For a month or more it's been periodic bouts of bleeding, and trips to the doctor or hospital about twice a week for checks and scans and shots. Thank god for insurance but my cover will run out sometime.
Right now there's a thirteen week foetus, growing. It looks peaceful in the still photos. It has its ankles crossed, thin legs against the wall, and there's a shadow like the eyelash line across the eye. In the active scans, though, it's quite busy. It flexes its back sharply and jerks and bounces like a bean. It moves its thin arms up to its head and down again. An almost invisible hand goes to the mouth, as though it's sucking its thumb. Once I saw it turn its head away from the scanner and back again. Its heart beats fast, at about double the rate of mine.
Next to the amniotic sac, against a thin line of chorion that seems, in places, to fade into nothing, is a dark mass. That's the sub-chorionic bleed. It was about 6.5 x 4.5 x 2cm at last measure, and it curves around the chorion like an embrace. It's the other life I'm carrying: the life of a possible miscarriage, instead of a baby.
I take hormone tablets and I sleep a lot. If I don't remember to eat all the time, or can't summon the will, I start to retch and gag and get dizzy. Once I've eaten I retch and try not to throw up, and my insides ache as though I'm digesting a whole crocodile. I'm on leave; I don't work beyond the occasional email, don't read anything except news on the internet, I don't write and I don't think.
The other day my hip seized up and I had a couple of days of intense pain, from above my sacrum to my left knee, that made me feel sick. So I gingerly, gingerly tried to stretch things out. Scared to move the wrong way and maybe break that line of chorion. Eyes closed and focusing very closely on the muscles and the space, what felt okay and was relieving the pain, not going close to anything that might be too much. It worked and the pain's mostly gone, I'm okay now.
Around the 11 week mark, at a very risky time, I thought I was feeling the baby move. I was sure of it. Now I don't feel that, though I know everything's okay for now in there. I don't know if I was right about the feeling, but it felt like contact. Now it feels like the growing work is all necessarily unconscious, happening in inevitability and full absorption.
Right now there's a thirteen week foetus, growing. It looks peaceful in the still photos. It has its ankles crossed, thin legs against the wall, and there's a shadow like the eyelash line across the eye. In the active scans, though, it's quite busy. It flexes its back sharply and jerks and bounces like a bean. It moves its thin arms up to its head and down again. An almost invisible hand goes to the mouth, as though it's sucking its thumb. Once I saw it turn its head away from the scanner and back again. Its heart beats fast, at about double the rate of mine.
Next to the amniotic sac, against a thin line of chorion that seems, in places, to fade into nothing, is a dark mass. That's the sub-chorionic bleed. It was about 6.5 x 4.5 x 2cm at last measure, and it curves around the chorion like an embrace. It's the other life I'm carrying: the life of a possible miscarriage, instead of a baby.
I take hormone tablets and I sleep a lot. If I don't remember to eat all the time, or can't summon the will, I start to retch and gag and get dizzy. Once I've eaten I retch and try not to throw up, and my insides ache as though I'm digesting a whole crocodile. I'm on leave; I don't work beyond the occasional email, don't read anything except news on the internet, I don't write and I don't think.
The other day my hip seized up and I had a couple of days of intense pain, from above my sacrum to my left knee, that made me feel sick. So I gingerly, gingerly tried to stretch things out. Scared to move the wrong way and maybe break that line of chorion. Eyes closed and focusing very closely on the muscles and the space, what felt okay and was relieving the pain, not going close to anything that might be too much. It worked and the pain's mostly gone, I'm okay now.
Around the 11 week mark, at a very risky time, I thought I was feeling the baby move. I was sure of it. Now I don't feel that, though I know everything's okay for now in there. I don't know if I was right about the feeling, but it felt like contact. Now it feels like the growing work is all necessarily unconscious, happening in inevitability and full absorption.
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