My unplanned but celebrated third pregnancy is now an unexpected miscarriage in process.  All of the excitement, anticipation, imagining, and nurturing around this impending baby is now just incessant blood on a pad.  It is simultaneously surreal and inescapably graphic.  We were so curious about this new being and eager to meet him or her.

After 5 days of bleeding, crying, and hibernating, today, I showered, changed my aged clothes and broke the news to my 3.5 year old daughter.  We anguished over how and what to tell her… finally, the moment and way arose.  I was reading to her and somehow the story segued into a discussion of eggs and chickens.  She was asking about how eggs get in and out of chickens and how eggs become chickens.  After we’d momentarily exhausted her line of questioning, I explained that I learned something when I went to the doctor… that the egg in my tummy was a special egg and isn’t the kind that turns into a baby.

“Well, where will the egg go?”, she asked.

“It will come out eventually”, I answered.

“I want to see the egg,”  she stated.

“That would be neat but with this kind of egg, it is SO small that we won’t be able to see it.  Not this egg, not this time,” I ventured.

Seemingly satisfied, she insisted I resume reading.

At bedtime, she pulled up my shirt and placed her hand below my belly button to “feel the baby.”  Breathing deeply, I reminded her that because of the special egg, we won’t be able to feel this baby.