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Lisa Quigley

Guest Posts, Miscarriage

The Real Horrors

August 7, 2016
miscarriage

By Lisa Quigley

“Write about what scares you.”

I like the way this sounds, what it implies. But there’s a problem: I don’t know how to write about the real horrors.

If I did, I might tell you that we lost a baby. Not a real baby, not one that we ever got to touch or name or smell or kiss. I was eleven weeks pregnant when I started to bleed.

At the hospital, I watched the doctor’s brow furrow while she performed the ultrasound. She pressed the instrument into my belly, so hard it hurt, but I didn’t care. I was watching the screen. I was watching because I knew where to look for the baby, and I was waiting to see the round shape of the head, maybe the briefest suggestion of limbs, something that would let me breathe a sigh of relief. But I just saw black in the circle, no white blob where the baby should be. Her words confirmed what I already knew: “I see the gestational sac…but no baby.” Continue Reading…