I know this feeling. The first time I understood "heartache" was literally, like a sprained coronary muscle, it radiates a numbness through the body.
Lying on the examination table, my belly covered with cold, transparent jelly, a sensor gliding over the swelling, crossing over the bulge, then returning back, frowning at the face of technology.
Another pregnancy loss. I knew, before the doctor was called, I knew what he called "fetal demise."
This time it wasn't me. My reproductive years are long gone. It’s my daughter. I’m not because of her recent ultrasound. Her husband is. But I can perfectly imagine it, to the point that it triggers the heart clutch, nausea, the weight in the chest.
What can I say to my beautiful child, what did I say myself between my first miscarriage and my second? Her brother will be born after the third pregnancy loss, which is the last one at the beginning of the fifth month.
Now my daughter has caught up with me. This is her third miscarriage.
I know better than to offer any clichés. "This is nature's way of taking care of things that aren't right." "You can have other children." "It wasn't meant to be." And so on and so forth.
Thirty-seven years ago, I wrote on the same topic, trying to explain that I wanted this baby, not another, and...