4-20: Part 1

The first time I got high was on April 20th 2016. 

We were living in Bahrain. It was early morning and I was getting ready for work. My husband and I did the morning routine dance, stepping in and out of the bathroom and bedroom, passing one another in exchange for sink space or the shower. I waited for the high to kick in.  I was 30, a late bloomer and “did things by the book,” so while past attempts at this sensation, this experience, were met with a letdown, I suspected it would be different this time.  And it was. 

Two. pink. lines in the window showed up within minutes of peeing on that white stick. I was pregnant. My high was unmatched. I knew what people talked about and when I passed the test to my husband, he got a contact high, a slowly growing smile forming on his face as it sunk in. “Oh wow,” was the most I got out of him in that moment, and tears were the best answer I could give in return. 

I finally purchased the books that I had had in my Amazon shopping cart for years. Special shout out to amazon.com for pressure free shopping experience and letting me hoard future junk without the guilt of buyers and storage remorse. I finally had a reason to buy books that had been on my list or in my cart since 2014 when we decided we would start a family.  We were that “new generation” of parents, future sandwichers who decided to wait 5 years after marriage before starting a family so that we could, “establish our careers, save a nest egg and be physically, spiritually and emotionally mature” before welcoming a new life.  Of course, at 30 years, this meant becoming parents roughly 10 years after my own mother and father welcomed me into the world, possibly having less energy, and finding ourselves in a space where we’d be sending our kids off to college while preparing to make arrangements for welcoming our aging parents to move in with us. But the reality of having astronomical student loan debt and little money to our names meant that we delayed parenthood.  When I was much younger, I decided that, before I had a child, I would set up a savings account for it.  My goal was to make sure it started life with a little money in the bank.  

As I got older and eventually went off to college and grad school, I later decided that I would want to be debt free before starting a family, but clocks were ticking and impatience mounted.  

So, after four years of marriage, and before obliterating our student loan debt, I got off birth control.  Three months later, I found myself not battling morning sickness but instead at war with the most painful menstrual periods I had ever endured.  This was in January of 2015, the month we moved to Bahrain for a two year tour. I detail it in this post here, but suffice it to say, 11 months later, I finally found out that I had uterine fibroids, the source of my pain and heavy bleeding. Still, no children, no pregnancies, nada.

Fast forward to April 2016 and there I was, after almost two years of trying to conceive, we found ourselves staring at a stick that said we were going to be parents.  Elated was an understatement.  I had never been high before, well, except for the day I wore a permanent smile on my face because Chris and I became an official couple, ending my 23 year streak of never being in a relationship.  But on April 20th, 2016 I slipped into bliss. I started to document the journey, taking a bump photo. I went to the clinic where the doctor congratulated me and, per standard protocol, let me know of the risks of miscarriage, none of what I wanted to hear. I went over to the OB nurse to schedule labs and learn when the next “Pregnant in Bahrain 101” class would take place and I went about my merry way.  That week was surreal. 

You ever miss a flight, a bus, or a ferry (for my Pacific Northwest Readers)? You know that feeling when you’re hoping you can make it, you’re praying, humming, meditating, or trying to do everything within your power not to panic? But alas, you arrive just as the gate is closed or the vehicle pulls away. Ok, and if you’re punctual and can’t recall the last time you were late to anything, have you ever accidentally deleted a file, damaged or lost one of your devices or gotten a virus on your computer that corrupted and destroyed your history?  Have you ever been in an accident and wondered if there was anything you could have done to have avoided that situation, maybe left at a different time or waited for the rain to pass, or slowed down? Hmmm, or even worse, have you ever been excited to go on a trip but missed your flight because you stayed up late the night before to try and fix your damaged laptop only to oversleep, rush out the door and get into an accident on the way to the airport? 

I know that's a lot, but don’t think any of that begins to describe, nor can I accurately put to words, what happens when you go from the excitement and anticipation of pregnancy and welcoming a new life to the pain and trauma of losing it. We lost our baby one week after discovering we were pregnant. Since then I even questioned if I was truly pregnant, but I was and it happened, no matter how short it lasted.

I lost him (I felt it was a boy) on a weekday, during a staff meeting, after lunch. I went to the restroom. I saw blood. I knew it was over. I pleaded with my body. I begged God. I beseeched time.  I needed all three to rewind, to fix whatever glitch had caused this to happen so that it wouldn’t continue. But it did. I was having a miscarriage. The worst part was that I was still early in my pregnancy, so I hadn’t told anyone that I was pregnant.  Plus I worked 45minutes away from the base clinic, so not only did I have to figure out if it would be best to try and hop on the next shuttle north, since I didn’t have a car, but I had to call the clinic for guidance on a decision that was out of my control. I was standing next to a Connex box in a dusty rocky parking lot meters from my work building, trying to contain my emotions while processing the incidents as they unfolded. 

I stayed at home for the rest of the week and tried to sort through the significance of this situation. The hardest yet most comforting part was the conversation with my mom, who had experienced a miscarriage herself. I didn’t have the chance to announce our pregnancy to her. I wanted to surprise her for Mother’s day that year and thought it would be cute to wait and come up with some fun little announcement. But she found out I was pregnant when she found out I lost the baby and I lost it. We were in two different countries, it was roughly 3 in the morning when I called her, I could barely speak through the tears but I was in dire need of comfort and encouragement that only my mother could give.

Roughly one year before my miscarriage, I remember writing a Mother's Day post that encouraged people to take a moment of silence for the people without mothers and the mothers who lost their children. Based on Wordpress analytics, it received well over 1000 views.  While that wasn’t the point, I felt moved by The Spirit to write that piece because for reasons beyond me, I briefly mourned with the women who were struggling with the loss of their children during a holiday that celebrated their identity as mothers and caretakers. Little did I know I was writing a piece that I would need a year later. God works in mysterious ways.