How My Miscarriage Saved My Life

Getting pregnant was the wake up call I needed

There was a time in my life, many, many years ago, when things could have turned out very differently. I was 19 and in love with my first boyfriend. We moved in together after two months. He wanted to have a baby right away. He said we were “meant to be.”

Of course, like any 19 year old, I was swept away by his romantic words. It all seemed like such a dream come true.

But there were things that gave me pause. Things that weren’t quite right. The way he talked to me, telling me he was the only man who would ever think I was pretty, the only man who would ever love someone like me. Or the way he sometimes hurt me — my body — on purpose and wouldn’t stop until I cried or begged.

I was wise enough to understand that we were heading for dangerous territory, but not yet mature enough to know what to do. I tried to be careful, making sure not to upset him, doing things the way he liked…and making sure we used protection even when he begged me to have a baby with him.

I wasn’t always successful, though — with any of it. I couldn’t seem to avoid making him angry. There were days when nothing I did seemed to be to his liking. And…despite my best efforts, I ended up pregnant.

It was a strange and intense experience. I’d heard people talk about pregnancy so much, but no one had ever mentioned the feeling of another soul’s presence in and all around you, all day and all night. I’d never experienced anything like it. It was, in fact, more similar to the way people described their romantic relationships — that cord that knots two people together and makes them feel like two people who are actually one, somehow.

I’d never felt that with a man. But I felt it with my baby.

It was a strange and intense experience. I’d heard people talk about pregnancy so much, but no one had ever mentioned the feeling of another soul’s presence in and all around you, all day and all night.

I knew she was a girl, from very early on. That was so important to me at the time. I’d been struggling with feminist rage and had gotten to the point where I didn’t even want to be a woman, anymore. Everything seemed so goddamn hard, I literally came to hate the body — the gender — I had been born into.

Yet having this little girl within me, within my female parts that had, for so long, been the source of my rage and disappointment, I thought of how lucky she was to be a girl. That maybe things would be easier for her. That maybe I could make things easier for her — make this world a better place by being stronger. Angrier. Mightier.

I wanted to turn the world upside-down for her. And I would have, except for one tiny problem…

I knew, somehow, that I would never get to meet her face-to-face or hold her in my arms. I knew she was not going to make it to the second trimester. And even stranger still, I knew she had come to me for only one reason: to make sure I left my boyfriend before he did real damage.

I’ve rarely had instances of such deep, deep knowing. It still surprises me that I experienced this at the age of 19. But it seemed so clear to me at the time that I didn’t even question it.

We enjoyed the time we had together — every second of it — even though I was debilitated by nausea day and night. It was like living in a golden bubble that no one else was allowed inside. I hadn’t even told anyone about it — there was no point, I knew. So it really was, for the most part, just the two of us.

And then it happened. She was gone.

It’s odd— I wasn’t even sad about it. She had been so explicit that she was only here for a brief visit, that she wouldn’t be staying long. I had never once daydreamed about our future together, imagined what she might look like, or made a list of names. The arrangement, the understanding, had been very clear.

And yes, I left my boyfriend soon after, the morning he threw his lit cigarette into the glass of water from which I’d been drinking. In that moment, it was as emotionless, as anticlimactic, as losing the baby. I stood up and said, “I’m done. I can’t do this anymore.”

I was well-prepared. I was ready.

I think part of my lack of grief about losing her was due to the fact that I believed, on some level, that she would come back someday. I would find the right man and get pregnant again, and maybe it would be her, choosing me as her mother, once more.

But that never happened.

I never had another pregnancy. I never had another boyfriend who wanted a baby or even a marriage.

When I met the guy I thought I would spend my life with, I was positive my rendezvous with this little girl was imminent. I knew which room in our house was going to be her nursery, but that we’d never use it because she’d always be in our bedroom (an arrangement my partner insisted he would veto if it came to that). I knew, for absolute certain by then, what I was going to name her. (My partner threatened another veto on that one.) And I knew exactly how I wanted to raise her, discipline her, encourage her, and teach her. (Again, all vetoed by my partner.)

It didn’t matter that I felt like I was on my own with this, that my partner and I could never seem to get on the same page, that he increasingly seemed like he didn’t want to have kids, at all. This was mine, anyway. This child had been with me since I was 19, long before I’d met my partner. She and I went way back and it was just the two of us in our golden bubble.

I think part of my lack of grief about losing her was due to the fact that I believed, on some level, that she would come back someday.

Seven years later, my partner ended our relationship. I was almost 40 by then, and I was so bitter. Why couldn’t we have at least had this baby so I would have had the chance to become a mother, even if he had never planned on sticking around?

Why couldn’t I have met my little girl?

One day, I had something like a dream, though I wasn’t really asleep. I saw her and heard her voice, though she was just an infant in the vision. She asked me if I really thought she had gone to so much effort to get me to break up with my first boyfriend only to show up and bind me to someone just as destructive?

I felt a reluctant sense of peace upon hearing that.

As time has gone by, I’ve become more and more reluctant to dive into motherhood. I certainly have no interest in doing it on my own and I’m in no hurry to find a partner whose priority is parenthood. (I have sexual needs that require attention, first. I’ve got my priorities straight here.)

But I still look back in wonder at the way it all turned out. To this day, I believe that that child literally saved my life — physically, mentally, and emotionally.

And over the years, she stayed with me, visiting my dreams every now and then (another story for another time). I didn’t always realize it, but she was never far from me. We were still in our golden bubble.

It’s funny to think of a daughter this way. An unborn daughter, at that. As if she has been my protector, my guardian angel, my best friend. But that’s exactly what she has been.

I don’t know if I will ever meet her here in this lifetime. Or even if she will stick around and keep visiting me long into my old age.

But I know her as a daughter. I know her as a friend.

And as I get older, I realize that somehow, that’s enough.

© Yael Wolfe 2019

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