The Panty Check

I slide my pajama pants and underwear off my hips, sit down on the toilet, and check the crotch of my panties. This is how I start my day. Every day. It’s also what I do every single time I use the restroom. Slide, sit, check.

When I was trying to get pregnant, I checked my vaginal fluid so I could assess the consistency, clarity, and quantity. All that checking ended up with me getting pregnant, so I stopped looking for vaginal fluid. Now, I only look for one thing—blood.

Slide, sit, check.

I wonder if this is what a pregnant person would look for if they never lost a pregnancy. For me, it’s automatic. My first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. It happened six months before I met my husband, Jeremy. The timing was horrible: I was tending bar at an Irish pub in Downtown Long Beach while attempting to complete a graduate degree. To top it off, I was in a relationship I knew was terminal. So I made an appointment with Planned Parenthood to have an abortion. A few days later, I sat down on the toilet and found blood in my underwear—a bright red stain that meant I didn’t have to keep that appointment.

Six years later, my son was born. It was a healthy and uneventful pregnancy, which led me to believe that my first miscarriage was some kind of divine intervention or the result of fate swooping in to save me from a bad relationship. This magical thinking ended abruptly when a third pregnancy ended in miscarriage just before my son’s second birthday. Now, pregnant for the fourth time, panty checks are a given. Most of the time I don’t even realize I am doing it until I glance down, see clean cotton, and feel my heart settle. 

Looking down to the place where my underwear spreads from knee to knee, I see blood. No, I think. No. No. No.

What kind of blood is this? I inspect it. It’s bright red. New blood. They say spotting is normal. But this does not look like spotting. This is more than spotting. Something is happening. I stick a pantyliner in the fresh pair of underwear. It’s gone, I think. I want to cry because then maybe I wouldn’t feel like I’m being crushed under a house. But I cannot cry.

My in-laws are in town—Jeremy’s mother, grandmother, and sisters. My family is in town too—my aunt, my cousin and her two kids, my other cousin and her husband and son, and my godmother. We will host a Passover Seder in just a few days, which will also include my parents and two close friends. I would like to find a very dark place, go inside, shut the door, and stay there until Passover is over. I feel obligated to keep going.

I call the OB’s office. “Spotting is normal,” the receptionist tells me. “Don’t panic.” She’s gentle yet quick to offer me an appointment in a couple hours. I know it’s not spotting. There is a lot of blood. But I’m not panicking. I’m quite numb now.

I take my son to preschool. He doesn’t usually hold my hand, but today he wraps his whole hand around two of my fingers as we walk down the hall to his classroom. I think about a conversation with Jeremy after several months of trying to get pregnant. He said he would be okay if it were just us three, that one kid could be enough. He was content. I don’t know what this word means anymore. Content.

My son likes when I linger a little bit in the classroom. He steps up to the sensory table with his classmates. They are washing plastic baby dolls in sudsy water with tiny washcloths. He looks over his shoulder to check that I’m still there. Could this be enough?

I drive straight to the doctor’s office, where I explain everything to the nurse, and then to the obstetrician. I’ve already tossed the pantyliner and replaced it with a tampon. I remind them that I’ve had two miscarriages in the past. I know this is in my records somewhere. But it seems so very important to mention right now. TWO PAST MISCARRIAGES. HANDLE WITH CARE. AND URGENCY.

They send me downstairs to have an ultrasound. Ultrasound technicians are famously taciturn, leaving most of the commentary to the doctors. Today, I have the rare angel at my side who explains everything. “Let’s take a look,” she says as she smears lube across my belly, as if we are investigating a mystery together. She slides the wand around until she finds what she’s looking for.

“Here she is. Look at that—her heartbeat is strong.” The words “she” and “her” shake me. She. She is my daughter. The technician refers to my baby as a person, and I realize I have not. Though a blood test early on revealed her gender, I’ve been keeping this baby at a distance, waiting for heartbreak.

“You see here,” she points to splotches of black on the screen, “You have a subchorionic hemorrhage. The placenta has pulled away from the uterine wall right here.” She taps my uterus on the screen. “That explains the bleeding. There will probably be a bit more, but it should pass.” Back upstairs, the OB tells me to take it easy, not to lift anything heavy or pick up my son. She assures me this is common and there is no reason to think I won’t carry to term.

Just a few days later, Jeremy and I turn our living room into a dining room by quilting together a mass of tables to seat the 21 of us. We have hosted many Seders, but this one is the first that brings our two families together. Everyone there knows that I am pregnant and that we have experienced a “scare,” though we don’t speak of it openly. I place dishes of food on the table and refill glasses we raise in celebration. Together, my Jewish family and my Christian family read from the Haggadah and sing.

Later, my cousin Christina and I watch our sons play trains. They are only five months apart and I’m so happy to see them connect. I had hoped they would grow up together. We now live over 2,000 miles apart and they are practically strangers. Still, the two toddlers fall into an effortless rhythm of sharing and laughing. I’m both happy and sad to witness it.

My cousin asks me how I am. I spill a long string of feelings about wanting another baby and how I thought the blood meant I was done having babies, but her heartbeat is strong, and so she is still here for now. So I’m okay, I tell her. And I keep talking. I tell her that the thought of my body deciding the fate of our family just broke my heart because I don’t want to be done. I say all of these things and I look up to her eyes and I see they are filling with tears.

“I know,” she says.

 I remember that she wants the same. But her husband doesn’t want any more kids. I remember the stacks of used baby things in her house, things she couldn’t bear to donate because the act of letting them go meant she was most certainly done having babies. Her eyes show me how much privilege I have for the beating heart in my belly. “I know you do,” is all I can say in return.

I think about the women in my family—this lineage my daughter already continues even as she grows inside me. My mother has three sisters. Her mother had six sisters. My extended family is a matriarchy, a force, a circle of women who have collectively endured a generous helping of loss. But we are still here. If there is one thing the women in my family know how to do, it’s persevere while the walls fall down around us.

My body, the home I have to offer my daughter as she prepares to be born, is a bit run down. At 40 years old, I am beyond prime child-bearing years, my womb geriatric. I think about her strong heartbeat, about how wild it is that we are wired for survival, made to keep growing. How the walls could be crumbling around us, and still our hearts beat on. I want to tell her I’m sorry I had to take so long to be ready for her, that I’ll give her a fighting chance. I’ll take care of myself, allow myself to rest and eat good food. Only one cup of coffee a day. Do my best to keep the walls from falling down around her. More than anything, I want to tell her heart to keep beating. Just keep beating. 

~ Jazmine Aluma

Jazmine Aluma (she/her) is Chicanx writer and poet who co-hosts a podcast called First Words, which explores the messy space where parenting and writing collide. You can find her work at www.jazminealuma.com.