such a vivid birth dream so early on. I had experienced positive revealing dreams while pregnant with Bel. I was troubled with the dreamy images of calling for Jamie and Bel. They were in this distant faraway room upstairs of a strange house. My calling faded as I gazed into my mother’s eyes. My child painlessly slipped from my legs. His cheeks were plated a shiny gold color. I never held him. The image fades with my mother holding him wrapped in a blanket. I froze in the cold message of not being pregnant through the ripening days of Fall.

The next morning I was different. I believe my body stopped being pregnant. My walks were different and I was single in my practice of yoga. I felt my cervix ever so slowly dilating. I questioned myself. Could my dreams be that strong and true? I questioned my husband. I questioned my midwife. All the energy surrounding me assured I was a healthy woman who was growing a healthy child.

On Friday at the end of that week was a routine visit from our midwife. I was relaxed with pillows on the floor as she again tried to find our babes secret heartbeat. We knew I was pregnant. I had felt and looked pregnant but the sound of a heart wasn’t there. We had thought it was her dop tone that was rated for sound at 15 weeks. I questioned my consciousness of our conception. I tried to ignore the flashes of the dream I had. Jamie tried to ignore both my dream and me that weekend. For the first time we had disconnected. Monday the corn was planted, and the message of my dream was evident. I had begun to bleed.

I shook and called Jamie away from the funeral home and a family experiencing loss; to his own family’s loss. With our midwife present we flipped through the holistic midwifery bible. At that time I questioned myself again by not reading further through the pages of an inevitable miscarriage. I had hope with the words "some women bleed a bit throughout pregnancy and birth beautiful babies". I had hope with the thought of a twin passing. We had decided that an appropriate use of technology at that time would be to meet with her back up the next morning and find my lost babe with ultra sonic waves.

That evening I experienced another dream. It was visual of the land across the road. The land had been transformed to a clear-cut with a parking lot. Along the back portion of the parking lot was a row of 10 payphones with one large one. The sky was a milky orange and Jamie, Bel, and I were standing in 10 feet of snow in the middle of the night. I had realized that the clear-cut made way for this metal building surrounded by a chain link fence and barbed wire. There were two women wearing beads standing between the building and us. One was a neighbor I have met briefly and the other was a woman from my old hometown whom I hadn’t seen for years. I remember the feeling of desperately trudging through the deep snow to get home. I could see home but it seemed so far away. I was so tired.

The next morning when we awoke I was explaining the dream as we got ready to leave for the doctor’s office. I noted the beauty of the office as I was processing my dream and filling out the questions of a work sheet from the receptionist. Our midwife met us there. We were called to a room. With my pad and underwear on I sat on the table. The door opened a crack and I met him. Through the door his first words were "your panties too". I felt so alone. Our midwife was at my side and Jamie was reading Bel some outdated People magazine. I thought my thoughts were going to set his magazine on fire. The doctor walked in and all I saw was his silky, pleated, tan pants.

I had thought something was wrong with the machine. I waited for him to turn the volume up so I could hear my child. I felt a volcano erupt inside when I realized there is no sound to a heart that is not there. My thoughts were swarming like an angry beehive. He told me to listen and look at the blurry black and white image. My baby had stopped growing early on and my placenta had grown like a rich man’s plush velvet couch. My thoughts of the time of conception held true to measurement. He thought best to remove my three months of elegant growth for fear of infection and hemorrhage. The use of support and herbs didn’t seem advisable to his medical knowledge and time frame. I remembering hearing the next day he had off. I was aware I didn’t know this man as I pulled myself together to get dressed in time for his next patient. We were sent home to make our decision.

I sat in shock. My thoughts buzzed with instances, the death of my child, a time bomb hemorrhage, infection, bleeding all summer, not being able to pick up Bel, no yoga, no walking, Jamie needing to go back to work, and being alone. We went back…

I believe something happens to you on a cosmic level when you don’t hold on to your truth. I have been sprinkled with the compliment of being a strong woman. The choices I made that afternoon were not footed strongly in my own truth. I was guided by the voice of my truth to not return. I had faith in my body to beat the odds. I was in no pain and capable to bleed the way women have since creation. I knew I needed to let my baby go……

In the spin of a cosmic swerve out of continuum I sat in that chair out of control for hours. I had to reach to the core of my being to find calm. The buzzing of thoughts grew louder and louder with every attempt to open my legs. I asked of the similarities of abortion. He asked if I had skeletons in the closet. Why didn’t I leave? Between attempts he would see other patients and come in to check on me. Bel was caught in the spin and needed to nurse for comfort. With the afternoon sun trickling through the window the last attempt was made. I was reassured again of my strength, of the decision, and the feelings of cramps and twinges I would feel. He adjusted to chair to hone in and make himself comfortable.

I asked if I was dilated like I had thought. I had. I asked not to have the shot in my cervix that he had injected anyway. I believe he thought I didn’t feel the prick as he believed most women don’t. I am not "most women". I was also counseled that most women who are "emotionally attached" to their pregnancy’s have a more difficult time dealing with the events of a dilation and curettage. I found "emotionally attached" a generic term for the connection that was about to be severed.

I trust myself in painful situations. I didn’t feel cramps and twinges described by the man in silk pants. What I felt was simply barbaric. Barbaric is slightly different from the cramps and twinges experienced through one’s normal lifetime. I moaned, legs spread, feeling three months of love effortly pulled from the center of my being. My body held on to my baby as his instruments pulled the roots of nerves and veins from the earth of my soul. I felt it all. I close my eyes and still feel it. Think of vacuuming that rich man’s couch and how suction would pull and tear at the delicate velvet. A man doesn’t have the concept, much less be able market it to women even with a Dr. title. Could this have been ethical? Could this have been ethical to a woman who was evidently out of control?

Engulfed in inner emptiness I took my placenta home for burial.

BREAKDOWN.

I must be in that "emotionally attached" group since I am sipping a mug of raspberry leaf tea in the energy of a thunderstorm on the last day of July. Physically, I still feel the electric storm of damaged nerves twinging down my legs and an out of control bladder from weakened muscles. Since, I have learned that every practice is different. A neighboring practice of nurse midwives believes a procedure of such magnitude should only be done after evaluating the detachment of contents and allowing time. It is also reserved as out patient surgery.

I now have a clear vision of the community and network needed to embrace whole women’s care. A common ground free from the black and white battle of hospital vs. home. A trustworthy network and working community birthed in the spirit of the feminine. I resolve with the thoughts of rooting firmly back to center. The Self-Help Princess is not "over it" when people ask. I must be patient. The sun still comes up every morning as summer turns toward Winter.

Nicolette J West Jackter 
~ New Hampshire  ~
Email: [email protected]

 

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