My poor child's death, and the birth of a worsened me.

I went to the appointment alone.

I read diligently in "What to Expect When You're Expecting" so when Gage's active manner suddenly fell flat I recalled a passage saying not to panic, that sometimes the baby just moves when they want to.

During the ultrasound I stared at the unintelligible blob on the screen with a silly smile.  Recalling just a few days before picking up that onesie that said "Mommy's little jelly bean".  I didn't notice the alarmed look on the ultrasound tech's face, I didn't notice her smashing the "record" button down, or the look or pity as she wiped the gel from my belly.  I just looked at the baby in my tummy on the screen and loved him with all that I had.

I could love him.  And that was my world.

After returning to the sterilized smell of the examining room I sat blissfully ignorant on a paper scrunched table waiting for the doctor.  He walked in with the darkest look of pity a person could possess.
I still smiled.

He put his hand on my shoulder and said "I'm so sorry, Ms. Wire"
I only regarded him with a look of smiling confusion.  In my mind I thought "Sorry for what?"

He then began to explain to me one of the horrific mysteries of the body.  Something called a missed miscarriage.

Gage had been dead in my body for weeks.  His heart had stopped beating altogether.  He stopped growing. He stopped thriving.
My body and mind had starved so much for the pregnancy that it refused to let it go.

He scheduled an appointment for a vaginal ultrasound right away.
I believe I had a thought following his words. I think that I just set a row of denial in my head a mile wide and refused his "medical" news.

My mother took me to the ultrasound. Her face grim.  After a short wait my feet were in stirrups and they had begun.  My mind clung to Gage so tightly that through THIS ultrasound I could make out the gentle slopes of chubby cheeks and curled eyelashes.  I just stared in love again.  I was told that I was I staring at so preciously was a dead baby.  Malformed and under grown, decaying within my body.
The soonest appointment would be in 3 days, I recalled hearing someone mumble to my mother.  I made it a maybe ten quick and determined steps before I hit my knees with the realization.

My mother could understand an ounce of my pain, as she had had a traditional miscarriage with twins when I was 16.  She gathered me from the floor and put me in the car.  I spent three days in zombie mode. Not eating, not drinking only sleeping and clutching my belly, begging him to move.

I went into the D and C appointment comatose without emotion.  Somewhere in my mind I was convinced that they would get in there and find a living normal healthy child ready to be placed in my arms when I awoke.

I awoke to a room with my mother's pitying face and empty arms.  My heart shattered.
I screamed and cried until I fell asleep exhausted.

For the next several years and a few times to this day I've had a reoccurring dream.  I'm standing looking at myself.  My second self is naked and largely pregnant. standing before a mirror.  She caresses her swollen belly and smiles.  She admires her adorable pregnant body for a while but then the bottom of her belly takes on a grey green hue.  And with no reaction from her, its obvious that her flesh is rotting away.  It degrades all the while she is smiling and admiring until a grey and swollen baby arm, mangled and deformed flops out of the side of her rotting stomach and I awake.  I'm covered in sweat and shaking. I'm nauseated and crying.
It is an unimaginable pain. It is something I cannot even describe.

It was another hell.