Honest goodbyes

Looking at my two year old son cautiously stroking my new born daughter’s hair, a feeling richer than any contentment ever known filled my heart. Time has its own orchestrated rhythm; wherein happy and sad notes go in tandem. Neither a sad time is devoid of memories of the good ones, nor does a happy occasion fail to tune in to the tough past. Such was the time which I had lived through the loss of my first pregnancy.

 I revived inadvertently the moments of that roller coaster ride, as I peacefully swayed through the present bliss…..

With a home pregnancy test in my purse and a spark of excitement in my eyes, I opened the lock of my apartment. We hadn't been planning for too long, with only two years of marriage behind us. But those years had given us the precious moments of sharing, of working together to get ahead in career, me as a pediatrician and my husband, a studying urologist.

I cannot depict the feeling, the overwhelming sensation I felt when the result came positive. Maybe I didn’t actually acknowledge it to be true till I told my husband, whose happiness was way beyond words. And then and there, we made a bond with our unborn child. A bond so strong that it didn't need the actual physical presence or form or shape of this new life, just the affirmation of its beginning this journey of life was enough.

Moments in life that are labeled” chaotic”, ironically do not affect much of our routine, the very flow of events that we have to live each day. But they do seem to colour the canvas of our subconscious, the parallel thoughts that fill our mind as we live through the daily grind.

As I floated through the bright colours of euphoria through my initial few weeks, I was totally unprepared for the dark shades due to come...

 Drops of blood (called spotting) was all it was; but it painted my whole canvas red. I was put to complete bed rest at the end of my very second month of pregnancy. What followed was a tug of war between hope and fear, which stretched every moment of every day to eternity.

My first scan showed no cardiac activity, which was a red flag. I was advised to give a trial of injectable hormones as a last resort. I was told by all the gynaecologists I consulted, that being a medico and consequently having a late pregnancy and with all the job stress, I should have had pregnancy support sooner. I wished I knew sooner.

Fate hadn't ended this torture here; for those few injectables got the heart beating. Hope eluded me a second time, when I went for a check scan a week later, only to find our baby surrounded by red. 

I hadn't bled out, I had bled inside and the damage was fatal. I had to get the surgical clearance of the baby, the D and C procedure.

I remember my husband trying to be all brave faced and my mother telling me 'all that happens is for good', only I found it hard to believe. This brief journey and its dismaying culmination left me feeling empty and incomplete. Though wheeled out of the operation theater was the same me that had been all these years, but something more was missing than the left out remains of our dream.

This episode left me contemplating, if it was almost our fault to have been negligent, not being overcautious, having been in the profession which expects the same. But whenever I recall those days, it’s only me, as a mom to be, that comes to my mind, excited and a little scared like any other woman. And it still leaves me with an ache, that maybe it could have ended differently. I am content now and hold no contrition. It was, to speak medically, after all some “lost products of conception” in an abortion. But to the life that never could be; I do convey all my honest goodbyes….

Editors note: In medicine we often ask our patients difficult questions , like "how many miscarriages, at what month of gestation?". We then go on to draw family trees depicting these angel children; as either triangles with a cross though it, or a darkenened black circle with a cross through it, or a square/circle with a cross through it, depending on if it was a miscarriage,still born or death of a new born. 
This gut wrenching, deeply emotional moment is put in perspective in our medical words. As a doctor parent I now wish we could offer some words of solace or kindness, empathy even, to our patients. 
But, in drawing these little symbols in the family tree , we acknowledge that these these unborn children still belong part of your family, they are right there and will forever be part of your lineage tree. 

Thankyou Dr Karnika for sharing your toughest moment as a parent with us. 

for more stories by doctor parents click here and  here http://doctorparents.blogspot.in/2015/12/a-mother-knows.html