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"Light bleeding, Cora?" my midwife, Kelly, asks over the phone. Her voice is an oasis of calm. "You’re probably okay, but for peace of mind, why don’t you come in tomorrow morning and we’ll listen for the heartbeat. All right?"
Sure, but should I lie down now? Put my feet up? According to Newton’s law, gravity pulls objects toward the earth, but can’t a mother prevent this by putting her feet up? That’s where my science turns out to be apocrypha; Kelly says if the baby has started to abort, it’s already dead. "But you’re probably okay," she reminds me. "I’ll see you tomorrow, first thing."
We’re probably okay. And now the bleeding has stopped. Reassured, I get a good night’s sleep.
But in the morning it’s back. Red flag. Hard to breathe. Wade holds me, helps me ready Gabriel for school. Breakfast, brush teeth, prayers. I try to thank God for life in my belly, but the words stick in my throat.
"Sometimes in this early phase it’s hard to pick up the heartbeat," says Kelly, removing the Doppler from my stomach. "Let’s go see what the ultra-sound can tell us."
A few minutes later, Kelly says, "Cora, I see your little baby, and I’m afraid it’s not moving."
Dr. Newman comes in, looks at the screen carefully, takes in the baby from different angles, and says, simply, "No."
Jews have a blessing for every occasion. You heard good news? Say, "Praised are You, God, who is good and beneficent." Someone has died? You say, "El Dayyan emet," God is a true judge, acknowledging the rightness of all God does, even what feels horribly wrong. Jewish law also mandates that a mourner tear the garment she’s wearing closest to her heart, to reflect the sundering caused by death.
I rip at my shirt and cry, "El Dayyan emet!"
Like Galileo’s mythic spheres, we do not fall in a vacuum. A day after the miscarriage, Wade’s parents are with us, and when they leave my mother takes over, showing us that we are not alone in grieving the loss of our baby. Friends from temple make us a beautiful memorial service. Just when I decide I need a book of psalms in Hebrew and English, a friend brings one.
My friend Jean, a poet, suffered two miscarriages and never had a child. She knows grieving. "It’s a very orderly process," she tells me. "You don’t have to do anything, just let it carry you."
I do, and it is. There are times designated -- not by me -- to cry, eat, sleep, pray, write, wake up and cry more. Toward the end of that first week, I know the baby’s name: Ori, Hebrew for "my light." I do not name the baby but inexplicably learn the name, and then cry again, realizing whom I’ve lost. I go through the process, discover the truth about falling bodies. They need only surrender to the fall.
-- Cora Shenberg
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