My Miscarriage Story: The Tale of Two Women’s Clinics.

“Did your husband impregnate you so that you would move to Miami?” This is what my father asked me, always blunt and indelicate. I assume he said this as a joke. At the time, my husband was a thousand miles away from me, living in Florida at his dream job as I traveled back and forth studying for my graduate degree at the University of Minnesota.

“No, he impregnated me because he thought he was going to die.” I joked back, the truth being that although we weren’t trying to get pregnant when we thought the worst of my husband’s health outcomes, we stopped trying to prevent pregnancy. That summer, when I heard that my husband was in urgent care, still complaining about the pain that he had a week after he came to visit me, I decided to take an earlier flight to see him. This time, the school was out, and we had already planned a summer together. None of his symptoms seemed to add up to any illness, at first. Massive back pain, blood pressure through the roof, unable to sleep, drastically losing of weight. I made a decision to swallow my worry as I cared for him.

As the summer crest, we found out the beautiful news that I was pregnant.

Each day with him was a relief. We were both cuddled on the couch, watching some TV show. “I just can’t explain how happy I am, and how every day it is like I am falling deeper in love with you.” Where there were weak threads in our relationship, the time together strengthened them.

Ultimately, my pregnancy complicated things. Where was I going to have the baby? Minnesota or Florida? My parents desperately wanted me to continue with my studies in Minnesota in person, even with COVID-19 and monkeypox. They told me that I wouldn’t be showing and could wear a mask. Nothing and they were determined, nothing, not even a fetus, would stop me from excelling in school.

There were a number of logistical issues. I didn’t have an OBGYN in Florida. I wasn’t on my husband’s health insurance, only the University of Minnesota’s. Did they even cover care in Florida? How was I going to manage school and pregnancy?

So I decided, when my husband asked me with a worried frown, almost choking up, “Are we going to keep the baby?” I could see the want on his face, the desire to be a father, and for me to be the mother of his child.

“Yes, we are going to keep the baby, and I’m moving here to Florida, so we can do this together.” I felt like I’d given my husband the greatest gift. His eyes were alight with excitement.

“What about your classes?”

“I can see what I can take virtually.”

“Are you sure you want to move?” I imagined laying on my mother’s bathroom floor as I had months prior, wishing for my husband to be with me, and decided I would never go through that alone again. How could I go through another year of loneliness, darkness, and obsession while pregnant?

“Yes, I’m sure.”

It’s crazy to feel seismic shifts inside your soul. Shifts that when spoken out loud seem antithetical to all your past actions. I wanted him there when I had an ultrasound. I wanted to share with him the joy I had on the phone with the women’s clinic, them telling me what I can or cannot eat. Although super annoying, I was thrilled to see him purchase all the pregnancy books and watch the videos for ‘expecting dads’ on how to best support their pregnant partners. These were all things that wrapped me with a warm cloth and reassured me that my decision was the right one. I didn’t have to go through this alone.

So I googled the closest Planned Parenthood to me in Miami. The building looked like all the other office buildings on the palm tree lined street, only it was dark pink and had a scattered few anti-abortion protestors in front.

“They better not dare say anything to us.” My husband whispered to me as we searched for a parking spot farthest away from the protestors. His knuckles glowed red and white as he gripped the steering wheel. Anger, shock, and his protective nature rolling over him.

“Don’t worry about them. Let’s just get inside.” I said calmly. They weren’t the angry protestors like on TV. More like noisy occupiers, a few old white ladies and a white man yelling into the void bible quotes and misinformation. “They don’t know us, we are here for actual family planning.”

I had heard that Planned Parenthood gave a full range of reproductive health care. When I was younger, I had gone with my friend to get her IUD from the Minneapolis Planned Parenthood in Uptown when she didn’t feel comfortable going through her family doctor, worried her family would find out about her decision.

For the first time in my life, I found myself with limited health options. I grew up going to the same doctor my family went to, then going to campus doctors in college, then back to my family medicine doctor back in Minnesota. But in Florida, I had no starting point, no OBGYN relationship, or even knowledge about how to get my Minnesota health insurance number! So, I went to Planned Parenthood. This one was on the opposite end of the spectrum of the Minneapolis Planned Parenthood. Where in Minneapolis, the office was large, accessible, and welcoming. In Florida, I found myself hanging onto the stairwell railing as my husband and I climbed four stories to the office. The elevator was out of order, and the stairwell was dingy, with concrete steps. Tyler’s voice behind me was gently encouraging as he told me to keep going.

The small and clean office didn’t have many places to sit. What I didn’t know was that my husband couldn’t come in with me. What also I didn’t know was that the specific tests I had wanted to be done, an ultrasound and blood test, they didn’t do at that Planned Parenthood office.

“So there is no one I can talk to? Just about prenatal options and what I’m supposed to do?” I questioned the front desk lady, who sweetly took my information down.

“Unless you want to know about options if you don’t want to keep the pregnancy…” she trailed off. I looked from my husband to her in shock.

“No, I want the pregnancy, I just thought since you do all … that here, you’d also be able to help me.”

I was unsure what to say. I’ve been a strong supporter of Planned Parenthood since my teens, even being a ‘member’ since 2016 when I heard Hillary Clinton speak at the National Planned Parenthood Annual Gala.

Florida, though, like many other states, has fledged a full attack on Planned Parenthood funding. Leaving Planned Parenthood and other Women’s clinics underfunded and unable to support all reproductive health care. Even when it’s the women that republicans claim to support, pregnant women like me who wanted to have healthy pregnancies and then strong healthy babies.

With the onslaught of fake women’s health centers online, I didn’t know who to trust. National Women’s Health Network claims that fake women’s health centers outnumber real ones four to one. I didn’t want to go to a pregnancy resource center to get misinformation about my baby. I just wanted information I could trust, and with the traditional avenues I’d go to being inaccessible or under-resourced, I didn’t know who to trust or where to go.

I lived in an independent nature of research. I became my own OBGYN, and to be honest, I wasn’t very good at it.

August.

When I told Tyler about the few drops of blood, I also told him not to worry. Many pregnant women experience spotting during their first trimester, I’d read that online. By now, I had changed all my plans and moved to Florida. When I went to sleep at night and dreamed of the next year, next two years, of my life. I saw that future life so vividly, that I believed those dreams were visions. I’d have my baby at the Mount Sinai hospital here in Miami Beach, my parents might not be happy, but that would all melt away in March when the baby would come, and we’d all get to bask in warmth and watch the sunset on the bay that the hospital overlooks. It all was so real and perfect to me. Thankfully

A week later, I was in the ER, at that hospital I had planned to have the baby. My husband was there when the doctor told us the fetus had a 50/50 chance of survival. I didn’t know at the time that this was the first and last time I would see my baby. I finally got my blood test and my ultrasound, and a list of other tests. I was speaking to a doctor for the first time about my pregnancy and my baby, and it was in an ER.

And my husband was next to me. Strangely, having him there in his suit and tie, holding my hand, was everything I needed to feel hope. We decided then we’d call her Esperanza. She was our baby. A baby, still without a heartbeat, without a gender, without anything but the burning hope and love of her parents. In my mind, I knew logically, it was a fetus inside of me. But in my heart, in my hopes, and in my dreams, I had a full baby, who I’d named, I’d seen so vividly in my mind’s eye. Who I had decided was going to go to Spelman. Who would grow up going to the beach, swimming in the waves, and knowing the world was at her feet. Who would be everything I’d wanted her to be. The gift of hope I had was this dream.

At the women’s clinic, back in Minnesota, I sat alone in the ultrasound room. My dad was in the lobby. This clinic was big, had carpet, and nice ultrasound rooms up and down a long hallway. When we checked in, they offered us water, and candy, and sat us next to the restrooms.

The doctor sighed after looking at the large monitor on the wall in front of us. “So there seems to be no tissue left, and just a little blood, so you may be bleeding for just a couple of more days.”

“I’m sorry, I’m confused,” I mumbled. I was of two minds. One that lived in reality, that was looking at the same monitor she was looking at, that showed static and a little bit of matter. The other mind, lived in a dream, that my eyes were deceiving me.

She tilted her head with her small reassuring smile. “You are looking good and should be able to conceive again.”

“Have I miscarried the baby?” I said, although my dream mind chastised me immediately for doing so. Growing up, my mom used to say, ‘don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.’ It felt like one of those moments. If I didn’t know, maybe I could go on like before. Dreaming and planning.

Shock and embarrassment painted her face. “ Oh! I should back up. Um. Yes, you have had a miscarriage.”

I didn’t speak for the rest of the appointment. On my medical records, it read successful spontaneous abortion. Those words, the technicality of them, hurt my eyes to read. They didn’t show the full breadth of what I believed I lost. I lost a baby, I lost Esperanza, and I lost a future for myself and my family that I was fully committed to and in love with.

Secondly, I worried. Does Ron DeSantis know that a spontaneous abortion is not the same as the abortions he legislates against? Does DeSantis care? Does he care that his tirade against people who have abortions hurts everyone?

The dichotomy of care I got in Minnesota at a place within my health network versus in Florida was extreme. Everyone seeking reproductive care deserves access not just to reproductive health care, but to good reproductive health care. Everyone deserves to have their reproductive health needs and even wants to be met, no matter where they live or their income bracket. It’s time for Florida to Wake the fuck Up. Reproductive Health Care is a human right, and your abortion boogieman, Planned Parenthood, is doing more to ensure life in Florida than Florida Republicans. And I am going to fight to ensure that the right to abortion is protected, along with the right to exceptional reproductive health care.

So, I took my dog, and the few things that I’d need, and got on my scheduled flight back home, home to Miami, home to my husband. When I got home, he was there for me. We held each other and cried. After wiping each other’s tears, he made me my favorite snack, and we walked our dog to the park and discussed the best ways to acclimate her to the Miami Heat, between treats and kisses.