I still have mixed emotions and a little trepidation about going to a sonogram appointment; it is a serious love-hate relationship. The very first thing I do once that receiver hits my gooey belly is scan the monitor for that one-important, life-giving organ - the heart - to ensure it is still active and beating. I am always relieved to see it moving in its strange 4-sectioned rhythm, and it helps me to relax and focus instead at the other beautiful details of light and dark images on the sonogram screen. This is all because of the memory of my little lost flower.
Last year, Paul and I traveled to Maui, Hawaii for a very important event - my sister's wedding. While there, we enjoyed all sorts of other island activities, among them, snorkeling at a locals' spot, called Three Graves, where I realized a transcendental moment gliding side-by-side gentle sea turtles, following them as long as my breath allowed. The next day, adorned with local island plumeria flowers (a Maui icon), and surrounded by all our family, I stood by my sister's side and witnessed a phenomenally beautiful wedding. Her wedding day, May 29th, which also happens to be my dad's birthday, also happened to be the day Paul and I saw our "stick turn pink," indicating we were pregnant. Our trip to Hawaii suddenly meant much more after that pink stick and practically everything held deeper meaning.
We were ecstatic for weeks. I bought several books, shared with friends and family, and bought a secret momento - a gold ring in typical Hawaiian style adorned with a central plumeria flower and surrounded by 2 sea turtles. I wore the ring every day and looked forward to meeting my baby. Six weeks later, at our first sonogram, instead of the anticipated joy, we learned the terrible news that the baby had no heartbeat and had died two weeks prior. The shock couldn't hold the steady weeping that happened over the next hours, days and weeks, which permanently changed the way Paul and I live our lives.
The day after the bad news, I went to the hospital for the D&C (minor surgery to remove the baby’s carcass from my uterus). As part of the surgical preparation, I had to remove all my jewelry. Opposite of my wedding ring I still wore the plumeria ring that celebrated the inception of the baby that no longer exists. “What should I do with it now?” I contemplated. Do I throw it away? Though the urge was real, I instead tucked it away in a compartment in my purse that I was unlikely to visit. After a pensive moment, I took a deep breath and followed the nurse down the hall to the procedure room.
They say that twins know they are connected very early in the womb - even before they are big enough to interface physically with one other. They have done studies of children born out of what they call a “vanishing twin” scenario (when one twin dies very early – before week 10 – and is absorbed back into the uterus, thus appearing to have vanished rather than mis-carried) and find that the surviving child goes through real feelings of loneliness and need for companionship as they age, as if they were missing or searching for someone. For that reason, twin books encourage parents of surviving twins to acknowledge and celebrate their “vanished” sibling as if they were an important and meaningful member of the family.
I wonder if our twins have any “knowledge” of the one that came before them; if they will find a kinship of sorts knowing that not all their parents' babies are here. I know that Paul and I feel it, even though we may not discuss it as much as we did before our second pregnancy. For this reason, I have decided to revisit that section of my purse where I left “my little Hawaiian flower,” take it out, and add it to my jewelry box along with all the other treasures and family heirlooms stored there. And, as I do, I look with irony – or perhaps foreshadowing – to notice and remember that on either side of the flower is a sea turtle - my Hawaiian flower and twin turtles. Perhaps there is already a bond.
Another aside – my father has hopes that his first grandchildren, the twins, will be born on his birthday, May 29th. This is of course very possible as they will be in their 37th week at that point, at full term, and ready to live in the world. The irony in that possibility is also odd – remember, not only is that the same day as my sister's wedding, it was also the day we discovered our first baby, our little Hawaiian Flower.
