even more ...

When I was 6 months pregnant I had to deliver a dead fetus (my baby). I had been hospitalized for a week & thought that I had escaped the death knell...I had been put in the miscarriage section of the maternity ward as I had started having blood spotting after personally attending one husband & 3 small children with the flu coming out both ends of all of their bodies. They would throw-up and I would clean them up & not even make it into the bathroom in time sometimes for me to vomit from cleaning theirs.I had no help available. My mother-in-law had passed prior my ever knowing her. My own mother died 3 weeks before my first child (my now 39yr old daughter) was born. My own father & I were EC/F. At the time his own father was angry with me for going off on him for teaching my oldest son (age 5) to laugh at sticking his tongue out at me. So I was all alone.I had been so worried bec it had gone on for a week & I had lost weight bec I couldn't keep any food down. I was scared I would lose my baby so I called my obstetrician. He said not to worry as miscarriages generally occur within the first 3 weeks. He added that the baby would "take the food stores" from my body! (Which obviously never happened!)Finally, I passed out on my feet & was admitted to the hospital. At which time my father-in-law cared for the children while my ex husband took me to the hospital.My room mate, a young black woman,only so noted as I was unable to relate her whatsoever, because she was also happy she had miscarried (so she said). She would laugh & make jokes about it. I thought maybe she was just compensating for her grief but it was making me, in my predicament, both sad & sick. So, since the miscarriage section was at the end of the ward not many aides or nurses were present. I was all alone there too.I had been sitting, Indian-style,on the middle in my bed when i started peeing myself. I figured I would just wait till I was finished before I called the nurse. So I waited but after a few minutes I hadn't stopped so I looked under my covers only to discover that I was sitting on a pool of blood!!I was so scared! And all alone.Needless to say, all attention was suddenly on me. Medical personnel were literally running around taking care of me shoving bunch up towels in my crotch while they transferred me onto a gurney & wheeled me into the delivery room! They induced delivery. My ex husband wasn't there. I delivered alone.Everything after that is kind of a blur. I remember bring brought home from the hospital. I could barely walk up the driveway or lift my coffee cup after I got home cause I had lost so much blood. I was in shock.But the worst part was about to come...My little children came running over to me. They were 2, 4, & 6 yr old. "Where's the baby. Mommy?!!"they insisted. I thought, "He hadn't even told them! They thought I was bringing a baby home. I always had in the past."But what really hurt the most is that in my loss and the traumatic shock I had suffered .. I had no baby to bury. By the time, I sobered up to reality. It had been "taken care of" My husband had not made arrangements. I guess since it "was not a genuine baby'" it didn't count. So. you see, I even had an EC baby through no fault of my own. IT had been disposed of.. IT did not qualify for a burial in anybody's mind .. at the time. And now as I look back on it. to this day, I can't help but feel... I abandoned my child (though through no fault of my own.) Again.NDY