A Man’s ABCs of Miscarriage
Elison Alcovendaz on the deeply painful experience from a man's point of view.
Posted October 18, 2016
Elison Alcovendaz is a writer based in Sacramento, CA. His work has appeared in several publications, including The Portland Review, Under the Gum Tree, Agave Magazine, and others. "A Man's ABCs of Miscarriage" was first published in The Rumpus. For more information on the author, please visit www. elisonalcovendaz.com .
A is for Alphabet . Long before Patty got pregnant, my Facebook friends populated my newsfeed with articles discussing the importance of words in a child’s development. So when, a couple years later, Patty woke me up at 5 a.m. with a positive pregnancy test in her hand and a smile on her face, I started buying children’s books that day. Where the Sidewalk Ends. The House on Pooh Corner. I leaned my face to Patty’s stomach and talked to our baby about everything—my workday, the 49ers, how much we already loved him (I always imagined a “him”). I imagined teaching him a literary alphabet. “A is for Absalom!, Absalom!. B is for Borges…” If words were important to a baby’s development, then he was going to hear as many words as he could stand.
B is for Baby, of course, though not the squirmy thing that looks like an old man until they’re six months old. I’m talking about the common term of endearment. As in: “Baby, scoot the fuck over, you’re taking up the whole bed!” Baby as in the thing I called Patty for eight years until I didn’t.
After the second procedure (see “D is for D&C”), the doctor advised Patty against overexertion. When we got home from the hospital, I situated her on the couch and went upstairs to grab whatever she wanted—socks, pajamas, the Harry Potter book she couldn’t wait to read to our kids someday—but just to make sure I got everything, I yelled, “Baby!” I’d intended to follow that up with, “Need anything else from up here?” but the words caught in my throat. The silence was the loudest I’d ever heard. And my saliva tasted dirty, as though “Baby” was a word to be spat and not spoken. I sat on the edge of the bed and flipped through the pages in her favorite book, watching the words flitter through my hands.
D is for D&C (or Dilation & Curettage).
“Dilation and curettage (D&C) is a procedure to remove tissue from inside your uterus. Doctors perform dilation and curettage to diagnose and treat certain uterine conditions—such as heavy bleeding—or to clear the uterine lining after a miscarriage or abortion.
“In a dilation and curettage—sometimes spelled “dilatation” and curettage —your doctor uses small instruments or a medication to open (dilate) your cervix—the lower, narrow part of your uterus. Your doctor then uses a surgical instrument called a curette to remove uterine tissue. Curettes used in a D&C can be sharp or use suction” ( mayoclinic.org ).
to look forward to; regard as likely to happen; anticipate the occurrence or the coming of ( Dictionary.com )
One of the first things we did was download the What to Expect When You’re Expecting app on our phones. The app tracked the baby’s size, provided helpful reminders (take your folic acid!), and listed remedies for the horrific morning sickness Patty would soon experience. For the most part, the app did what it said it would (tell us what to expect) though it was oddly light on the whole miscarriage thing.
I get it. Why drown yourself in negative possibilities? Let’s drown ourselves instead in the love! The cuteness! The miracle of the female body! The expected! But what about what to do when a doctor lets the “hysterectomy” word slip to your thirty-one-year-old wife? Or when the doctor tells you the amount of blood your wife lost in her second D&C is the most he’d ever seen? Or when you, a writer, can’t come up with any consoling words, much less the right ones?
F is for Fetus . Right after the first D&C, Patty, in her still-anesthetized-but-slowly-waking-up stage, was busy entertaining the medical staff and me. She’d wake up for a few seconds, shake Dr. Strong’s hand and thank him (for the fourth or eighth time) for his “fine work,” fall back asleep, wake up again singing old rock ballads, and between all of that, tell me repeatedly how much she loved me.
While the nurse took Patty’s vitals and entered it into the computer, Patty woke up again. The nurse and I exchanged grins, curious to what comedy would spout from Patty’s mouth. “Did they say if the baby was a boy or a girl?” she asked before falling back asleep. I grasped onto the cold, metal armrests of my chair and felt the floor slipping beneath me.
“It wasn’t a baby,” the nurse whispered, “it was a fetus. It’s important to know what things are and what they aren’t.”
Patty nodded, her pale face relaxed as though in a daydream.
G is for Gender . A few months after the miscarriage, I called for a boys’ night at a sports bar in Downtown Sacramento. Me and three of my best friends, three dudes who’d been groomsmen in my wedding. We were the stereotypical “bros” who usually didn’t talk about shit like miscarriage, but I needed to.
Thirty minutes into dinner, as we stuffed our mouths with fries and beer, I talked about the miscarriage. They nodded as they listened, and when I was done, one friend said his wife miscarried the month before. I asked him how they were doing. He said “fine.”
That was it. A minute later, our attention turned to the female bartender using her breasts to extract a bigger tip from a gaggle of drunk businessmen.
That night, I scoured the Internet for tips on how, as a guy, I was supposed to talk about miscarriage, but most of the information was about how to help your partner. How to be the “strong” one (as though she isn’t the strong one). But there was nothing about how seeing a father holding a newborn makes you scream into your shoulder. Nothing on how your inability to raise your wife from her melancholy makes you feel like a failure as a husband. And definitely nothing on how to talk about miscarriage with the men you’ve been friends with your whole life.
H is for (T.)Hanks . Patty crushes hard on Tom Hanks (I know, I don’t get it either). The “SF Girls,” two of Patty’s friends from San Francisco, do everything in their power to keep this crush alive. They randomly quote lines from his movies, buy random trinkets with his face on it, and write “thanks” as “T.Hanks” on Patty’s birthday cards.
After a particularly rough day, we came home to find a package on our doorstep from the SF girls. In the package, we found popcorn, theater-sized boxes of chocolate, and five DVDs, each one starring Mr. Hanks. Their note said they wanted us to have a date night, and what better way to do it than with the other man in Patty’s life.
We stood in the middle of our kitchen hugging, wiping our faces on each other’s shirts. We were Wilson the volleyball, and our friends weren’t going to let us drift away.
I is for IMDB . When your wife miscarries and can’t stand hearing about pregnancy or babies, IMDB is a wonderful source for synopses of films and TV episodes. This means that you know before your wife does that in the first episode of Downton Abbey , Season Six, Mrs. Bates miscarries. And this means you can delete the first episode when it records on your DVR. And this means that when she asks why the first episode didn’t record, you can tell her you’re not sure, but then you feel bad lying , so you tell her the truth, and she immediately asks if you can find it On Demand, and that’s when you realize she doesn’t need you to protect her in this way anymore and that, perhaps, it wasn’t her you were protecting, anyway.
J is for Jesus . I’ve always been a superstitious Catholic. Anytime I saw an accident or even had a bad thought, I’d perform the sign of the cross and say a silent prayer to Jesus.
I stopped cold turkey three months before the miscarriage. After, I wondered if doing so caused the miscarriage. Numerous family members told me that “God works in mysterious ways,” so maybe that was one of the mysteries! If you don’t sign the cross often enough, bad things happen to you! Because if Jesus is God and God is good and all-powerful, then he/He wouldn’t just allow such things to happen, right?
When my right hand finds its way to my forehead now, I don’t stop it. Of course, I don’t really believe my cross-signing has any pregnancy power, but hey, God works in mysterious ways.
K is for Kübler-Ross . For months after the miscarriage, I couldn’t write. Instead, I turned to Fantasy Football for distraction. I committed myself to endless hours researching advanced football metrics. When people asked what I was working on, I lied about a novel. I didn’t tell them that if they planned on starting Marshawn Lynch against the Packers that week, they shouldn’t.
I’m not sure what stage of grief I was in at the time. Not denial and definitely not acceptance. Anger ? Certainly. I called in sick one day and threw a glass on the floor just to see something break. Bargaining? Sure. I told God I’d go to church every damn Sunday if that meant no more miscarriages . Depression ? Yeah, maybe.
The five stages of grief were developed by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who had two miscarriages of her own. During both pregnancies, she’d been disqualified from a residency in pediatrics due to being pregnant. She lost her potential career , her dream, for babies that never arrived. Instead, she turned to psychiatry and envisioned the now famous grief model.
“K is for Kübler-Ross” is the first thing I’ve written since the miscarriage. I’m not sure what that means, but I hope it means something.
L is for Lola . The first time Patty met her, Lola (Tagalog for “Grandma”) was punching the air from her seat on the couch, her paralyzed leg resting on an ottoman, her oversized sunglasses perched loosely on her nose. Our family had convened for a Pacquiao fight, and Lola was in fine form.
“I thought you said she was blind,” Patty whispered to me.
“But how can she see—”
“She can’t,” I answered, laughing . “She’s a fighter. She wants to get in that ring.”
Our wedding was the last Lola attended. She was already sick then, but when we visited her table, she grabbed me tightly by the wrist and said she wanted to meet my kid.
“Maybe in five years,” I teased.
“No,” she said seriously. “You’re starting tonight, aren’t you?”
In a family of a hundred people, I’m the oldest without a child. My uncles constantly tease my mom about being the oldest non-Lola in our family. Whenever cousins have babies, you’ll find them in my mom’s arms while my uncles remind me how penises and vaginas work.
A few weeks after we found out Patty was pregnant, we hung honeymoon photographs (see “P is for Paris”) on the walls and invited my brother, his wife, and my parents to see the new additions. After taking them through the house to see photos of the Colosseum, the gargoyles of Notre Dame, and Stonehenge, we ended in the guest bedroom. There, on the dresser, was a framed photograph of me holding the positive pregnancy test, smiling.
This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.