It's okay if you can't handle it, but I really think you're doing a great job

There. Right there. Listening to the cavernous space inside of you. Waiting for the clicks and bumps of echolocation that confirm: everything's going to be alright.

These are the small moments that define us. From here on out, this moment will forever be before and then this other one, this will always be after. I am watching you change forever in front of me.

We didn't mean to be in this space together. Normally, this part comes later, hours later, after the work of breath and muscle has moved you into a place of transcendent, exhausted acceptance. Then, when you are ready to be opened, the change will come and it will be more than you had expected, but you will be ready. But not now and not like this. Right now, we are here and you are crying. I am keeping my face an unreadable mask. I am trying to hold back the creeping understanding inside of you, I am holding out for heartbeat. We didn't mean to be here together.

I try to learn to read the signs, reading your chart, that I might know better next time. But oh lord, let there be no next time. Let this be the last silent spring. Let all our visions of beautiful babies, blinking amniotic fluid from their eyelashes, staring up to the meet their mamas come true. Let me hear this heartbeat now.

There should a word for the sound of no heartbeat. Not merely an absence of noise, it is a silence that fills up this whole room. It is a palpable drop in temperature. We are moving very slowly while the air freezes around us. We are working in a dream, living out the scary things we hoped would never happen.We are living the aftermath of a sudden swell and learning that, sometimes you do everything right and it still goes all wrong.