How Life Goes On

Exactly two weeks later, and I returned to the evil place. It was difficult for me to go back to the doctor's office, even though I knew she understood my situation. I feared sitting in that waiting room again, but when we arrived, it was blessedly empty. We had given ourselves five extra minutes before the appointment, and even though one pregnant woman walked into the room during those five minutes, I held myself together long enough to be called back.

It seemed the clinic, or at least my doctor, had taken my suggestion that a woman who was miscarrying needed to be sent back into an exam room right away, so she wouldn't have to stare at all the babies and pregnant women and feel her loss so terribly. We sat back there for a little while, waiting for the doctor, but it was preferable to being stuck out in Babyland. When she arrived, I was relieved to hear that there would be no further exams, no ultrasound of my empty womb, just a blood test to ensure my hormones were back on track. We talked for a little while about everything I was feeling, and it seemed to her that what I was going through was normal and expected. She even offered me counseling or support groups or medication, but I let her know that I was seeking out support in my own way, and she seemed satisfied. We discussed future pregnancies, resuming all normal activities, and in the end, I was still sad, but satisfied. The blood work came back that evening and it was confirmed that physically, I was back to square one, like it never even happened.

Some people might have wanted a support group, but I found it difficult to speak with others about this subject, whether over the phone or in person. I got my support in part from blogs and forums I read online. The words of others made me feel like I wasn't going crazy, but that this process was normal and would take its course in its own good time. I also have had the fortune of writing e-mail to a few receptive family members, who gave me their support and their love and understood that I needed this distance to heal. I remember informing all those that I spoke or wrote to that night about my doctor visit, and that everything was all right physically. Mentally I was still shaking from the three days before - not only had that been the two week anniversary of the beginning of my hellish ordeal, but that was supposed to be the day of my very first ultrasound.

But the next day, I felt lighter. It was as though the trial had finally reached its end. My feelings hadn't really changed, but I didn't have to go back to the doctor anymore. I didn't have to worry about my health. It was truly back to square one, back to where we had started from. There had been this uncomfortable feeling about the pregnancy before, about the lost baby, about thinking I had to just move on and put it behind me. But I didn't want to forget. I didn't want that child to be lost in the vastness of time that had been my life before. It was real. I had proof, and I intended to honor it and treat it like a real person who was gone. I might not know anything about it, even the gender, but it didn't matter. I could still love it and care about it and wish that I had a chance to know it. And from the midst of all the reading I did, a way had presented itself.

Mizuko Jizo. Translated, it means roughly, 'the bodhisattva of the water baby'. I kept coming across this reference and it resonated with me. Obsessively I searched out every page that I could. What I came to understand was that, in Japan, partly due to their high rate of abortion,the practice of praying for Jizo (Buddhist patron saint of the unborn, as well as other things) to assist the mizuko (the unformed child) in finding its way back to the waters from which its soul came so it could be born again. This is made tangible for many by the purchase and upkeep of statues of Mizuko Jizo that are adorned with bibs and hats and toys as a way to celebrate and grieve the short life of their child and appease its spirit.

I think what struck me the most is the fact that the Japanese have a special word for miscarried, aborted or stillborn fetuses, mizuko. English doesn't have a nice word for these things. Of my situation, I could say dead baby, dead cells, bad egg, product of miscarriage, spontaneously aborted materials, etc. All of those sound terrible and even though I used the 'bad egg' reference to explain to people what happened, I hate saying it. It feels awful. It's like saying 'my dead mother' instead of 'my mother who is no longer with us'.

I'm not particularly spiritual, nor am I religious at all, so those aspects of the practice don't necessarily appeal to me. But having a nice word to call my baby makes me feel better. I'm not really one to consider the afterlife either, but having a connection to the child, even if it's something that's really only in my own mind just for me, is a comfort I won't give up. So when I went to a sad movie and I allowed myself to cry in public, I thought, 'my mizuko is teaching me the way through grief.' Before all of this, there was so much sadness that I had never expressed because I was afraid of how others would respond to me. And now that it is much closer to the surface, I don't care what people think of my emotions. They don't know all that I've been through, and I may never care to tell them. All I know is that this experience continues. I can't be the person I was two months ago. I may be back to the way I was physically, but that is perhaps the only thing that has remained the same. Because somewhere just outside my back door, the molecules that used to be my child are being rearranged, are being broken down and transformed. Someday, the flower seeds I planted and water almost daily will grow and I perhaps will see something of my lost little one in the brilliant colors that carpet the ground beneath that ancient tree.