Sometimes we don't get to choose.

On Friday, July 21, 2006, I was initiated into a club I hoped never to be a part of. The welcome packet includes a delicious popsicle following surgery, a personalized plastic bracelet, a prescription for 600mg Motrin, a brief publication entitled "D&C Home Care Instructions," and as a final parting gift, a feminine pad the size of Montana. I call it The D&C Club. Lovely bunch of women, really. But still, I'd rather not be counted among them. I am there among at least ten women I know personally and can think of off the top of my head. And there's no telling how many others I don't know about yet. I am just flabbergasted at how common this is, at how many women say things like "Oh, we've been through that..." or "...when I had mine...."

Every woman knows those little letters. Until Tuesday of last week, I didn't even know what words those letters stand for, only their very sad implication when they are coupled with that tiny conjuction. And I would say most women don't know. Dilation and Curettage. Those words have kept me up at night, haunting me. DILATION. CURETTAGE! RELINQUISHED!!! But no matter how haunting the words are, life won't let me turn in my membership card. Here I am...a life member. No turning back.

No turning back the clock to before. Before we waited extra months to get pregnant again (which might have allowed time to try again for a 3L baby--that's lingo for a baby during third year of law school, an optimal time to have Daddy around). Before I agreed to go to the doctor alone that day. Before I kept my thoughts to myself when the doctor didn't hear a heartbeat with the doppler, even though I was dying inside and wanted to hear him admit it was bad that there was no discernable heartbeat with doppler at twelve weeks. Before I said, "Everybody think positive thoughts...I would rather not go through twelve more weeks of nausea," just as he began the ultrasound. Before I witnessed his determined stare and morose silence for three straight minutes while he studied the ultrasound image to make 100% sure my baby was dead before he told me so. (He didn't have to say it. I knew before he even confirmed it.) Before he turned the monitor my way and allowed me to see the lifeless little bean, still and silent, no flashing heartbeat where the little dark spot (heart) is. Before that image was etched into my mind forever. Before my stunned and disappointed response was "Well, that's a bummer." Before he said the size of the baby indicates it was only seven and a half weeks along. Before the words, "So my baby died over a month ago and I didn't even know it?" passed from my lips. Before the only ultrasound photo the doctor could give me--the only tangible thing I will ever have of this baby--got crumpled in the bottom of my bag. Before I had to call my husband to deliver the news. Before the day of sorrow that followed, and the day of feeling full of death that followed that, and the day of resignation that followed that, and the day of emptiness that all of these days were leading up to. Before I signed my name below the words "Any and all claims to the contents of my uterus and/or the fetus I hereby relinquish," pausing after only four letters of my signature to absorb the reverberation of that horrible word--relinquish--and pour out some sorrow as I completed what had to be done.

After my surgery, I remember nothing before I felt a tear fall down my cheek, and I became aware of the finality, of my emptiness. I was deeply sad, and my husband finally gleaned that I was regretting that I didn't get to say goodbye. Afraid to see, but more afraid to regret not doing so, I requested to see, to know what happened to "the contents of my uterus." The nurse was right. There was really nothing to see. Our baby was the size of a pinto bean, and amidst "the contents of my uterus" it was nothing seeable. But I needed to know that. To feel like I had the last word. To feel like I got to say goodbye. To let go. To relinquish.

I relinquished. I relinquished my own flesh and blood, and God didn't ask me for my opinion in the matter.

Goodbye, Baby. I miss you.