Dr. Ross introduces herself and listens intently as I tell her about my symptoms and a positive pregnancy test.
“You did well to come in early. That means we can start on the right supplements right away.” She’s young but has wise grey eyes, and I immediately feel comfortable with her.
“First things first,” she says. “We’ll get a pregnancy test done, and then we can take it from there.”
She takes us next door to a lab where a lab technician pricks my finger and draws blood. We sit in the waiting room, and after ten minutes, we’re called back to the obstetrician’s office. She doesn’t look as easygoing as she had earlier, and my stomach muscles tighten with anxiety.
“What’s wrong?” I say.
“The pregnancy test is reading negative, but that could just be an error. Instead of another pregnancy test, we’ll do a scan,” she says. “From the dates you gave me, you ought to be nine or ten weeks along.”
I’m numb and not processing anything she says. Declan takes my hand and holds it tightly as we walk to the ultrasound room. I don’t take in anything other than the fact that the sonographer is also a woman.
“I’ll see you back in my office when you’re done,” Dr. Ross says.
I follow the sonographer’s instructions like a robot. I lie on the bed, lift my blouse to my ribcage, close my eyes and try to control the rising panic in my chest. I cannot handle another loss.
She pours the cold jelly on my belly, which transports me to another place and time.
“I can’t hear a heartbeat,” the sonographer had said.
I sat bolt upright. “What do you mean? My baby is in there. I know she is.” I’m hysterical, and it takes her almost ten minutes to convince me to lie back down.
I open my eyes and stare at her face. From my experience, the best way to know whether it’s good or bad news is to look out for the sonographer’s facial expressions. This one is good. She doesn’t twitch a muscle as she stares at the screen and moves the handheld probe over my tummy.
“Is everything okay?” Declan says.
She takes the probe away and wipes me down with a towel. “The doctor will talk to you.” She smiles to remove the sting from the words.
As we walk back to the doctor’s office, we have no idea what to expect. I know it’s serious, though, when I see her solemn expression.
“What’s going on?” Declan says when we sit down.
The doctor glances from Declan to me. “Like the blood test, the scan shows an empty uterus. There’s no baby and no signs that there was one.”
My mouth drops. “I don’t understand. I did a pregnancy test, and it was positive.”
“She did,” Declan says.
“I even had the symptoms,” I say, speaking more to myself than the doctor.
She lets me rant for a few more minutes until I have nothing else to say. I feel as if I’m caught in a nightmare. It’s one thing to lose a baby like I lost Lilly, but to be told there was no baby to begin with. What does that make me? Crazy?
“You might have had what is called a blighted ovum,” she says, speaking gently. “It’s a fertilized egg that implants itself in the womb, but it doesn’t become an embryo.”
“I don’t understand,” Declan says.
I retreat into myself, and the words between Declan and the doctor pass through my ears, but their meaning doesn’t register in my brain. Was I so desperate to be pregnant that my body believed that I was pregnant?
We leave the doctor’s office. I’m numb with shock, and we don’t speak on the drive home. The numbness melts away and is replaced by pain. Pain so intense that it hurts my whole body, settling in my chest and squeezing. I feel like a fool. The tears wait until we get home. I break down as soon as Declan shuts the front door.
“Aw, sweetheart,” he says and gathers me in his arms. He slips a hand under my thighs and the other under my arms and lifts me.
I fist his shirt as he carries me upstairs. My heart is breaking. I’ve been living a dream in the last few weeks. I dreamt that I wanted so badly that my body pretended to be pregnant to appease me.
I had even estimated the date when our baby was likely to show up when Declan and I would get to hold him or her. Declan lays me gently on the bed and slips my shoes off. He joins me on the bed and holds me tight as I cry my heart out.
“It’s okay,” he says over and over again.
“It’s not,” I tell him when I manage to talk. “We lost our baby, Declan.”
“I don’t think we had him to begin with,” he says.