Sarah Ophelia Plaisance

Sarah Ophelia Plaisance

August 5^th, 2017

Sarah Ophelia Plaisance was like a shooting star, by the time you saw her, marveled at her beauty, and made a wish, she was already gone.  For the 17 days that I knew I carried her, I loved her and was honored to know her, even if most days I didn’t believe she was there.

I have spoken publicly about my miscarriage of her on Facebook, but I wanted to put something more permanent down on paper.  The date of my last missed period was April 21, although I did have some bleeding for a few days in June.  Dr. Hirsh, my OB/GYN believed that her conception date was in June.  Dr. Brown and the ER told us Sarah had stopped growing at 7 weeks, so his date didn’t line up with the June date.  Jay and I believe that she was conceived May 5^th, so she was a Beltane baby, which would have made her about 8 ½ weeks old when I miscarried her. 

The night of her conception was a lovely night.  I had started working on uploading my book that day, and was feeling fine.  My periods have been coming more regular, since I cut mom out of my life last year, and so I wondered if I might be fertile.  I kind of counted days and guessed.  Hey it was Beltane, time for love, sex and fertility, right. 

That month I began to develop breathing problems in my left lung.  It hurt when I laid down at night, I could feel something kind of squeak in my lungs, each breath felt like a rubber band was around me.  And I was exhausted, more tired than I had ever been in my entire life.  We hoped at first that it would just go away.  I was facing my own imposed deadline of trying to be finished with the book by the first of June.  I was tired but other than that I felt good, happy, and my negative thoughts seemed to have stopped.  I missed my period in May, but I thought nothing about it.  This often happens when I am under good or bad stress, no big deal right.  The doctors had told me it would take a team to get me pregnant, and 14 years of unprotected sex, had yet to yield anything. 

My breathing problems continued, as well as pain in my heart.  Of course being a big woman I am always fearful.  After about 6 to 8 weeks of this exhaustion and breathing problems I decided to risk going to the doctor, and being told it was nothing.  My regular doctor was out, so I saw a friend of his, who spent I think a sum total of 3 min with me.  Blood work, ex-rays, and a urine test later, with no pregnancy chaser (cause I told them I could not get pregnant, I wish now I had, or they had at least asked why), and no answers.  They gave me a steroid and an antibiotic, and no explanation to my problem.  Two weeks later I came back, with the same problem.  I saw my regular PCP and he said, “Well your heart is a little enlarged.  I’d like to get you in for an echo, and a CAT-scan right now.”  That was Friday night, Father’s day weekend.  Again I was asked, “Are you pregnant?”  I glared at him and told him, “No way.”  Again I regret that I didn’t say, “Why the fuck not,” and have the damn test.  Maybe she wouldn’t be dead; I’ll never know.

I did not want the cost of going in the hospital.  So we made appointments to see a cardiologist for later in the week.  When I was asked what I wanted to do I said, “I want to talk to Jay.”  So I went to his office.  He said, “You’re going.”  So we went and spent 24 lovely hours there.  For the CAT-scan they tried to put an IV, so they could give me contrast.  I blew all 7 times they tried, had a panic attack in the middle, and finally they had to do it without it.  Nothing there.  I had an Echo.  It took a month for the results to come back and be relayed to me, it was fine.  Blood work all normal, and no they didn’t do a pregnancy test, even though I asked for one.  So Saturday morning the doctor comes in and says, “Well we don’t see anything on the CAT- Scan, your blood work is fine, you’re heart is not enlarged, and since your EKG was okay we think your Echo will be too.  We don’t know what’s wrong with you.” 

Here I was in the same place, in the same hospital, with the same people I was 10 years before, when I had been given the same diagnoses.  I had pain, and no one knew why, or really honestly didn’t seem to care.  I was fucking livid!  And I told him about having been checked in to the hospital all those years ago, about my excruciating pain, and that the doctors said, “Oh it is your hiatal hernia causing you hip pain, and pain in your vagina.”  (I was later diagnosed with IC and pelvic girdle dysfunction.)  This doctor upon hearing this said, “I would see a GI doctor.  It might be your hernia.”  I was so fucking mad, I damn near threw him out of my room.  I turned away from him, he got the idea and left.  I was so mad I ripped off the heart monitor!  Jay had gone to get breakfast for himself.  I was so mad I had to throw something!  So I stripped my bed, his bed, dirty towels and put everything in the hamper.  I packed my stuff, and just waited. 

Bobby Joe and Amy, cousins who are more like an Aunt and Uncle to me, came in about that time to see me, brought me coffee, and I just cried in Amy’s arms and feel apart.  Here I had spent all this money I didn’t have, to be told, once again, that there was nothing wrong with me.  I asked the Doctor, “Is it psychosomatic?”  He said no.  I had explained to him that being a crazy, fat woman in the South doctors don’t take me seriously.  He had no explanations for my breathing problems, and seemed honestly like I was just another number and he didn’t care. 

We left there and went to Wal-Mart.  Tired of being asked if I was pregnant I bought a test.  I thought, it was be negative, so I bought a cheap one.  They are always negative, so why waste the money.  Jay and I have this system where I pee on the stick and then give it to him.  He doesn’t tell me anything unless it is positive.  But this day he was at work when I took it. 

I took the test and when the results came back positive I said, “I can’t be pregnant.  I don’t get pregnant!”  I called Jay and said, “Hey hunny.  I just took the test and there is a plus sign.  I’m not sure what to do.  Is that good thing?”  He confirmed that it was, and I could hear joy and shock in his voice.

We were both in shock and hesitant to believe it.  We had been through fertility medicine, and when that failed I was told, “Go home and lose a hundred pounds and it might happen.”  We gave up hope and have learned to be contented living without children.  Several of my childhood friends are now grandparents.

We were in shock and tried to not be too happy, because we knew it could be a false positive.  We found an OB/GYN who took high risk clients and when I talked to them on the phone they said we did not need a blood test to confirm.   We told a few friends and family.  We had to wait until Jay’s next pay check to afford the $100 co-pay to see the doctor.  So in the mean time, I read my cards again, and they confirmed it.  The Sun card came up again, just as it had in my reading a few months ago.  I called Mother Mari and asked her to do a reading to confirm my pregnancy.  She read my runes and she was told I was carrying a girl.  I knew that already, but didn’t tell her.  I had asked the sex of the child to my runes, and been told it was a girl too.  So we named her Sarah Ophelia.  What we had always wanted to name her.

I started a group of letters to her, and wrote often.  I fed her regularly, with the best food I knew to give her.  We even began to read to her.  And I rested, which I hated because I had so much to do.  I had cramps most of the time I was pregnant with her, on my right side. 

Some days I believed it, and some days I didn’t. It was too much for me to comprehend.  Even now it seems like it was all a mistake or a dream, but knowing an impossible thing is possible, I think changes you.  I thought of her often and then would forget I was pregnant and go back to what I was trying to do.  I worried constantly how we would feed and clothe her, afford to by her school supplies.  I began to read books on pregnancy, and went to the Thrifty Peanut to buy a few. 

Sunday we took Precious for Swimmy day at the lake.  It started bleeding Monday.  With IC there are times when you can have an irritant and bleed from your bladder, in fact most of the time I have microscopic blood in my urine.  I thought I am just having a flare, but by Tuesday I was passing small clots.  I believed it was coming from my bladder but by Tuesday night I could not tell where it was coming from.  Wednesday was the big day.  Jay took the morning off work to take me to the OB/GYN.  They took me in for an ultra sound, and I informed them I was having an IC flare and was bleeding.  They had never heard of IC.  They could not find her with the belly monitor, so they had to do a vaginal ultra sound.  Now under ideal conditions this is fairly painful for me because of my IC, but I was in so much pain that I was screaming, and biting my hand, and Jay’s hand to keep from screaming more.  I just wanted it over with.  They never could get good pictures.  I think because I was jumping around too much.  Finally the tech stopped and said, “I don’t know what to do.  This should not hurt her like this.”  When I got off the table I nearly collapsed, but stopped myself.  In pain Jay and I hobbled to the bathroom to put on some clean panties and a fresh kotex.  I think I was miscarrying at this point, and that is why I was in so much pain.  My cervix somehow did not seem right, like it was not as strong as it usually was.  I’ve just looked it up, and I wonder if I was already in early labor at that point.

We went in to visit with Dr. Hirsh, and she confirmed that I was in fact pregnant.  I cried I was so happy.  I showed her my period dates and she believed that the baby was about 4 weeks.  She wanted me to come back in two weeks and we would do blood tests and all that good stuff.  She was great and I really liked her.  I hope to see her again at least as an GYN.

On the way home, we called the family and told them we were confirmed.  We asked Kenny and Lucy to be Godparents, and they agreed.  I was so happy.  It was a wonderful few hours.  Jay dropped me at home.  There was a lot of blood and I was passing bigger clots.  We didn’t know what was going on.  He looked and said it was coming out of both.  He went back to work and I tried to rest, but I had problems.  I felt like I was having a period, with cramps that went down into my legs.  I had trouble sitting on my pelvis, so I laid down.  I just could not get comfortable, so I ended up laying on a pallet on the floor.  I called Pam and talked to her about 5 and told her I was in a lot of pain, and I just wanted someone to talk to.  We chatted for a while and then I called Lucy, and we began to plan my baby shower.  I told her I wanted to do it around Halloween, “A boo for the Boo,” was going to be our theme.  We talked about my pain and my bleeding and they both soothed my fears that spotting was normal in the first trimester. 

Jay came home and from then till about sunset it seemed to just get worse.  I just could not get comfortable, I could not stand, or walk without pain.  Finally I ended up leaning.  I keep going back and forth to the bathroom thinking I had to poop, but nothing came out.  And there was just so much blood.  I finally was in so much pain that I made him call my urologist and then the OB/GYN’s office.  They both said to take me to the hospital.  At one point I remember backing myself into the corner, because of the look on Jay’s face.  I started crying saying, “I’m sorry.  It will go away.  There is nothing wrong with me.”  I was terrified of another hospital bill and that I was miscarrying.  He called the boys at the fire station. 

The ambulance came down the road, and out of it came our friend Paul.  I cried, that it was him.  He is such a good man, and damn good nurse.  Before he even opened the back door of the truck, I was handing him my paperwork with my meds on it, driver’s license, and insurance card.  Jay was running around behind me packing my bag, tending to the kids, and putting Star and Henry away.  The pain I had been feeling at that time seemed to be coming in waves and intensifying.  At no time, during my entire hospital stay was I told I was in labor and having labor pains.  Even when I asked the nurse again as we were leaving the ER, “Why am I in pain?!”  I was told they did not know.  I had to go and talk to two nurses after words who confirmed that yes sometimes women who miscarry, do so with labor pains.  My pain was coming every 10 min or so.  Just this intense wave of pain, then me screaming, and finally it would subside, long enough for me to feel okay again, and then it started all over again.

I arrived at the hospital screaming my head off.  Once in the ER room the stupid doctor comes up during a contraction and asks, “How are you doing?  Are you on any meds?”  Paul had already given the nurse my list with meds on it and all my info.  I was in no capacity to talk and very pissed off at that point.  I finally was able to say to him, “She has the list.”  And at last the nurse confirmed to him that she had a list of all my medications.  Jay arrived about that time and I am not sure about what happened in the next little bit.  I was given a total of 8mg of Morphine.  That shit is awesome.  Makes you feel warm and fuzzy and forget your problems.  Gods no wonder it is so addictive, and it works almost instantly. 

I was sent for another ultrasound with much bickering.  I told him I had already had one today.  He told me he had no access to those records, which is a lie because it was all done at the same hospital, just a different branch, and all of their records are tied in together by computer.  Thankful this time I was high and it didn’t hurt that bad.  My tech said, “They couldn’t get clear pictures?”  When I told him no he stifled a laugh.  I asked him what he saw, and he answered, “The doctor will have to tell you.”

Dr. Brown came in about midnight to tell me that, “You have a UTI and you are miscarrying.  Your baby stopped growing at about 7 weeks and there is no heartbeat.”

I said, “So she’s dead.”

“There is no heartbeat.”

I asked if I would have to have an abortion, and he told me, “No, you should pass it in the next day or so.  You won’t even know.  It’s just a little clump of cells.” 

I asked him, “So I killed her, because I didn’t believe I was pregnant.  My negative energy, and somehow my body killed her, with too much worry, too much stress.”

He just looked at me confused, and then at Jay who told me, “No you didn’t kill her.”

I was loaded up with antibiotic and sent home.  It least the UTI explained why I was peeing blood.  We stopped to fill our prescriptions and have a snack.  We got home about 2 in the morning.  Jay left for work a few hours later, but came home early to be with me.  That morning I passed something that was about 6 inches long, and my pain stopped not long after that.  In it I could recognize an umbilical cord and a tiny little right leg, and the rest I couldn’t.  It was a mash of cells.  I know y’all think I am gross for reaching my hand in the toilet to retrieve it.  But I could not stand the idea of my daughter’s finally resting place being my septic tank.  I wrapped what I found up in tissue, and gave Jay a chance to look at her.  Then I wrapped her in pink tuile, circled her with dried flowers and herbs just as I had so many fur babies before her, folded it all up and tied it with a black ribbon. I rocked her for a few minutes, sang to her, and cried.  Holding her felt no different to me then holding any other child.  And I knew in that moment that I really have been a mother for more years then I care to count.  She was just a different species.  And her life was no more and no less important than my other children.  Jay and I walked out to our little grove and buried her in Holda’s Well.  The same place we had buried Punka so many years before. 

I’ve spent the last three weeks or so resting.  The first week I bled so much I didn’t know I had that much blood in me.  I made calls to my PCP and OB/GYN who were sad to hear that I had lost the baby, but unless I was soaking a pad an hour that I didn’t have to come in.  I have not seen a doctor since I was in the ER.  It took a week for all the pain to go away and two for all the blood to stop.

I have been exhausted, board out of my mind and frustrated for the last few weeks, until this week when I have finally be able to work a normal schedule.  You clean up after the dogs, wash clothes, write, do dishes, repeat.  My breathing has returned to normal, and after talking with a nurse friend of mine, she believed that it was related to the pregnancy.  That the baby was putting such strain on me that it was aggravating my asthma. 

I have been very open about the miscarriage and losing Sarah.  I posted on Facebook the morning after, and received wonderful comments, messages, and phone calls.  I think this honestly helped me get through this.  I was struck by the number of women who opened up and told me about their similar experiences.  Making those phone calls to Beau, and my family were some of the hardest things I have ever had to do.  It reminded me of when Momma Muriel died. 

Friday I posted to my yarn group and told them they had all asked what they could do for me, I said I need hugs.  Our attendance had been low lately being that its summer, so I asked if they would all please come to our regular meeting.  And several of them made a point to show.  It was very healing for me to sit with them and talk about all of this, and to listen to them tell their stories of losing their own babies.

I called a cousin who had been through a similar experience.  She had delivered an 8 month old stillborn.  She was told she could never have children.  She has PCOS to, and erratic periods so she thought nothing of missing them for so long.  She had no symptoms of pregancy.  She told me point blank, “I went to a dark place after my child died.  I will not let that happen to you.  So if you need to call me and cry and scream, I am here for you.”  I think we spent an hour talking on the phone, and it was wonderful. 

Jay has been wonderful through this all.  He has been my rock through both hospital visits, and the grieving process.  I have yet to see him cry though and that worries me.  I think he has just not been doing it in front of me.  I am continually asking him, “How are you doing with all this?” and he says, “Good baby.”  He told me in the ER that night, “I don’t care if we lose the baby.  I just can’t lose you.”  I told him, “I’m not going anywhere.” 

The other day when I cleaned her grave and showed him, he got a little teared up and sad.  I think now that I am better, he might be able to process all this a little more.  That is her grave on the picture above, circled in white quartz stones. 

The cards tell me that another child is imminent, and I hope so.  At least now we know it is possible, something we didn’t know before.  So I am taking my prenatal vitamins, and doing deep breathing exercises to try to keep my root and sacral chakras open and cleared.  Preparing to become a vessel for the next child.  I told Jay last night, that maybe Sarah came to open the door and clean me out physical, emotionally and spiritual, to prepare me for the next time she tries to come into our world.  Jay thought it was good that I could look at it like this.  I saw my councilor on Monday, and shocked as she was about all this news she said, “Ilsa you realize that if this had happened a year ago, you would have been a basket case.”  I agreed.  My life is in order now.  I am who and where and what I want to be in this life.  It took a long time, and as hokey as it sounds, I think I am ready now. 

Ilsa

You can write!

By the time I was 12 I was settling into my new family well.  I knew all the players and all the places.  When I was nine, Pappy, Dad’s dad, died.  Although we did not have many years together, I was always sure he loved me and wanted me in the family.  By the time I was 11 I started doing genealogy on my new family.  Mainly I was trying to keep all the family stories straight in my head, but I also hoped it would appease Novelle.  It never did. 

My father, used to tell me the most extraordinary stories, of his Great-Grandfather who fought in the civil war.  I began to take my new families history as my own.  I was also hungry, to learn anything about Oma, that I could.  History was always alive and present in my life.  Both my Dad and my uncles were great history buffs.  I went to a historic church and lived in a very historical town.  Grandpa would also tell me wonderful stories, about the sea and all the different countries he had visited.

In 6^th grade I had a phenomenal teacher named Debbie Pace (now Debbie Silver).  She always had a smile, had bright red hair, loved science and lived every bit of her craziness and reveled in her wonderful weirdness.  She is the kind of teacher, that had a dramatic impact, on every student she taught.  She LOVED to teach.  It was not just a job to her, it was her calling. She gave us the beautiful luxury of letting us be ourselves, and never chastising us for it.  I remember speaking with an Australian accent for about 6 week and she never asked me to stop.  She just let me, be me. 

Many of us are still glad to call her friend today.  She would eventually leave our little school, and Louisiana for better opportunities in Texas.  She now teaches other teachers how to teach.  May you all be blessed, to have a teacher like her, in your life someday.

Ms. Pace taught all 6^th graders science.  But that year, I happened to have her for homeroom, which included literature and spelling as well.  She was also gifted in these departments.  Every day we started the day in the same way.  The pledge was followed by a few moments of silent meditation.  Before the meditation everyone was encouraged to say if they had, for lack of a better term “prayer requests.”  Although it was never called that.  You know pray for my mom cause she has cancer, or my dad pulled another drunk last night, or I am really scared about the test we are going to take today, etc.  You would not believe what came out of our mouths.  Kids talked about family members being sick, about being bullied, and I think even once or twice abuse was implied if not downright mentioned.  What’s tough about being that age, is that no one will listen to you.  The silent meditation helped us to get our minds off of what they were on, and onto our school work, and it showed in our grades. 

I am vehemently apposed to prayer in school.  You may think everyone should be fine with shoving Christianity down everyone’s throat, cause you think everyone should be Christian.  But what about the little Buddhist boy in the corner or the Jewish girl sitting at head of the class? Everyone’s faith should be respected and I believe in the separation of church and state.  I, however, see no harm in a few moments of daily meditation and stillness. You could pray or simply sit quietly, it was your choice.

Also you have to remember I went to small school.  No nurse, no security guards, no councilor, no art and no sex ed.  A loving teacher was a godsend to us.  She listened to us.  And not only did she believe us, she believed in us.  I was not a writer until that year.  She had us working on stories for something and I started getting upset.  She came over to me and I said, “I can’t do this.”  She held the pencil in my hand and said, “Yes you can write.”  She was the first to believe in me.  I know many others who felt the same way. 

Although it was widely known in my family that I wrote, it was never encouraged.  Nor was it ever mentioned, to me that I should or could write for a living.  Even when I was in college, I was not encouraged by the family, to study more about writing.  I always believe I was not good enough.  I knew my spelling was awful and my grammar was not the best.  I believed no one wanted to hear what I had to say.  I still struggle with that.  I have even had moments of that this week, where I thought about deleting this blog, because I feel no one wants to listen to my boring, and ordinary life story.  I have resolved I must soldier on, at least for the moment.

I was having trouble with boys about that time as well.  The year before I had been put in braces and developed breasts, now they didn’t just come in as A’s, no they couldn’t do that.  I never remember being in a training bra.  Nope mine grew in as B’s.  By the time I was in 6^th grade they were C’s.  So having large breasts has always been part of my identity.  Boys began to want to touch my breasts, and pop my bra.

I had braces, so I had to go after lunch every day and brush my teeth.  I don’t know if you remember the first pump toothpastes we had.  I think mine was Aquafresh.  It was in this hard ass plastic bottle.  Now I used to care that pump in my blue jean purse, along of course with my book.  The boys would go to touch me, and I would wind up my purse like a sling and PAWYAH!  I would hit them with it.  They would just start screaming!  “What have you got in there a brick!”  Serves them right.

About the time I got breast I got my period as well.  Thankfully my mother had had the talk with me, and I knew what was going on.  In those days I would often hide out in the bathroom after brushing my teeth, because I did not like my 5^th grade teacher, and did not want to go back to class.  I often heard girls go in the stall and begin to scream.  They had started and had no idea what was going on.  Many of the believed they were bleeding to death.  I would calm them down.  Explain this was natural, that they were not dying, and that they should talk to their mom when they got home.  I would them give them a Kotex and show them how to use it. I would continue to carry extra protection with me, until well into high school.  I became know as the one to come to for such things. 

As gross as the above story may seem, I want you to understand that women often do not understand how their bodies work. For many of us in Louisiana, we were denied that right to learn about our own bodies in school, by people who put their morals ahead of our education.  Some girls never got the talk about their bodies, or much less about sex.  The hormones that accompany puberty were never explained to me.  I remember, that even the encyclopedias that contained pictures of sex organs, were not on the shelf at my local library.  They were kept under the desk, and you had to be a specific age, or be researching something in that particular book to even see it. 

In 6^th grade I had my first official boyfriend.  His name was Melvin.  He had lovely dark black hair, light eyes and little ears that stuck out and turned red when he was embarrassed or cold.  He was so cute.  We were set up by friends.  He was a very nice fellow, but I didn’t feel anything for him.  He was terrible shy.  I don’t even think we held hands.  It lasted all of 6 weeks.  Melvin gave me two bracelets.  One was metal and one was some simple black beads on a string.  To break up with him, I public cut the bracelet off my wrist, in front of him on the bus.  I was not really mad at him.  I was mad at my friends, who kept whispering in my ear about the two of us.  I could not stand the pressure. 

I did not know until much later that Melvin was very poor.  I have no idea where those bracelets came from, or what they meant to him.  I also did not know until years later, when one of my guy friends told me, that Melvin had been in love with me for a long time.  Finding out somebody loves you changes you’re perception of them.  I began to develop feeling for him a few week before we graduated, but by then it was too late.   

I was attracted to dysfunctional, bad boys, who used, abused, or worse ignored me.  The kind of love Melvin offered me was quiet, and slow, and healthy.  Things I was not used to.  So I passed him by.  Something I almost did with Jay as well.  When I married Jay, I realized that he and Melvin shared many characteristic.  I finally understood how much I may have hurt Melvin. 

I had the opportunity, at my 10 year reunion to apologize.  But I was so nervous I could not do it to his face, and so I instead apologized to his wife.  She carried the message for me.  I saw him recently at our 20^th year reunion.  We hugged and we were glad to see each other.  He has been happily married for many years, to the same woman, and has a family of his own now.  I continue to wish them all the best.

Ilsa