I had a miscarriage in the bathroom of a Walmart. I was in there for what felt like hours. It was my first miscarriage and I had no idea what to do with all that tissue, so I scooped it up and wrapped it in a brown Walmart bathroom paper towel, which immediately just desintegrated into the blood. I put it my coat pocket and grabbed a bath towel off a shelf to cover my bloody khaki pants. I drove straight to the doctor's, still while bleeding and having terrible contractions and when I showed them my bloody paper towel, they told me to just toss in the trash. They check me out and sent me home with absolutely no intervention, just to finish it off...on the toilet.
I had a miscarriage on a toilet too. When I called my doctor (from my landlord’s phone because we were young and poor and didn’t have our own phone), she said she had suspected I would miscarry, but she never shared that with me. She told me to gather as much as I could so they could be sure I had passed everything. I sat on the toilet and cried while my husband kneeled in front of me with a slotted spoon, his forehead pressed to mine. We gathered two fetuses, and so many clots. We put them in a Tupperware, and put that in a cooler. We dropped it all off the next day. I never knew what happened to our little package. A few days later I had a fever and cramping and had to go in for an emergency D&C. I was 19 and my husband was 23 and I was just supposed to return to normal life. I think of what all that would have meant if we lived in Texas (where we lived for 2 years five years ago). My landlord could have been fined for helping me. I could have been charged, investigated. It was a surprise pregnancy already. I was newly married, young, Mormon, and not great at remembering to take the pill. Would I have been blamed? I felt so much guilt, and heartbreak. I had finally gotten over the shock and the nervousness and I was so excited. I was a full 12 weeks. Twenty nine years later and those feelings are still so vivid. What we are doing to women in this country is disgusting and traumatizing.
I had a miscarriage in the bathroom of a Walmart. I was in there for what felt like hours. It was my first miscarriage and I had no idea what to do with all that tissue, so I scooped it up and wrapped it in a brown Walmart bathroom paper towel, which immediately just desintegrated into the blood. I put it my coat pocket and grabbed a bath towel off a shelf to cover my bloody khaki pants. I drove straight to the doctor's, still while bleeding and having terrible contractions and when I showed them my bloody paper towel, they told me to just toss in the trash. They check me out and sent me home with absolutely no intervention, just to finish it off...on the toilet.
Your writing is painful and beautiful.
I had a miscarriage on a toilet too. When I called my doctor (from my landlord’s phone because we were young and poor and didn’t have our own phone), she said she had suspected I would miscarry, but she never shared that with me. She told me to gather as much as I could so they could be sure I had passed everything. I sat on the toilet and cried while my husband kneeled in front of me with a slotted spoon, his forehead pressed to mine. We gathered two fetuses, and so many clots. We put them in a Tupperware, and put that in a cooler. We dropped it all off the next day. I never knew what happened to our little package. A few days later I had a fever and cramping and had to go in for an emergency D&C. I was 19 and my husband was 23 and I was just supposed to return to normal life. I think of what all that would have meant if we lived in Texas (where we lived for 2 years five years ago). My landlord could have been fined for helping me. I could have been charged, investigated. It was a surprise pregnancy already. I was newly married, young, Mormon, and not great at remembering to take the pill. Would I have been blamed? I felt so much guilt, and heartbreak. I had finally gotten over the shock and the nervousness and I was so excited. I was a full 12 weeks. Twenty nine years later and those feelings are still so vivid. What we are doing to women in this country is disgusting and traumatizing.