The Stories We Tell - We Named Him Bruce
This is, ‘The Stories We Tell’, a weekly series of true accounts in all things motherhood. These 100% vulnerable, raw and ferociously honest tales are taken from the LA-based storytelling event, Mothers Unleashed. This week, we're sharing Gemma’s story. Gemma is the co-founder of Mothers Unleashed. Just a warning, this story contains explicit depictions of medical procedures and loss. Gemma shares this very personal story in an effort to remove the veil of silence around pregnancy loss.
Bruce. That’s what we named him. And even after my beautiful, healthy, rambunctious, perfect little Brooksy was born, I still think of Bruce.
We had been fighting on the way to the hospital. My husband had worked late the night before and so I, 11 weeks, 2 days pregnant, drove us to the early morning appointment. I don’t know if it was the accumulation of the 6 weeks worth of horrendous morning sickness I’d been suffering, or if I really did have “ample time to make that left turn.” Either way, it wasn’t pretty.
The genetic counselor delivers us facts and figures about what one can expect as a geriatric mother. Rates on Down syndrome and other genetic disorders and conditions, and a plethora of options for tests one can undergo to ensure the baby blossoming inside you is healthy. She sends us to radiology for the routine three-month ultrasound. As we sit in the waiting room, I spot a chocolate muffin in the other pregnant lady’s hand and I think, “Ima get one once we’re done.”
Noah breaks my daydream. “Babe, I don’t think we need all these tests, chances are so slim that our baby will be abnormal.” I feel the residual resentment from the fight we’d had on the way over.
“Gemma Bishop.” I roll my pants down and scooch up my shirt.
“Oh my god. Look at that Noah, look.” It was plain as day. Five incredibly tiny toes and the gray outline of a perfect little foot. My heart swells. The ultrasound technician lets us listen to our baby’s heart beat. The sound is akin to someone rapidly gulping… but to me it is music.
“Hmmm. I’m not able to get the correct measurements here. I just need to go and consult with the head radiologist.”
“Okay.” Unfazed, I think about those little toes… and then the chocolate muffin. Noah and I still don’t really talk. About half an hour goes by. I need to wee.
“Miss Bishop?”
“Yes?”
“It looks like there may be some problems. Do you have a history of genetic abnormalities in either of your families?” I feel Noah, suddenly by my side, grab my hand. We look at each other.
“No… what do you mean?”
The doctor takes a seat beside the monitor. He says nothing.
I feel the breath lodge in my throat. My entire body seizes up as a dark cloud envelops my body. My baby. What is wrong with my baby? The doctor examines the monitor, alternating between three ultrasound probes. The internal probe doesn’t hurt but feels cold and makes me catch my breath. Noah and I clutch each other’s hands, fight all but forgotten as we are rapidly catapulted into reality. We are holding hands so tightly I realize my hand is numb, but I don’t care. Each of us study the screen for some kind of clue. What can the doctor see that we can’t see? All I see are gray and white blobs. Where has that little foot gone?! What about the heartbeat? Doesn’t that count for something?!
It is at least thirty minutes until the doctor speaks. He struggles to look me in the eye.
“There are some problems.” He looks back at the monitor. “The baby’s liver and bowel are outside the body. Its heart is exposed and its head is too small.” He averts my eyes.
“What does that mean, doctor? Will it get better?”
“No.”
I am sure the bed I am lying on has been pulled from underneath me. I am sure Noah is not there. I am sure I have evaporated into the ether. I am sure this is not real.
We are sent to obstetrics in the next building. We wait. The doctor enters the room, preceded by her ginormous belly. She is due next month. She wraps her cardigan around herself as if it will mask her stomach, full of life.
“Can’t something be done to fix this?”
“No,” she assures us. My options are to do nothing and wait for the baby’s heartbeat to inevitably stop and deliver a still born in a few months time, or to have a dilation and curettage, an abortion, as soon as possible. No choice there.
“This is not your fault, Gemma. It’s just something that happens.”
Five days. Five days until I can have the procedure. I will not miscarry in this time, I am told. Instead, I am to try to sleep at night with the thought that in five days time, I am willingly going to have a procedure to kill my baby.
I go to work. My saving grace is that I have obeyed the golden rule and not told anyone I’m pregnant. A happy announcement we were going to make that weekend. Not anymore.
Monday morning. I am 12 weeks pregnant today. We stop at Swingers Diner for the “early bird” special. Bacon, eggs, pancakes. They had told me to eat a big breakfast and we decided to try to savor a flicker of positivity before the day ahead.
I am admitted to the day procedure ward at UCLA.
9am. I am administered two pills of misoprostol. One to dissolve in each cheek. This is a drug to soften the cervix, I am told. The nurse then tells us it takes a few hours to work and I probably won’t feel much, so why don’t we go for a walk, get some lunch, relax. Noah, exhausted from another late night at work, would prefer to stay in the room and rest. I am too anxious to make decisions or to go for relaxing walks or to lay down, and we had already eaten a big breakfast, so I offer Noah my hospital bed so he can have a nap while we wait. I google vacation resorts in an attempt to extricate myself from my body and mind. I cradle my stomach.
9:45am. It starts as mild cramps, but I know after a swift ten minutes that I do not feel good. I can taste remnants of the dissolving pills in my mouth and I am suddenly desperate to go to the bathroom. I exit our room and the nurse catches a glance at me in passing.
“Wow. Are you feeling okay? You’re looking very pale.” I realised in addition to the strengthening cramps that were making me quite nauseas now, I’ve begun shaking too. But I knew… if I didn’t listen to the screaming of my churning bowels and get to the toilet immediately, I would have to add “extremely embarrassed” to the list of things I was feeling.
10am. The cramps were getting really bad now and the waves of nausea were becoming too strong to bear.
“Noah, Noah.” He wakes from his slumber to his wife vomiting into a bag beside him. Ugh, bacon.
There are at least five nurses in here, now. They’ve called the doctor. “Give her an anti nausea shot.”
The doctor looms over me. “Well, this isn’t normal.” I am on the floor at this point. Too weak to get up to the bed, white as a bed sheet, convulsing and vomiting and, oh God, I have to go to the bathroom again. I stand up. I think I might faint. They let me go to the toilet on the condition that I don’t shut the door. Oh God, oh God, I think I actually might faint.
I collapse on the two nurses and Noah, who are stationed just outside the toilet door. They hurriedly escort me to the bed. I have never felt this sick. The doctor decides to go ahead with the procedure immediately since I’ve had such an extreme reaction to the misoprostol. By now, finally, the anti-nausea meds have kicked in, so at least one thing has subsided.
I open my legs. They shake. The doctor struggles with the clamp used to open my vagina. I feel it rip and pull at my neglected pubic hair.
“Gemma, we’re going to administer lidocaine directly into your cervix. You’ll feel a little pinch.” I feel the cold syringe push into me and it hurts, but then I’m numb.
“Breathe, Gemma, breathe,” a kind voice says from somewhere in the room. I realize I am holding my breath. I stare at the ceiling, I can’t look at Noah.
“Are we doing the right thing?” The tears stream down my face. I feel them pool in my ears. I see out of the corner of my eyes the two metal probes the doctor is about to use to open my cervix before he takes my baby from me.
“No. Wait.” But I can’t speak, and it is too late anyway. I am breathing rapidly, now. Like the vivid in- and exhalations I’d seen in rom-coms with Lamaze classes in them. I am squeezing Noah’s hand so tightly I am sure I have cut off circulation to his thumb. But it’s my only lifeline.
I feel him kissing my forehead. “It’s okay, babe, it’s going to be ok.”
“Suction,” the doctors says. And I hear the whiz of the machine as he sweeps my baby from my womb.
I have never felt so tired in all my life. And I cannot for the life of me string a sentence together.
“The Lidocaine,” says a nurse. “It can do that to you.”
I am empty.
The days pass and they do not fill me up. Nothing brings joy. It is all just emptiness.
I am scheduled for a follow-up appointment two weeks later to make sure that the bleeding has subsided and that all of the tissue has been removed effectively. The nurse hands me some papers. I glance at them and read the words: “Sex: Male.”
“So, it was a boy?”
“Yes, you didn’t know?” I didn’t. The page in front of me shakes as she explains my little boy had Trisomy 18, where there is a third copy of the chromosome at the 18th pairing. The rest of her explanation fades away.
Months go by, and all I want is to be pregnant again. Each time I get my period, I contort into a trembling puddle on the bathroom floor. Each time feels like another death. My husband doesn’t know how to help me. I count days in my cycle, tracking ovulation, and stick my legs up on the wall like a yoga master after we have sex. To this day, I don’t know how I could have had so much jizz inside of me month after month and not get pregnant.
My struggle was silent. It was an emptiness that had no bottom. No end. And no one knew… it’s not exactly dinner party conversation after all. But I knew! The second I fell pregnant with Bruce, I became a Mum. I knew I was forever changed, but I could not show my new identity. Every time I saw a pregnant woman, the hollow inside me expanded a little more. I was a Mum. I just didn’t have my baby.
Finally, I did fall pregnant again. And I know, without a doubt, that Bruce was there every step of the way, showing Brooksy exactly how to keep his insides on the inside. Bruce is responsible for the immense gratitude I hold, for the joy I feel every time I look at my son, for the feeling of utter contentment at finally being able to do the most humbling job of all.
Bruce. The little boy that never was.
- By Bruce’s Mum - Gemma Bishop.
