The sight of blood left me paralyzed, with my pants around my ankles as I sat in a bathroom stall在我的办公室, located on the 30th floor of a skyscraper in midtown Manhattan. I just stared and stared, my eyes welling with tears, hoping if I stared long enough the steady trickle of blood would stop.
当那不起作用时，我打电话给我的OB办公室。这是在下午6点之后，所以我拨打了“0”，为紧急操作员拨打“0”，并在医院打电话给医生。在像永恒的感觉之后 - 但可能更接近30分钟 - 我的ob叫。I can still hear her saying, in a slightly patronizing tone that suggested she had actual emergencies to attend to, “Even if you are losing the pregnancy, which I don’t believe to be the case given your history of spotting, a baby born at 24 weeks isn’t likely to be viable.”
She told us to come in first thing in the morning for an ultrasound.
I spent the night picturing what would happen if Ilost this pregnancy。Who would I tell first? How would I tell them? What would they say? And then what? How would I move forward? Start again? What if it wasn’t so easy the next time? And what if this was my only chance at having a baby?
确信我感觉不到婴儿踢，我起身跳舞，唱“宝贝我”by Bette Midlerto him or her. I kept on willing his or her little heart to keep beating, to hang on until the morning when the doctors could fix the problem, whatever it was. They had to be able to fix it.
我一直想着我家里失去怀孕的其他女人 - 我吓坏了我。我理止地知道，that pregnancyloss is incredibly common. Thinking back on it, my OB was likely trying to prepare me, just in case — just as my mom had.
When I was a little girl, my mom told me I was arainbow baby。The term didn’t really exist at the time, but I knew there was someone who had come before me. My mom’s miscarriage was in her second trimester. Technically, it was a “silent miscarriage,” as they call it; her body failed to expel the fetus, so she required a D&C. She told me that after her miscarriage she was the saddest she has ever been.
这是直到六个月后怀孕的。然后太阳再次闪耀。
我母亲的母亲lso had a stillbirth, but I never knew that. On a recent Saturday morning, my mom and I were chatting about my sister-in-law, whose baby had tragically died during childbirth this过去的冬天。
似乎脱离了，我妈妈说，“奶奶有一个死产。”
“什么？”我回答。我的奶奶是一位位于讲故事的故事者（就像我的妈妈一样），但我从未听过这个特殊的故事。
“是的，”我的妈妈去了。“她甚至告诉我他的名字。这是约翰。“
似乎我不是唯一一个被永不受到的兄弟姐妹的记忆所破坏的人。我希望我知道。它会让我更了解母系的母系遗产kinehorathat had caused meso much anxiety在我的第一次怀孕期间。官网下载beplay体育ios版
When I started spotting at 10 weeks, I figured this was it. I called in sick at work and made an emergency doctor’s appointment. My mom told me not to worry, but I could tell by the false strength in her voice that she was preparing me for what she believed to bethe inevitable。“它会没问题，即使是流产，即使是流产，”她说。“很多人在第一个三个月中错误地失败。它经常意味着婴儿出了问题。“
But I didn’t miscarry. Nor did I miscarry the following week, when I was spotting again, and was diagnosed with a small hematoma that could result in miscarriage. Nor did I miscarry at any of the other 10 ultrasounds I scheduled on an emergency basis during my first two trimesters when the spotting recurred.
My anxiety wasn’t limited to the realm of science, causing me to read every article on BabyCenter about every uncommon pregnancy condition that existed. It also had supernatural elements. I am not a religious person, but I beganpraying toHaShem every night, often more than once, to save my baby. If I forgot to pray before going to bed, I would awake in a cold sweat and immediately go to the bathroom to check for blood.
我拒绝告诉任何人关于婴儿，直到第一个三个月结束后很好。就好像告诉人们关于怀孕的简单行为是一个官网下载beplay体育ios版kinehora。我相信，甚至想象一个健康的孩子的诞生，我很诱人the evil eye。
我家里的所有女性似乎在遵守周围怀孕的kinehora的原则时变得无声地观察：拒绝购买任何东西官网下载beplay体育ios版for the baby直到它出生，上淋浴，不愿意装饰甚至讨论幼儿园。当我怀孕时，有人给我买了一个小毛茸茸的大象为宝宝。我拒绝触摸它，并让我的丈夫在他的车的行李箱中困境，直到宝宝出生。
I do not think the mothers in my family engaged in this behavior because we believed it would make it any less likely that we would incur a loss. In fact, history had repeatedly revealed that not to be the case. I think we were hoping that if we remained disengaged, we would be protected against情绪损失when the inevitable happened. I am sure that is the reason the kinehora exists, but I am NOT certain our methods were effective at protecting us against that, either.
Which brings me back to the morning after that disconcerting phone call with my OB. My husband accompanied me to the doctor’s office where, thankfully, we heard the familiar whooshing sound of the heartbeat on the ultrasound.
“我发誓我真的在昨晚发现了，”我告诉ob。我看到她在我的图表中做了一个笔记。她写的是我疯了吗？
But 16 weeks later, I gave birth to an 8lbs.7oz. healthy baby boy. The cause of my mysterious spotting was never uncovered, but that doesn’t mean my fear was irrational. Rather, I think it was a form of adaptation to损失the women around me.
My son is nearly 3 now, and I still think about whether my doctor was right to dismiss my fears on that day. Medically, her advice was sound. But what she failed to recognize is that this was never about the baby — I wasn’t OK, and needed someone to explain to me that, even if the baby didn’t make it, I was going to be OK. I wish my doctor had told me that. But perhaps even more so, I wish that my mom and grandmahad doctors谁告诉他们。也许，那么它不会让他们的整个生活能够实现他们的经历与我一样正常。
Tatyana Antusenok / Getty Images的标题图像
