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In a Room Made for Bodies
On losing a child and being broken open
The needles used in acupuncture are extraordinarily small, a fraction of a millimeter thick, about the same as a single strand of human hair. They push through the top layer of skin with a sharp pinch, breaking through the boundary of the body with something like an electric charge.
The first time I went to the community acupuncture clinic, it was winter, and I was heavily pregnant with my first child. He was more than a week late, and I was desperate for him to be out in the world, for the birth story I’d been writing and rewriting in my head to finally settle and take shape. I’d been terrified of needles all my life, but at that point I was willing to do almost anything to get things started. I needed to see his face, and to know who I was going to be as his mother. I was so focused on starting labor that I barely remember there being any needles. Four visits over three days, that heavy gray January — and my son arrived.
When I went back, more than two years later, it was the needles I was thinking about. The fear had returned, cold in my bones. This time I wasn’t desperate to give birth. My second pregnancy had never reached that aching overdue point. Here I was anyway, with the idea that acupuncture might help.
