"Do you have any questions?" asked the pharmacist. "I don't know. Are there instructions on it?" I thought I remembered my doctor's explanation. But I really wasn't concentrating when she was talking to me. I was still trying to figure out why I had naively assumed my pregnancy would be like all my friends' pregnancies. That is – viable. I'd never heard of a missed miscarriage. Or a spontaneous abortion. Or any of the other terms I've read so much about that I now refer to them by their initials. RPL. LPD. The pharmacist showed me the pill bottle. INSERT THREE TABLETS PER VAGINA. "Um, I guess that covers it," I mumbled.
Being in an emotional haze, and understandably confused by the "per vagina" instruction (not to mention the admonition that pregnant women should avoid contact with this medicine), I decided to google the name of the drug when I got home. Not a good idea. Two horror-filled hours later, confident that I was going to die, I bravely inserted the three tablets in my single vagina.
I didn't die. But you know how at the doctor's office, you're sometimes asked to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the worst pain you've ever felt? I've been blessed with a relatively pain-free life, so that night is my new 10. Yes, of course childbirth must be worse. But at least childbirth usually results in a child.
mrohkay tried to sleep on an air mattress next to the couch to keep watch over me. (My doctor had the bizarre idea that doing this overnight would make it more tolerable, and we weren't in the right frame of mind to think critically.) I watched a Forensic Files marathon. Nothing like a little blood spatter analysis to keep your mind off things, right? Later I moved on to a rerun of the Westminster dog show. When the pain got really bad, I started groaning, "Aaaaaaaaaaa hey look that cute little dog looks like a mop aaaaaaaaaaaah." I learned later that when my childhood best friend's mom died unexpectedly around that same time period, my friend sat up all night with her dad and also watched the Westminster dog show. The banality must be comforting.
So – and this is where the story gets gross – the lovingly titled "product of conception" was supposed to come out. I was under strict orders to make sure it came out, but the night was almost over and I hadn't seen it. I decided to take a shower. Plop. It came out. I nudged it. A split second too late, I thought, "Shit – that wasn't very reverent." I had just pushed our baby down the drain with my foot. Technically, the doctor had never even seen a fetal pole, but it was still our baby. This is not how I imagined my first pregnancy would turn out.
