Miscarriage of Hope

Tara Edwards watched the cherubic face of her adorable three year old daughter. Her curly brown hair framed her beautiful face that was a lighter version of her beloved husband. How could something so simple bring both unspeakable joy and earth-shattering heart ache? She knew that she should probably quit being so hard on herself. She knew that her doctor and counsellor were right; she just needed time to grieve after the miscarriage. But dammit, she needed to be back to herself again. Or maybe she needed to find herself. She was not quite sure which it was actually.

She tried to focus on all the good things in her life. Her daughter, of course, was chief among them. But her older children too were doing remarkably well. She was proud of the thoughtful, independent people they were becoming. Each one would make any mother proud, but together the three of them were a remarkable accomplishment. She had been a single parent long before the acrimonious divorce that had ended her fourteen year marriage to their father; the preacher, who felt his prayers more important than his obligations to his wife and children and his sometimes over-powering depression most important of all. But Tara was a survivor. She had made it through all of that and years of being an actual single parent, including the especially hard teenage years...three teens in fact.

Tara should be happy too with her new husband. He was after all physically everything she found attractive. He was broad shouldered with enough 'cushion for the pushin' as the saying goes. His thighs were like tree trunks and his arms saplings. His neatly shaved head glistened in the sunlight. Of course, it was his dark chocolate skin that sometimes took her breath away and flooded her panties. After a life time of denying her attraction, at the age of thirty-nine and with over two-hundred and fifty lovers to her credit, Tara had finally accepted her forbidden attraction to black men...and what a man she had landed too.

Not only was he gorgeous to look at, but he was a rock; as stable as they come. He had the same job since completing school; he was a computer technician with the British MI5 security agency. Of course, the family joke with the older children was that they knew it was all just a cover; he was really an assassin. It seemed every time he went out of town some African politician was murdered or disappeared. Tara's older daughter had even made up the fantasy that he was the agent that had murdered the princess with an ice bullet in that Paris tunnel; like Tara both her daughters had active imaginations. Her adult daughter was even following her mother's foot steps into writing; hopefully not the porn that her mother did though.

That was another thing that Tara had to be thankful for...after a lifetime of dreaming, she was finally taking the steps to become the writer that she always knew she was born to be. Of course, those steps at this point were just writing mostly erotic stories on a website. But she was in the lead for the annual contest to write the most stories there. Ironically, the contest was even called Survivor. It seemed to be a theme in Tara's life...surviving.

And now this...surviving the loss of a baby. At times it seemed more than she could bear. For a quarter of a century, mother had been a core part of who she was. At forty-four and after eighteen months of trying to get pregnant, she was just beginning to come to terms with the fact that her young daughter would be her last child. Then suddenly, they fond out she was pregnant. Although it was a surprise, Tara and her husband Brian had both been over the moon. They had told everyone; their young daughter most excited of all at the prospect of a baby brother or sister.

Then at nine weeks and two days, Tara had noticed some blood on the paper when she wiped. She was not that worried about it really; after all she had bled even heavier with their daughter, Ella. Being cautious, she had gone to the hospital. She left Ella with her brother-in-law and called the emergency numbers she had for Brian, who could not have his mobile on while in the secure MI5 building. She had been sanguine even as she waited in the A & E to be seen. Brian had made it to the hospital before she was seen by the consultant.

The bottom of her world fell out when the consultant announced that she could not see anything on the ultra sound. With a degree in health education and training as a doula, Tara knew that at this point the doctor should be able to clearly see the baby. The doctor explained that perhaps she had her dates wrong and was not as far along as she thought, but Tara knew her cycle well having used natural family planning during her first marriage and then again in reverse to conceive Ella. The doctor tried to reassure her, but mentioned that perhaps it was what they called a missed miscarriage. They scheduled a repeat ultra sound the next week by which time they should be able to see something for sure.

That week had been a living hell. The moment that they got home, Tara had googled the words 'missed miscarriage.' What she discovered caused her heart to drop even further. Blighted ovum, anembryonic pregnancy, missed miscarriage, whatever the term; the news was not good. In all likelihood, her baby had ceased to develop after implanting in her uterus. The gestational sac had continued to grow with nothing inside. But her baby had died; perhaps even before they knew that she was pregnant. That week was an emotional roller coaster; one moment trying to prepare herself for what was to come and the next daring to hope that perhaps the doctor was right and all would be fine.

The follow-up ultra sound was even more traumatic. Tara had pushed Brian aside; insisting that she would go in alone. The moment the nurse opened the door she knew that had been a horribly wrong decision. The doctor performing the ultra sound was so visibly pregnant that it seemed she belonged on the labour ward instead. It seemed almost too cruel a twist of fate as Tara kept her head down and tried very hard not to look at the doctor. To make things worse, they still could not say for certain if the pregnancy was alright or if the baby had died. They found the sac on the ultra sound, but it was too small to say for absolute certainty. But the doctor was not as optimistic; by this time it should have been larger and they should have seen a baby. Tara felt her world falling apart as this woman with such an obvious gift of life growing inside prepared her for the worst. Tara rushed from the room in tears as they called Brian to schedule yet another ultra sound in a week.

But that was not to be. Within three days, the spotting had turned to bleeding. In the early morning hours while Ella slept in their bed, Tara had awoken Brian in pain. She was clear about what she wanted; unless she passed out the thought of losing her baby in that same hospital was just too much to bear. She would do this at home; just the two of them. As always, Brian had been a silent wall of strength in the hours ahead. He had held her hand as she endured what she clearly knew were contractions as if giving birth. But this time there would be no happy ending.

As grotesque as it might sound through those hours Tara would examine everything that came from her body looking for anything that might represent the baby that should have been. Just as Ella awoke and Brian tried valiantly to prepare her for nursery without disturbing her, Tara found what she was looking for; the shiny, silvery sac that had been the home for her child no matter how brief its life. Although as the doctor had said she could see nothing that resembled a baby, Tara retrieved this memento from the toilet. She put it into a freezer bag; planning to give her baby a burial perhaps in a pot where she could watch something grow in memory of the part of them that should have been.

But six weeks later that freezer bag still sat like a silent reminder of her loss each time she opened those doors. Despite six weeks on anti-depressants and a couple of counselling sessions, Tara still was not herself. Although those intense feelings of hopelessness had lifted a bit, there were still too many tears and moments were she felt she was drowning. She hated to admit it, but there were even times when she thought that perhaps she and everyone else would be better off if she was dead.

Of course, she knew that it was not just the grief of this loss. Tara's life seemed to be an endless tsunami of loss with another wave knocking her down the moment she rose from the last. From the moment that her father had abandoned her when she was even younger than Ella, Tara had lost something priceless...trust.

While she was old enough and wise enough to know that in real life there were no 'happily ever afters' promised by the fairy tales from her childhood, this latest wave seemed to have driven a wedge between she and Brian. For a couple of years, things had been tough. Tara, who used sex as a measure of love, had been disappointed that despite many long talks on the subject before marriage their sex life had dwindled to once a week...or less. Every time she brought up the issue, Brian assured her that it was not her. He said that he loved her and found her as sexy as ever; things were just tough at work. But with the deep-seated abandonment issues from her childhood, Tara increasingly felt unloved and unattractive.

She had actually begun writing erotica as a means of living out her fantasies of affairs with younger men. In her writing, she could once again become the confident, sexy woman that she had been before her marriage deteriorated. She could do and feel all the things she fantasized about...without risking the security that she had craved all her life and found in her rock. Even though she recognised that while her divorce from her first husband had been best for everyone, there was also an emotional price that her children had paid. From her own childhood, she viscerally understood that damage and was determined that Ella would not pay that price too.

So what if the sex had become more like once or twice a month? Sex was not everything. They had a decent life; better than many. But still there were moments when Tara just wanted to throw caution to wind; to feel that desirable, sexy woman once again...even if in the arms of a man other than her beloved Brian. It worried her too that the men that attracted her most were young black men, not much older than her own sons. Although she championed women's right and idolised women of her generation like Madonna and Demi Moore, as a mother it bothered her that the men she desired most were young enough to be her sons.

She had though through her strong will managed to remain faithful to her vows, even if her life was in a rut. Each day she rose to take her daughter to nursery so that she could tap away on her old laptop another story that she hoped touched someone's heart. Although afternoons were always the worst, she usually managed to make it through somehow. Most days she even had dinner ready and the house straightened before Brian came home. It was those moments in the early evening over dinner and afterwards as Ella played and chatted to her adoring father that Tara loved the most. Although their marriage might not be perfect, she knew that in her daughter's eyes her daddy was the best; as it should be.

But those special moments seemed to be all too fleeting as Tara prepared Ella for bed each night. When she was asleep and Tara knew that she should go back downstairs to be with her husband, she instead buried herself in re-runs of crime dramas. Brian would complain too often that he feared she was planning his murder. He came to bed each night tired and hugged his side of the bed even as she did the same. She knew in her deepest heart that he loved her, even as she loved him, but it just was not the same anymore...and might never be.

So her trials and tribulations continued...as she survived.