Watching LEGO Batman While Having a Miscarriage

Once again, comic book characters prove therapeutic.

The nurse midwife had gone strangely quiet. Although I could have sworn I’d felt lots of movement whenever I lay still, now there was nothing. The doppler glided here and there, applying pressure on my bladder. The nurse put the doppler away and came back with a small ultrasound machine. She peered intently at the screen, which was turned away from me, with a look of concern on her face.

Nobody told me anything that day. All I knew was what they hadn’t found — a heartbeat. To avoid aborting a fetus who wasn’t actually miscarrying, they wait until they have at least two different ways of confirming that the baby is actually dead. No one could take a walk-in appointment for a vaginal ultrasound that day. I was sent home with an appointment and no other information. I went to help at my church’s after school program. Reality sank in a little. I finished teaching Kids’ Club. Reality sank in a little more as the bleeding started.

Seeing my husband’s sadness brought the sadness out of me, and vice-versa. While joking around with our son and daughter, I randomly began singing “Yellow” by Coldplay (I like this version) and had to stop at “your skin and bones turning into something beautiful.” Just like that, we were making each other cry again.

That night, from about 2-5am, I sobbed. Everything inside me had been very still for over 24 hours now. I googled whether I had done anything wrong. I googled common causes for miscarriage. I googled whether my baby had suffered a heart attack all alone without my even knowing. I considered what I might write in the tiny box I would use to bury my child — “you whole family loved you very much” — and hot tears filled my eyes again.

The vaginal ultrasound the next day was also turned away from me. I was only able to spy a brief glimpse at the vaguely bean-shaped baby lying still and silent on the screen. This would be the only time I would see my child. That night, an unholy amount of blood clots poured out of me. Although I examined all of them for human remains, I later learned that the baby had stopped developing halfway through the twelve-week pregnancy and would not have been able to hold a shape outside of the amniotic fluid. I flushed my baby while still holding onto the slightest bit of hope that a miracle might happen. I alternated between that and other emotions: Why did I do all this extra self-care and take all these vitamins? Maybe the husbeast will let me adopt a teen now that we don’t need the extra bedroom, and that will give some meaning to this baby’s death. I’m not going to try again if the next baby is going to die, too. That’s just cruel.

On one of these days, I came home from an appointment to find the husbeast watching The LEGO Batman Movie with our kids, six-year-old “Squid” and two-year-old “Newt.”

If you don’t know, this is secretly the best Batman movie ever made. Seth Grahame-Smith knocked it out of the park. I’ll write a separate article about it sometime; there really is a lot to appreciate. Though I sat down to join the family only because it had been a while since I’d enjoyed this one, instead, I found myself hearing a lot of things I needed to hear.

Batman has impossible ideals. He wants to prevent anything like what he’s suffered from ever happening again. He especially lives in fear of losing more people he loves. Beneath his stoic demeanor that is often wrongly depicted as sociopathic, he loves profoundly. He simply struggles to show that love in a healthy way. While the silly A-plot of the movie, more noticeable to a child, is Batman saying those three little words “I hate you” to Joker, the B-plot is an inversion: Batman opening himself up to loving (and granting freedom to) a new family. Even if it’s risky.

“Sometimes losing people is part of life,” he tells Robin. “But that doesn’t mean you stop letting them in.”

On an ordinary day, those words sound trite. On that day, as I was hardening my heart against ever having a baby again, I realized I was being a control freak. I was protecting myself not only from pain but also from joy. I was, once again, trying to fix the world without addressing my own brokenness.

I was also being stubborn. I knew I was probably supposed to go in for care when giant, dark blood clots soaked through my pad, underwear, and pants, only to then soak through two actual diapers. This is when they want you to seek treatment. Now, had I thought I was septic or dangerously anemic, I would have gone in, but I stalled because I didn’t want someone to reduce my baby to an abstraction like “pregnancy” and I didn’t want them to scare me into a D&C procedure if there was even the tiniest chance the baby might pull through. During my last pregnancy, a doctor gave me a guilt trip about the health of my daughter before suggesting we “make a plan” (abort her) if she turned out to have Down syndrome. I never spoke to that woman again. I managed to be nice to her face that time and I wasn’t sure if I could do it a second. I have no desire to yell at a hardworking healthcare worker. The easiest way to avoid doing that was to keep my baby on the list of patients. I can’t recommend you make the same decision.

The husbeast knew how I felt about it without being told. “Your other kids need you, too,” he reminded me. In the words of the ever-wise and infallible Alfred Pennyworth, “Sir, it’s time to stop this irresponsible behavior. You need to take responsibility for your life.”

Though his grief is more enigmatic, the husbeast seems to have experienced similar feelings during LEGO Batman. “I just threw this on,” he said. “But then I realized… Oh, I kind of needed this.”