Is there, a Mr. Carriage?

i was pregnant and now im not.

I understand immediately writing a substack after something like this could be considered gauche. In full transparency, I really don’t know why I’m doing it. Social media has always been a journal for me, a place where I just projectile vomit out my every thought. These thoughts are sometimes well cooked but often passing and impulsive. I've grown up on the internet, publicly. I’ve grown up here, healed here, self sabotaged here, flagellated myself for all to see.

 At times it became the only way I knew I existed. I've had a decent following since I was 16 years old. I only got access to the internet a few months before my first 10k followers. I got lucky enough that people wanted to follow me to watch me live my life. I got to exist on a stage, from the comfort of my phone. Then, I got to make money through onlyfans. Then, I got to document my love story. Then, i got to document my great awakening with womanhood and speak out against the sex work industry. I have been many versions of myself online, completely publicly.  

 I’ve been better at keeping my personal life more private these days, partly because that…might just be a part of growing up. Finding good friends who don't care about what you post or if you post, was a huge turning point for me. Also, there is a terrifying rule of the internet where if you garner a little attention online people claw at you for more and more access and they think they know you through little snippets and they want to bleed you for more. 

I’ve teetered this strange line. Perhaps, always looking at myself with disdain for my natural immediate inclination to share everything about myself publicly. I suppose it may be natural exhibitionism. I feel sheepish to say it makes me feel alive and here. To play a character online, to be earnestly myself; I  do the latter for as long as it doesn't hurt for people to see me stripped bare ...and then I retreat to the bit when I feel scared for her; when I've shared too much and people use it to hurt me. Both “beings” still me, just entirely compartmentalized. My relationship with the online could have its own article.

 It just feels like the big things should be here. I almost feel like I had to do this big preface spiel so you didn’t judge me too harshly for telling this story. I’m already apologizing for the earnest space I’m taking up, which is actually why I was drawn to write this at all.

If you’ve watched me online for a while you know how outspoken I am about women’s issues, even when it’s inconvenient and even when it makes me lose 30,000 followers (real numbers after i said what makes someone a woman is being female…i have another substack article going in depth) and even when it makes people feel justified to find my address and my mothers job. Basically what I’m saying is a lot of this online outspokenness has had a cost to my life. Not a huge cost, and I doubt it will be much more than people saying mean things to me; but It’s a trade off. I lose a bit of my privacy or favor, but then I get thousands of women speaking directly to me about how I’ve personally changed their life or altered their views in some way. This is so unique, rare and special to feel a personal positive impact. Whenever I want to run and hide away and never come to the digital public again, that call pulls me back. 

So…..i'm going to share my female experience with you. For you, for me…for the people who are nosy, for the people who will experience this, for the men who are curious, for the people who hate me.

So, I was pregnant. Now I am not. 

I'll get the “what” happened out quickly:

It’s not abnormal for my period to come weeks late or not at all, because I’m on progesterone birth control. But the weeks leading up to the positive test were filled with:

- horrifying restless legs (I had to get a neurology referral after two medications didn't work because I was positive I had MS. I mean, full body restlessness, up to my jaw. My nerves were crawling and vibrating. Worst feeling I have ever had, like my body was running from itself in place. 

-My breasts went up two sizes in a matter of a month. And they HURT. My husband just thought he got lucky and his wife's breasts expanded because he had good karma saved up. I was spooked.

-No food sounded good to me and I felt slightly nauseous all the time. 

-I was even weepier than normal, this is very concerning because even prior to pregnancy if there is a piano melody in any piece of media with any sort of baby animal, i am sobbing. I cried for everything. If the wind hit me, i cried.

-My allergies were so bad I started to be unable to wear makeup because I’d have a free flowing faucet down my face all hours of the day. 

-I had a huge ovarian cyst rupture. 

-Extreme fatigue and heat intolerance (thought i was just depressed again)

-3 week missed period in an already long 37 day cycle (normal for someone on my birth control.

Now I know, these are mostly, if not all symptoms of early pregnancy. But at the time I chalked them all up to just normal body things. The last thing I thought it would be, was pregnancy. Probably because THE last thing I wanted to be, was pregnant. 

So when I woke up one morning and my boobs were so sore that the bobbing to go downstairs felt like my skin was falling off, I decided to take one of the tests I keep in my bathroom.

 I peed and the two lines IMMEDIATELY showed up. I didn't have to wait even a minute.

I screamed for Connor, my husband of only 2 months, and in a slow motion succession: he grabbed me, my knees went weak, I started to sob into him, he grabbed my head, I somehow ended up on the toilet sobbing. And I remember repeating “I can’t do this” over and over. I assured him I'd have an abortion so he wouldn't have to worry about me making the decision to uproot both of our lives. I was terrified hed be mad at me, as if I'd done something to him. As if this was some sort of threat.

I had  this very strange separation of body when I learned there was something else inside of my body. It sort of put everything into perspective that I was a vessel. Not just myself, but something built to create and something connected to the universe in a primal and guttural way,  and all of it was completely out of my control. 

Not one moment went by when I considered keeping it. 

And while I’ve been pro-choice my whole adult life; there was a gnawing feeling writhing up my ankles and collapsing like waves into my body.

…I'm killing MY baby?Like sure other people can do what they want…but, but this is mine.

I kept having intrusive thoughts of glimpses of my husband as a toddler seen in photos, and myself. My mind would wander…what it would be like to just have it. I thought of myself as pregnant and my heart condition. My condition carries more risk when pregnant. We’d planned to do genetic testing to make sure the child would have the best shot, because of my health issues. (none serious, but all annoying.)  

Then came the shame. 

I can’t be one of THOSE women who have an abortion. 

One out of four American women, by the way, are THOSE women, but you can't help the places your mind goes when you're in a panicked state. I felt disgusted , like I couldn't take responsibility for my own body enough to keep myself from falling pregnant, even though I had done everything right. I mean, 5 years of everyday sex and not one pregnancy scare. We were very dialed in.

 Pretty immediately I went to reddit to see women talk about their abortion experiences. 9/10 of them were just as petrified as I was. 2/10 were unsure if they wanted to keep it. I was shocked to see one woman ask if 3 abortions in one year was…too many. My knee jerk reaction was obviously…yes. But I figured it's better for a person with that low of conscientiousness to not be a parent and she's obviously made the right choice. I sort of rationalized that any woman willing to kill her child at whatever point in time, has to have PRETTY GOOD REASONS. Even if she didnt….being forced to go through the dissociation of growing a person is obviously entirely unethical.

I started to question myself, and why or how it was so easy for me to make the decision. I was starkly smacked with my own selfishness. Aware that I could have the life I wanted, and the cost was killing my own child. I don't believe in the “clump of cells” thing. Of course it can be very young in gestation, but even when it looks like a little fish or alien…It is a baby. That is the potential for life, it will be a child and eventually an adult human if not intervened. My justification for being pro-choice is that no woman should be forced into being a vessel or breeding cow for bringing a human into the world if she doesn't want to be. I don't believe women owe the world children, and I truly believe maybe less people should have children. A LOT of the problems that we deal with in everyday politics are because of what happens to unwanted and underprivileged children. Why wouldn't we try to curb that by offering a solution of killing a child before it ever feels pain, or happiness, or grief, or unfairness. It seems merciful to me, a life form essentially frozen in time before it ever feels pain, its energy returning to the universe completely unriddled with its evil.

Furthermore, my mother had me at 18, her mother had her young, her mother had her young, her mother had her young. I come from a long line of women who didn’t get to be anything much more than mothers. Now, this is fine. a woman owes the world nothing and owes only herself  her happiness. If motherhood is your calling, it’s your calling. I would love to be a mother one day, but it is not my calling. 

I made the decision a few months ago to go back to school and my 10 year plan is a road to PhD. I’m starting almost at baseline at 25. This means I will not be done, even if I did years back to back, until I’m potentially 35 years old. i started talking to my doctor about freezing my eggs now, I thought I might take a break in between my masters and PhD to have children.  My husband and I had a plan.  I had a plan. I had a plan. Nothing was going to stop me. 

I had a plan.

I was going to be a woman with a career, and our eventual children would have two focused and driven parents. They would be loved, privileged and I would have a sense of purpose to make the world a better place that would hopefully be gifted to my children.

This pregnancy was not the plan and so I never faltered in wanting to go through with an abortion. Even if I felt…..sadness.

I kept telling Connor through heavy fat tears filling my mouth, “it did nothing wrong, it's just here at the wrong time.” “It's not its fault.” and I'd weep and hold my stomach. And he'd say “when we are ready, we are going to be incredible parents, and we get to pick the right time”

And while this was incredibly sweet and true, it just made me mad. There's nothing he could have said that would've been the right thing to say. He was supportive of any decision I made but it was like he couldn't feel the gravity of any of it, because he couldn't. It wasn't INSIDE of him.

Maybe it's the hormones bonding you immediately to your child, I just felt like he couldn't hear me. I was screaming, I alone was the one making the choice for someone to go INSIDE of my body and TAKE OUT the child i was building, and it was all so i could go to school. I couldn't decide if it was justified. I felt the natural urge to protect it or make excuses for why I couldn't go through with it. I didn't need to be justified to do it, I just kept getting caught up in deciding ultimately how bad of a person I was for doing this. I had to have some way to measure myself in those moments, how much self hatred was permissible, considering everything.

 I am lucky that my home state allows elective abortion up to 18 weeks. I was about 4.

It made me too anxious to talk to planned parenthood on the phone so Connor figured it all out for me, made the appointment for consultation. 

In the state of Utah you have to take, a quiz about pregnancy facts on the planned parenthood website that doesn’t count towards any sort of grade (weird), it’s basically just a presentation slide of pictures of in utero- fetuses to educate you, but also scare you, and also deter you. This is fine, I don't think anyone who is serious about getting an abortion would allow this to stop them; and I think showing the gravity of the situation to women is a net positive. It was uncomfortable. My baby was too tiny to look like any of the photos shown.

Then, from there, you have to call a Planned Parenthood official, then from there, you have to make an appointment consultation where they tell you about all of the risks of abortion and read out your rights and ask you what you want to do with the fetus once it’s out. I guess you can get a cremation and I bet you can even jar it at home if you wanted to. I suppose it is nice that we get to choose what we do with the potential person we've killed.

They give you the option of medical abortion, which is a pill… or surgical abortion, which is an aspiration abortion with a vacuum-like tool. Here I've attached the pros and cons of both.

https://www.clinic66.com.au/surgical-vs-medical-termination

Because of the cardiac complications * extremely low risk but im very careful* of the medical abortion, and how quick and easy the surgical abortion was, I made the appointment for a surgical, aspiration abortion. A week out from that moment I signed in the office, I was going to be put under general anesthesia and it would be over in less than 10 minutes, and the cherry on top was that they could place an IUD right after it. That way, I wouldn't have to worry about pregnancy for years. But I actually had a complex case that planned parenthood said they'd try to be prepared for but weren't sure they could be.

This is where i'm going to bob around in time a bit:

A few days earlier I had to go into the emergency room because 8 days prior to finding out i was pregnant, i had what i thought was an ovarian cyst rupture on my left side. brutal , horrifying, nail biting, 10/10 pain. There's also nothing doctors can do about it unless you develop an infection from it, so I didn't go in when it popped. But upon finding out i was pregnant, i thought it would be good to check up on what was going on in there.

When I was admitted they found my hcg levels were very low, this could be indicative of an early pregnancy or…ectopic pregnancy. They couldn't find anything in my uterus. It could've been because it was too early to tell, but it could've been nefarious. They decided because I was hemodynamically stable that they were just going to have y on an intensive follow up schedule to see if the pregnancy was progressive, and to go ahead with the aspiration abortion. But I was diagnosed with a “PUL”. pregnancy of unknown location. This is a very scary thing to be diagnosed with because you're essentially a ticking time bomb. The number one cause of death for mothers in the first trimester is ectopic pregnancy.

Well, like I said, a few days have passed, and I'm in the planned parenthood office for my 72 hour consultation. A young woman, probably 21, comes in with her young child, probably 5, and we sit close to each other in the waiting room while Connor helps me fill out paperwork. The girl and her mother laugh together. They look just alike. Long brown hair and both slender with bird-like builds and long faces. 

I think of my mother and i. My mother who, went to the clinic for a consultation for an abortion when she figured out she was pregnant with me. My mother who gave birth to me. I thought about when it was just us, before she married the man who would adopt me and become my dad. I think about the dreams my mother had for me and for us and what she was thinking about when she learned she was pregnant with me.I wondered if there were many times we laughed together in public. I wondered what her fears were when she found out. I wondered why she actually decided to have me. I was very aware the only reason I'm here is because my mother made an important decision at a pivotal moment. And because of that, I was able to experience pain and joy and love and despair and neglect and unfairness and…

 Then I wondered why she had me only to abandon me for men in her life, or to ignore me, or to send me away. Why did she make that decision? And how many times did she regret it? Would I regret this decision? Did the young woman in the waiting room, laughing and tucking her daughter's hair behind her ear, ever regret her decision? 

The little girl in the office filled the waiting room with laughter and her mother snickered back to her as if they were old best friends. I beat myself over the head, wondering if I was making a choice I'd regret. The context of being faced with a pregnancy after having been abused or neglected was very painful for me. It made me remember that before I met my husband, I was operating only having known what it was like to have your family reliably hurt you. But I always thought it was my fault. I always thought something was wrong with me, fundamentally. I guess this is in an effort to excuse my family's behavior, or to place some sort of blame. In reality and adulthood, I know there is nowhere to put this blame that will make me feel better. It wasn't my fault. My mother was young, and she wasn't ready. My father was schizoaffective bipolar, my grandparents were addicts. It's everyone and nobody's fault, and none of it changes a thing. But, the prospect of bringing someone here, created an awareness about life that I do not often think about. Would the child be doomed if it was kept? Maybe i was so quick to want abortion because i wasnt sure i wouldnt fuck up someones life if i raised them.

I get called in, I do my consultation, my abortion is scheduled, and while Connor pays I get a deep cramp in my uterus.

We get stuck in traffic on the way home. I topple over, and turn to Connor, obviously scared.

When we get home, I pee and look in the toilet. Blood, a lot of it. Which is exactly what the ER told me to come in for. Because blood could mean ectopic. And pain could mean it ruptured. And that could mean I am dying.

So we rushed in. The whole thing was actually extremely traumatic because nobody knew anything. I was getting poked and prodded. 3 different doctors put their fingers inside of me for pelvic exams, I had the big probe for the transvaginal ultrasound twice, and various other tests. I had two doctors tell me I needed to immediately go into surgery to remove my tube because it looked inflamed, or because they saw blood in my abdomen. Then, maybe I only needed a shot, then I only needed to wait. 

I don't own panties besides showy lingerie for special occasions, and I don't use any menstrual products besides a silicone cup, so I bled into a pair of Connor's boxers he grabbed for me right before speeding the 2 mile drive. I sat tiny in the hospital bed, vibrating with anxiety, heartbeat like a hummingbird just awaiting the results about a pregnancy I didn't want that could actually just kill me before I got to kill it. Sort Of a sick joke. Connor moved the chair closer to the hospital bed the whole time and held my hand with every probe a doctor stuck inside of me. 

We watched the Olympics on TV, most of it was women's sports. We both sat in awe of the athletes. The able-bodiedness and excellence of the greatest athletes is really awe-striking. Like superheroes we grew up reading about in comic books and watching on TV. 

Hours later my hcg was 73. This is a 70% decrease from 48 hours before. This is a good sign for me because it means…I am probably miscarrying. But because of my risk factors, the doctor keeps me overnight for observation. She pokes me every few hours and the doctors keep waking me up to check my vitals. Connor went home to check on the dogs  for only 10 minutes and get me a couple of my anxiety essentials like a plushie and peppermint oil. I clutched the teddy bear all night. Connor had just given it to me for my 26th birthday a few days prior. He got me a honey bear because he calls me “honey bear-ess”. Connor had no issue sleeping, he could fall asleep in a subway station metal concert while a terrorist attack goes off, but he wakes up every time a nurse or doctor comes in to check on me and asks the right questions because I am not reliably bold in public interactions. He blinks like a raccoon and he's half awake and disheveled every time and I remember how lucky I am to have someone witness my life with me.

All night I bleed into my makeshift diaper of Connor's boxers and the pad the hospital gave me. All night I was afraid to die. I kept scanning my body for pain and it kept me alert. I kept feeling bad for being excited. I didn't have to get an abortion because the baby was killing itself. Or my body was. Or both. It was a lot of blood, way more than a period and much thicker.

Before we went to the hospital I asked Connor to pray with me for the first time. I'm not religious but I often talk to God, or whatever is around or above us. I'd never prayed with anyone, and I don't think I had ever told anyone that I do pray.  The situation seemed grave enough to get Connor's prayer-power,  like how witches in a coven are more powerful together. He's even less religious than I am, but he obliged me. We prayed that I'd be safe and the pregnancy would resolve on its own because I was scared to have an abortion and i didnt want to have to make the choice I had to make. We prayed a second time in the hospital, eyes closed and horse olympics on in the background, where I just prayed for my health and thanked god for connor.

Morning came, and with it came the (almost) certainty I was miscarrying. Just a natural, old fashioned miscarriage. I learned about 50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage and about 30% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage. It felt shocking that this happens so often to women and I barely heard about it.

They sent me home after about 3 doctors came in to say goodbye and tell me what to look out for. They knew the pregnancy was unwanted so we all shared relief with each other.A few said congratulations sheepishly, knowing this was somehow a better alternative although I'm sure none of us would want to verbally articulate why.

I don't remember the ride home. I hadn't eaten in 48 hours because I was scared that at any moment I'd be rushed into emergency surgery. 

When we pulled into our driveway, and I got out of the car, I looked across the street and realized our neighbor's tree was blooming in a way that made it look like it was weeping. Our block smelled extremely floral. Our own apple tree has buds of tiny apples. Connor was ahead of me opening the door and I was 17 feet behind him, looking around, grateful to be alive and scared to move too much. 

Since being home I've had this feeling, like a blanket of snow has fallen on me. Something has died inside of me. Something I didn't want. I feel sick thinking about that. I didn't want it, and then I feel sick. Then, It died inside of me. My body has changed in some way. It feels different. It is a body that has been pregnant. 

I turned 26 only a week ago and still felt like a child. The body I live in only days later does not feel childish anymore. I feel changed, and heavier, older.

I don't know how to handle this. I make jokes and sometimes they make me feel evil and inhuman but sometimes they make me feel lighter.

 I got in a discord voice chat to play Elden Ring with my friends and it was the first time I'd heard any of their voices since my child died inside of me and… I felt like something had changed. Like this was different than when we'd done the same thing 5 days prior. I don't think they knew how to talk to me either. One had texted me while i was in the hospital, “is there a mr. carriage?”. I laughed at this, obviously. They're all men, and men don't talk to each other like women talk to each other. I've felt safe with them in this way, maybe perhaps my own avoidance of any deep emotion or connection with other women. I was very aware of my different sex this week, more than usual. The first person I called after I peed on the stick was my close friend claire. I was so aware during that moment how much I needed feminine depth and love. She said everything exactly right, like she couldn't understand but she could because all women have this fear, all women understand the gravity of having a womb. I think I even told her I didn't really want to talk about it, I just needed to tell a woman. It was a 3 minute call.She said she loved me and checked on me every few hours, even though she was in the middle of packing and driving, moving literal states, even if sometimes i didnt answer.

I guess I never fully felt my woman-ness until this. Never been afflicted by my own body in a way completely out of my control. I didn't choose to be a woman, it was something that happened to me. My pregnancy happened to me. And while it also happened to my husband, it was inside of me. I don't know how to talk about the gravity of something like this happening to me. My life diverged in 400 ways in my head the second I saw those two lines.

I'm glad I didn't have to make the choice. I would have felt the weight of that guilt my whole life. And I'm not sure I could've made that choice, imprisoning my husband to that choice; of being a father. He'd be an excellent father, he just wants to be ready. And realistically we could have made ourselves ready. I'm almost mourning this. Or, maybe it's not “almost”. I don't miss the fear of being pregnant, and even though I wanted to get an abortion, I miss the hope of being pregnant. Like, not the hope that I was pregnant, but the hope of life. the promise of a child laughing in a waiting room. I don't think I was as sure I wanted an abortion. I think maybe I didn't want an abortion but felt I needed one. 

I often feel endlessly and existentially frustrated that I have to make choices in my life that will affect the rest of my choices. Like, I feel frustrated that I can't have more than one life. In one life I would've loved to be a mother in my early twenties, with six babies living on a homestead. I would've loved to bake bread and giggle endlessly and raise cows. But i want to have a career of helping women get out of street sex work and prison, i want to work in the justice system and give it my everything. I want to work for 72 hours straight with no sleep and no food all in pursuit of saving people who are forgotten. And I can't have both, not at the same time. The weight of having to make a choice like this is uniquely female. Women are like gods in the way they can build humanity, and in the weight of their choices. I understand why the men in control of the world seek to legislate this power. While making the choice myself I was scared of how much I had. I could have impacted the lives of thousands of people with just the choice to have the child. I couldn't have had the career I wanted, my husband couldn't have had the career he wanted. The child would grow up and be whoever it was and impact the people it impacted based on how we impacted it. My actions are entirely consequential. Every action is entirely consequential. I guess I'd never felt it this much.

And up until this moment I'd never had anyone close to me die. My family is young and healthy. I've been extremely lucky this way. I've never felt close grief and death has never touched me in any substantial way. But this week something died inside of me. I didn't know them, but I could have; and it wasn't my fault and it wasn't their fault. It just maybe decided for itself it wasn't the right time either.

So, I was pregnant and now I'm not.