By Leah Spellman Berger
A lifeless baby bird lies on the sidewalk outside my work. Iced chai latte in hand, arms full, I rush in only to be stopped by the sight of its tiny wings sprawled out on the concrete. Its shiny little beak, its still damp matted feathers, its unlived life.
The thought of it panicking as it plummeted to the ground brings tears to my eyes. Where was its mother? How did it fall from its nest just hours or days after it broke through its shell? What should I do?
I don’t know, so I do nothing…
Sitting at my desk, unread emails looming, I replay the image again and again. What could its life have been? Would it pass the time playing in the nest with its baby brothers and sisters getting strong on a diet of bugs and worms? Once grown, would it spend its days soaring over the Scioto River? Bathing in bird baths? Singing each sunrise?
During my morning meetings I debate going back. I could get gloves from the kitchen and a pair of serving tongs and put it in Tupperware. I could bring it home to bury it in the back yard.
My baby was too small to bury. I never had the chance to see it. After the D&C at twelve weeks I left the doctor’s office with nothing to cling to. No moment to honor the lifeless baby that rested inside me for four weeks after its heart stopped beating. My body didn’t know that, like the baby bird, my baby would not make it.
***
Eleven months earlier while on a girls’ trip to Maine I found out. Our dream of having a second baby was going to become a reality. Looking out at the water, sun warming my face on the balcony where I sat journaling, I FaceTimed my husband and toddler to share the news. Wandering through the tourist shops I looked at moose stuffed animals, smelled evergreen-scented candles, and held up baby clothes. How would the neon-pink outfit with the red cartoon lobster that said, “I’m a keepah!” fit her? Would it swallow her tiny frame, or would she be so chunky she wouldn’t be able to fit into the newborn size? Feeling silly for shopping for her so soon, I put the tiny coat hanger back on the rack and got the Acadia National Park T-shirt for myself instead.
“There’s a baby in mommy’s belly,” I told my toddler the day I got home. “Baby,” he chirped back, touching my stomach. Even though it was earlier than normal, they did an ultrasound at six weeks since I was already scheduled for my annual physical. My husband and I grasped hands as we heard the swish-swish, swish-swish of the heartbeat. In the parking lot we held up the sonogram and posed for a picture. I didn’t know it would be our only one with her.
During those three months I envisioned the life we’d live together. I bought a box adorned with a floral design and stored it on the shelf in our closet. Slowly, I started to fill it with mementos—congrats cards from my family, the sonogram, a postcard from Maine where I wrote about finding out the exciting news. I didn’t know then that the large box—mostly empty—would symbolize the life unlived, the memories we’d never make to fill it.
***
I had spotting most of the first trimester during my first pregnancy, so I wasn’t too concerned when I noticed a few pink dots on my underwear. I brushed off the backaches the next day as just another pregnancy symptom. But the next morning when a streak of scarlet appeared, I thought I should at least call the doctor. “Some spotting and bleeding can be normal,” Google assured me as I waited for the office to open and researched on my own. “Why don’t you come on in so we can check and make sure everything is okay,” the nurse said over the phone. I rearranged my work meetings and went in.
The dim lighting and glow of the screen was a stark contrast to the typical bright fluorescent lights of the OBGYN office I had been in dozens of times. Until now, all had been marked with excitement as I saw each new scan, learned the gender, measured my now toddler’s growth when he was still a growing fetus. I assumed since I didn’t have complications during my first pregnancy, everything would be fine this time too.
“How far along did you say you are?” the doctor asked, a hint of concern in his voice.
“Twelve weeks tomorrow,” I said, hugging myself to keep the oversized starchy white gown closed. He measured again and again before sitting down on the stool and touching my arm.
“I’m sorry. The baby didn’t make it.”
I’m not sure if those were his exact words, but I didn’t need to hear him to understand. We lost our baby. I hadn’t even thought about having my husband come with me to the appointment. I was sure it was nothing. “You’ve had a ‘missed miscarriage,’” he explained. I later learned it’s a fairly rare occurrence, happening in only one to five percent of pregnancies. My baby had stopped growing, but my body refused to accept it.
A few hours later we were in the car driving to the procedure, too numb to know what to do. I had quickly agreed to the outpatient D&C the same day when the doctor said there was an opening and after I decided it seemed to be the best option when presented with a few—go home and wait it out, take a pill to jumpstart the bleeding, or get a D&C. “We can do it right from our office—it’s a very common procedure; only takes about ten minutes.”
“Let’s call her Samantha Josephine,” I said, breaking the silence as we drove. We didn’t know the gender, but I always thought it was a girl and naming her made her time with us seem real. In the office we waited next to a newborn nestled in a car seat as her mom waited for her first postpartum checkup and next to a woman with a bulging belly coming for her now weekly appointment. We played a game I often do to pass the time, making up words with letters from random office signs.
“Radio,” I whispered.
“Tree,” he countered.
We continued until I got stumped and gave up. The stillness allowed the sadness to seep in. Minutes later, I lay on the table, blasting music through my AirPods and squeezing my husband’s hand as I flinched, grunted, and wept as they took my baby from me.
In the weeks after the procedure I obsessed about the small things that perhaps jinxed my pregnancy—the baby outfit in Bar Harbor I didn’t buy; the pregnancy journal I bought only to return because I didn’t think I’d actually write in it. Maybe if I had bought it; kept it…I retraced my steps down Main Street on Google Maps, trying to remember which souvenir store the outfit was from. I even called several stores to try and find it. Finally, I saw a similar one online. Slowly, I started to fill her box. Not with memories of her life but markers of her passing. The sympathy cards friends sent, the pink baby blanket I asked my mom to knit for her, the letter I wrote to her before I went in for the procedure—all of it went in the makeshift casket.
***
It’s been a few weeks since I passed the baby bird outside work, but I still think of it most days when I walk in. Should I have taken it home to bury it? Would that have somehow given me closure for the loss of Samantha? When I went back later that day, its tiny frame was gone. Now all I’m left with is the image of its ending and the wondering:
Why do some birds fly while others die?