Hello Blood: The Dance of Miscarriage
When the small body stopped forming and came out of me, I put it into a yogurt container and drove out to the desert. We placed it on the ground between a saguaro, an ocotillo, and a barrel cactus, and made a circle around the form with small stones. I intentionally left an opening to allow its spiritif such a thing existedto get out.
The blood had started at 5 a.m. I went to the bathroom and there it was, just like a period. Just like the end of a sentence. Only it hadnt been a sentence, it had been a joy, and now, I was pretty certain, it was ending. I crawled back into bed. Im bleeding, I told my partner.
We got pregnant easily, on the second try, in June. By August it was real. At the end of a cross-country drive from Pennsylvania, where wed been visiting my parents, we took a pregnancy test in a South Dakota motel. We went to Mount Rushmore and looked at the white mens heads, but all I could think about was the beautiful creature inside me. I already had a name picked out.
In September I went on a six-day backpacking trip in Yosemite with a friend. Because of the nausea, I couldnt eat much of what wed packed. But somehow we hiked at high altitudes and lounged aside glacial lakes. On an external hard drive somewhere there exists a digital photograph of me in an alpine meadow wearing shorts and a maroon t-shirt with my hand on my belly. I can still conjure the anticipatory bliss of that moment.
https://www.guernicamag.com/hello-blood-the-dance-of-miscarriage/
cilla4progress
(24,589 posts)Thank you.
murielm99
(30,657 posts)I am seeing someone who did some unnecessarily strenuous things during the early part of her pregnancy.
I have endometriosis too. I had my children when I was in my thirties, not my twenties. I did not sit around, but I tried to behave sensibly, keeping in mind that I was pregnant.
cilla4progress
(24,589 posts)Pregnant! Including compete in the Olympics! Not limiting!
https://splinternews.com/18-badass-women-who-competed-in-the-olympics-while-preg-1793860969
And anyway, as I understand it, no correlation between activity and endometriosis.
Beautifully, touchingly written.
murielm99
(30,657 posts)and activity.
There are two issues. She does strenuous things at high altitude. She has endometriosis. Both are red flags that indicate she should exercise caution.
Haggis for Breakfast
(6,831 posts)And unless you KNOW this lady personally, or have inside information about HER medical profile, it is beyond inappropriate for any one to judge her in any way. Only she or her physician would know what caution she should have exercised, if any.
I am so tired of people who know fuck all about a person or a situation, sitting on their "I am better than you/I know more than you/I am superior to you" throne, making sweeping judgments about things which they have NO personal knowledge or information. This is one of the things wrong with this country today. Too many people just vomit out their opinion with no forethought.
murielm99
(30,657 posts)to decide that she is moving and brave. And it is all right for you to judge me for thinking she could have used better judgement herself.
She opened herself up to criticism by writing this "moving" essay.
It is all right for you to have an opinion, but not me. Okay. I will keep that in mind when I read your posts. My judgements are sweeping, but yours are not.
Haggis for Breakfast
(6,831 posts)And you failed to understand any of it.
3catwoman3
(23,820 posts)...things I have ever read.