Coming to Terms With a Body That Tried To Kill Me

At age 20, I had a miscarriage. I found out at 14 weeks that “your baby is dead”, quoting the sweet Austrian doctor, who was practicing his broken English on me. I have thought long and hard about how I wished he would have said it in German. There are kinder, more subtle words he could have used in German.

Within 2 days, I began to bleed, which was normal…until it wasn’t. The cramping expelled the fetus in the toilet, and proceeded to hemorrhage. Minutes later, my then-husband woke up the people we were living with — I was working as a nanny at that time-and we were on the road to the Frauenklinik.

About 20 minutes later, I was on a surgery table, with an IV in my hand. The last thing I remember is the doctor yelling a question at my boss… “Du bist sicher, dass sie schwanger war?” — You are sure that she was pregnant?

The poor doctor. He was just stabbing in the dark, watching me bleed out. I don’t really know what happened after that. I remember 5 anxiety-infused heartbeats and I was out. When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed, in a room with three other women.

I remember very little about the three or four days I spent in the hospital. They came and took blood often, checking my hemoglobin levels. I remember the food wasn’t bad, especially the schnitzel. I remember that the Turkish woman, who was a mechanic who dressed like a man in order to work, didn’t know that there was an ocean between the US (my country) and Austria.

Those were the most difficult months of my life, outside the first year of my marriage. I felt like I had failed the most important test of my life.

I don’t remember my then-husband being too attached to the idea of having a baby. He was supportive enough, but was incredibly clueless. So much so, that when he drove me home from the hospital, he dropped me off and left me alone. He had a meeting at church that trumped me. My boss was at work and the kids had been farmed out for the day, in order to let me recover.

He left me alone, sobbing on the deck. Luckily, my Austrian mom — a neighbor — noticed and came to hold me while I cried. That memory, as much as it still makes me angry about the husband part, is a treasure. That sweet woman is still part of my life. What a blessing she is.

Five years later, I was ?brave? enough to want to try again. I got pregnant the second I thought about it and had a great pregnancy, although I carried worry the entire time that I would miscarry again. It seemed to get better after the 14 week mark — the length of the previous pregnancy.

Just when we thought all would be well, my water broke and I went into labor. Almost 20 hours later, and 4.5 hours of pushing, a baby boy was born. About 30 minutes later, I began to hemorrhage again…just like the first time around.

Doctor calling to nurses, nurses rushing for drugs, IVs not working fast enough, and a shot of something special in my leg, and I was stabilized. It took some time. No one was really prepared for that. We had all been exhausted and the doctor had been very focused on the severe tearing that was needing repair.

The doctor, I found out later, had never, in all of his thousands of deliveries, experienced anything like what my son and I surprised him with that night.

So again, my body tried to kill me. Was this my “normal”? I had no idea. Within a week or so, I began to experience something I learned later was called postpartum psychosis.

Those were the most terrifying months of my life. It mostly consisted of avoiding being alone with my son at home. I would go to my gramma’s down the street, to my mom and dad’s, on long walks…whatever it took to keep him safe. My mind was not one of those safe places, to be sure.

It took 2 years for my body to recover fully from that experience. It was then time to have another child. And my daughter showed up exactly 9 months later.

Her pregnancy was nothing like my son’s. From day 14, I was sick. I wasn’t just a little sick, either. Eating was exhausting. Symptoms similar to an IBS attack were all day, every day. Food went right through me, my gut felt like it was on fire and there was no relief. Months passed and I lost weight…a lot of weight. My body started to disappear and my belly never enlarged. At 8 months pregnant, no one could tell. She, my daughter was crushing the organs in my belly.

Starting in month 5, I had biweekly ultrasounds, due to my weight and the shrinking size of my belly. I was, however, lucky enough to find a really gifted naturopath who, in my opinion, kept me alive. I wasn’t okay, but I was alive.

Month 9, we scheduled the birth, induced labor, and prepared for the worst. And, just like clockwork, the placenta released, and the bleeding began.

2 years later, I did it again…and another girl was born. 2 years later, I did it again…and another girl was born. We got better at controlling the hemorrhaging, but it still happened each time.

Four pregnancies with the same finale. It was about ten years after the last was born that I realized that I was still having panic attacks when I felt the sensation of bleeding during normal menstruation.

It’s been five years since then and I don’t worry so much anymore. I am just a few years from menopause anyway. The trauma I experienced lives in my body less and less over the years, but it still lives there. It lives here.

I didn’t choose to experience all of that. Yes, I chose to have child after child. In some ways, my culture chose a lot of that for me, but to be a mother was a given. I was meant to be a mom.

I am grateful to have lived through all of that. I learned a lot. I learned how to manage the chaos that lived inside my head and how to keep going despite feeling of neglect and betrayal. I learned that my children were incredibly forgiving and loyal.

I experienced this as betrayal by my own body. There was no real “understanding” it.

Several years ago, I met a doula. It hit me that maybe someday I might find what I need to heal this. In the meantime, I am in the process of accepting my aging body, its limitations, but also embracing what I could never have embraced before.

The gift of softness of my body and spirit, the looking forward to the “someday” grandchildren, and loosening of any agenda are the gifts I am living into as an older mother.

Maybe the focus just shifts. Maybe that’s enough right now. I don’t need my body to do the baby thing again. And that is a welcome relief.

Disclaimer: I do not regret having my amazing children. What I have learned from them are the treasures I hold most dear. No matter what I went through, I chalk it up to learning and expansion. You might think I was a little off my rocker, but there is no way to explain the cultural demands on my psyche in one blog. We do the best with what we have. I did too.

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Previously Published on medium

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