Strike Picket Line
I grew up in a state of unionized workers. My mother was in a teachers’ union. My father worked for one of the “Big Three” automakers and UAW is an acronym every Michigander knows. Every year, there were talks of negotiations and talks of strikes. The only thing worse than buying “a foreign car” is crossing the strike line.
My babies went on strike. They held up signs in my uterus and said “Hell no, we won’t go.”
When my friend described the miscarriage this way, I laughed out loud.
For the first time in weeks.
I laughed.
They come by it honestly, she told me. They get this from you and your partner. “Didn’t you know,” she said while I giggled, “that you would have activist babies?!”
So we waited. We waited for the babies to let go and bleed out.
But they stayed put.
For weeks.
The doctor said he wanted it to happen naturally.
I’m not sure the word “natural” is right.
I was pregnant with non-babies who were on strike. I had all the hormones and the breasts that wouldn’t fit into my bras. I had the nausea, but this time with pain.
We waited. For weeks. For my activist babies to throw in the towel.
I lacked the energy to go to church.
I stayed in bed.
I got up long enough to care for the teenager in our home.
At night, in the morning, in the day, my partner and I huddled together, crying, not crying, talking, not talking.
Sad.
Picturing, asking, pleading, acupuncturing, nasty-tasting-Chinese-herbal-tea-begging the blood to come.
Let go, I begged the babies.
Bleed, I commanded my body. Yes, I asked my body to bleed.
Can’t we just end this?
Previous entries in The Miscarriage Chronicles
