Miscarriage.

Miscarriage has been on my mind quite a bit lately.

Now, before you start spreading rumors or making assumptions, I am 100% not pregnant and have never known the pain of experiencing the loss of my child through miscarriage.

The memory of my mother's miscarriage has been coming to the surface a lot these days. I am hoping that by writing it down and releasing it out to the world, something will settle and shift.

When I was five(ish) my mother invited me into bed with her to take a nap. As I crawled up into bed with her, the water of the mattress shifted and moved. I tried my best to lay still and fall asleep, but it wasn't long before the wiggles came out. I flopped onto my back, and then back to my tummy. I shifted horizontally and then vertically. I couldn't get comfortable. And because I couldn't get comfortable, she couldn't either.

"Lay still and go to sleep." I can still hear her voice as she said it (and repeated it).

"Tell Jessica to lay still and go to sleep too." Jessica was my imaginary friend and she was AWESOME.

"Mom, Jessica is already sleeping."

"Great, now lay still and go to sleep so you don't wake her up."

This went on and on, with me wiggling all the live long day. Finally, after a while my mom got out of bed and excused herself to the bathroom. She was in there for a long time and in my five year old world it seemed like days.

Finally, I heard the toilet flush and she came back into the bedroom with tears in her eyes.

"Mommy was pregnant with a baby. There was something wrong and it wasn't able to live inside of me. The baby died and came out while I was in the bathroom going potty."

"Oooooh! A baby, can I see it?!?" I remember rushing down the hall towards the bathroom, running past my bedroom and the toy room. I arrived to the toilet and expecting to see a little baby. When I got there, it was an empty toilet with water in the bowl.

"Where is the baby?" I remember asking.

"I flushed it down the toilet." I remember her saying matter of factly. "Come on, Mommy really needs to nap." And so we did.

I don't know all of the thoughts that were running through my mom's head that day. And since she has passed away, I can't ask her. We never spoke about it again.

She had literally just kicked my dad out and was on her way to divorcing him. Was she relieved in some way?

How hard it must have been for her to juggle that moment of motherhood. We were the only two in the house. I feel a little guilty for being a typical wiggly five year old that day. If only the kid me would have had the insight that the adult me has. I would have laid still and let my mom have her moment.

I appreciate her honesty. She didn't sugarcoat what was happening to her body. That was the thing about my mom, she was always real.

I don't know how long she mourned the loss of that pregnancy. I know she didn't tell my dad. He didn't know about it until a few years ago when I told him. He was shocked. He didn't believe me or the facts of my vivid memory of that day. My Nana confirmed it.

To the best of my knowledge, there wasn't any other time in her life she was pregnant. When I got a little older she and I would play the "what if" game. We decided that if she ever had another baby it would be a girl we'd name Katelyn Paige.

My childhood was surrounded with cousins my own age who were like sisters but not the same. I was very busy with gymnastics, softball, and doing normal kid stuff. I never felt that I missed having a sibling until I got older.

There are times that I miss having a sibling so much. I feel like a a whole piece of me is missing in some way. I especially miss the adult sibling relationship I do not have. I wish there was someway I could make it better. But there isn't. There is no resolution to this, which might be the most upsetting of all.

There is just acceptance.