Anyway, we kept the lid on my pregnancy (barely) until I had gotten out of my first trimester. In September, when I was a respectable fourteen weeks along, we decided to break the news to our family. We told my mom and my sister and then drove to Portland for the weekend to visit and tell my companion’s family they were a few months away from their first grand-spawn.

As we drove back we were very pleased with ourselves; the deed was done and now everyone who needed to know, knew. It seemed cruel to tell Franny right then–six months is a long time to wait when you’re four. I felt weird and feverish all weekend and chalked it up to some problems I had a week prior: my midwife told me that my blood test revealed that I was slightly anemic, and that I had a UTI I needed to take antibiotics for.

We took a long weekend and got back to Seattle on a Monday evening. My companion decided to spend the night at my house, and we settled down to go to sleep. Suddenly, I felt a popping sensation in my lower pelvis. I pulled the covers back and saw a torrent of blood rushing out of me. I leapt up from the bed and all I could do was think to go to the bathroom and stand on the tiles. The bathroom always seems like the place to go when things are going horribly wrong.

More blood ran down my legs, followed by clear fluid. I cried because I thought that was the end; my baby was dying and I couldn’t do a thing about it. I called the midwife on duty and she said that what I described sounded like a complete miscarriage. She gave me instructions and told me to rest. I took a shower and sat up with my companion for a while, after he had cleaned up the bed and cleaned the bloody footprints off the floor.

“Do you want to try again, later?” he said. I nodded. “We should wait for a few months, until I get a really good job and you’re not anemic anymore. You should be healthy.”

I didn’t have much to say then, except that I realized something.

“I feel…better,” I said.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“I don’t feel sick anymore. I don’t feel feverish.”

The next morning my midwife explained to me that sometimes babies die in the first trimester, and your body will retain them for a couple of weeks, which is probably why I had such a late miscarriage. She wished me well and told me to take care. I was sad to say goodbye to her, as she had attended Franny’s birth and was leaving the U.S. to practice in Canada in the spring. I was probably going to be her last American client.

I decided to rest and take care of myself. My companion and I decided to start training for the December 5k, The Jingle Bell run, as soon as the bleeding had subsided. I looked and felt like run-over-thing-in-the-road: I was still puffy so my clothes were snug and my face was broken out. I would continue taking my prenatal vitamins, even though the iron content meant that I would have to give up pooping successfully for the time being. I hate those things. I hated everything at the moment.