“The tissue.”
“What you passed from your vagina.”
“The contents of your uterus.”
I flinched every single time, but I had no better suggestions. Frankly, I had to stand there and stammer and hope they could figure out what was in the tupperware, because I was somehow blocked, physically unable to wrap my mouth around the sounds necessary to tell them what was in the tupperware.
Of course they could figure it out. And I got out of the problem of what to call …….. God, I have trouble even typing it. My Dead Baby. I can’t even look at the words. I’m going to scroll away from it now.
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I got out of the whole problem by calling it “what you people are calling ‘the solid material.'” I said it a bit angrily, but they could understand that too. They knew better than to take it personally, they know that there was nothing they could call it that would make it ok for me.
I got the lab report two days ago back on the “products of conception.” It’s the medical equivilant of a shrug. They can give me no explanation as to why this happened. They could spot nothing abnormal about the “contents of container #286437.” I’m officially healthy.
The confirmation that my body didn’t cause this, and that I don’t make defective children is comforting in the sense that it doesn’t make me feel any better now, but I suspect it will someday, if I ever feel up to the idea of trying to have another child. I’ll tuck that info away for the future, like when I carry band aids for my feet when I go out dancing, or take a shot of whiskey before going to a mall at Christmastime.
But what it really means is that now well meaning people will stop offering me “comfort” in the bullshit idea that special needs people shouldn’t be born. That I have paperwork that can prove to everyone that this baby was what it always was to me, perfect.
Valancy Jane 