Friday, December 12, 2008

A father's experience of miscarriage

I usually read (and have even written for) the NYT "Modern Love" column, but I somehow missed this one from earlier in the fall. It's a father's account of pregnancy loss:


At 20 weeks, we went in together for the second ultrasound. The technician made small talk and popped his gum as he dimmed the lights. Lisa lay back on the table. I shifted in my seat, jammed my hands into my pockets, and stretched out my legs like a teenager settling in to watch a movie. As the technician slid the paddle around on Lisa’s belly, the image on the computer screen wheeled, dipped and blurred.

Finally my son’s image popped into focus. Arms and legs folded, he seemed to be resting on his back, as if lying on the bottom of a pool, waiting to spring to the surface.
I said, “Cool.”

The technician muttered something, hit a button to freeze the image and walked briskly out of the room.

A few minutes later, in walked a small man wearing a rumpled white coat and steel-rimmed glasses, his bow tie askew. He shut the door behind him.

I don’t remember exactly what he said; he looked as if someone had left him out in the rain. What we had taken for a frozen image, he explained, was in fact absolute stillness.


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3 comments:

  1. just read the article. thank you for sharing this. We just found out today that our second child was miscarried. yes, father's do grieve over miscarriages. Today has been a pretty dark day for my wife and I. Reading this blog and the article helped me process my emotions a little bit.

    Thanks

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  2. I found this article in preparation for a college assignment. I have decided to do the assignment on fathers of miscarried children. My wife miscarried our first child. I was so tired of people telling me that they can understand the mother's pain because the child is in her, but none of them could understand why I would feel the way I did because I never met my child. Your article touched me. Thank you.

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