It wasn’t a baby. It was not a baby. It was just a bunch of cells put together in a petri dish that had the potential to be a baby. But it was never going to be born, I told myself after the D&C.

The procedure wasn’t as horrific as my previous one. After my last miscarriage, the doctor vacuum-aspirated the nine-week fetus out of me as I watched, numbed with only local anesthetic. This was quick and painless. I went in sobbing, alone, to a different back room without green stars floating across the ceiling. Dr. C wasn’t on call that day, and I was glad. I didn’t want to face him: I felt like a colossal failure. I was his high hope, the pregnancy that would work. And I couldn’t even do that. The thought sent me into a new round of anguish and tears. My pregnancy was done.

“Would you like to listen to music?” the anesthesiologist asked, offering me his iPod with a Beatles station (Solomon’s favorite group). That was the last thing I remembered after the needle went into my arm.

I felt fine when I awoke. But the tightness in my womb was gone. The space in my brain tethered to my uterus was now severed. There was nothing now, just me.

I knew what to expect from a miscarriage: a chemical depression as the HCG “happy” hormone level started dropping (by my next period, they would want to see it back to zero); a weight gain that no medical professional would acknowledge but every woman on the fertility forums complained about; and a feeling of listless hopelessness.

But apparently each miscarriage is different. Last time, I mourned the baby, an almost living creature whose heartbeat we’d taken pictures of, whose growth I charted on my phone with an app, whose name Solomon and I had been debating. Last time, we didn’t tell many people because I didn’t want to be one of those women who was defined by her fertility issues.

But after another miscarriage, I’ve become that woman: defined, almost, by my fertility problems. This time, I was less saddened about losing a baby – after all, I didn’t feel pregnant, I didn’t see a heartbeat, and with my low-rising hormone levels, I was warned of failure almost from the start. No, this time I was sad because I didn’t know if I’d ever carry a baby of my own to term.

As I lay there on the couch, zoned out from painkillers, I kept asking myself how this could have happened: I was not supposed to have another miscarriage. The doctor had remedied my blood-clotting tendency that had probably caused my previous loss.

With the TV blaring in the background, I couldn’t help but think, “Why is all of this happening to me?” I didn’t believe there was some nefarious divinity out to get me, personally, and I also knew there were worse things in life: one friend just discovered he’s HIV positive, another was found to have cancer, which is much, much worse. I wanted her to live more than I wanted to have a baby.

Did I want to have a baby? Was it worth putting myself and my body through all of this? I couldn’t imagine going back to the clinic, starting again with the hormones, the pills, the blood tests, the waiting … again. It was new and exciting the first time, and now it was just sad.

I felt sad – we both were. Our great hopes for I.V.F. had been dashed. Sure, we had been prepared for it not to work on the first try, but we hadn’t imagined getting pregnant and losing it — whatever “it” was. I couldn’t imagine anything, really, about the future.

We were back to square one. But this time square one looked very, very bleak.