YOU CALL THAT LUCKY?

Miscarriage. What an all-encompassing shitty word that is. A mis-carriage of what, justice? A miscarriage of justice all right, why did my baby have to die rather than some woman’s who didn’t even want her child? I used to do that a lot; walking down the street I would watch women pushing babies in prams and pick out the ones that I thought deserved their child a lot less than I deserved mine. And who in their right minds ever strung those innocent words together to create that disgusting phrase: “You’re lucky it happened now and not later on.” There is no luck in losing a child, whether it’s 2 days or 9 months gestation, it is a part of you and when that baby is gone, it’s like a part of you dies too. All up I lost 7 babies, so with 7 bits of me gone, I felt like a puzzle with most of the pieces missing and the rest jumbled into a mess.

With my first pregnancy I had a trans-vaginal ultrasound at 7 weeks gestation and he was a tiny little dot, my husband and I were sure it was a boy and we intended to name him Alexander. My breasts were unbelievably sore and my stomach was really bloated so whilst only 7 weeks along I looked about 3 months, and I loved it. After years of trying, we had finally done it and we were both on cloud nine. Immediately upon hearing the magical words “It’s positive” I took to rubbing my tummy dreamily.

A short-lived cloud nine however as 2 short days later, everything stopped, each pregnancy symptom halted in its tracks. The breast tenderness disappeared, the feeling of nausea stopped and my stomach returned to normal size; I knew something was drastically wrong. I confided my fears to an older relative of mine, the family expert on pregnancy and child rearing as she had borne twins long ago. You know the type, it’s usually the woman who has given birth to the most children in the family; they become the unofficial family expert on anything to do with babies, presumably because they’ve experienced it all already. I told her that I thought something was wrong and she snapped at me “Stop worrying, you’re making your baby sick by worrying about it.” Of course I immediately felt a huge rush of guilt: I was hurting my baby, but no matter how much I tried to ignore the way I was feeling physically, deep inside I knew something was wrong. Those words have never left me; they were in my nightmares for years. I felt blanketed in guilt: what had I done to kill my baby, what physical or mental mistake had I made to make his little heart never take a beat? I remember panicking when I went to change my sanitary pad for the first time after I started bleeding, my doctor hadn’t wanted to perform a curette un-necessarily as she felt that because the pregnancy was so early on it would expel naturally, just like a really heavy period, so I carried my dead baby in my womb for 4 weeks until my period came. I had the foresight to arm myself with packets of super absorbent pads, but I hadn’t given any thought as to how to dispose of them. Ordinarily I put them in delicately scented pastel sanitary disposal bags and toss them into the bin, but toss my baby in the bin? Or worse, flush him down the toilet? I didn’t know what to do. I cried my heart out with every little pastel packet, was that the one with the blood containing my tiny spec of a baby? I felt like the most disgusting woman in the world, throwing her own baby in the bin. I bled for 30 days straight and shed litres of tears in that time. Everything felt surreal to me, like it wasn’t really happening. My family, knowing how much we had wanted this child, were desperately worried about me and took turns to visit me on a daily basis, yet no-one mentioned my baby. The only conversation even vaguely related to the miscarriage was to ask how I was feeling and to tell me to get some rest; every other word uttered was mundane garbage, all to avoid the white elephant in the room. Heaven forbid actually talking about the fact that my beloved baby was dead, no, that would be too upsetting, for me or themselves I’m not quite sure. I have one crazy aunty however, whom obviously wasn’t briefed as to appropriate conversational etiquette following a miscarriage, she rang me and said some of the most beautiful words I have every heard in my life, “Hello darling, I just wanted to ring and tell you that I love you. I’m sorry about what happened and I love you very much.” I put the phone down and wept tears of equal sadness and joy: my baby had finally been acknowledged. You see, probably like most parents I didn’t particularly care what was happening to me, my baby was all that I cared about; I loved him even before I conceived him. So the fact that no one but me felt the loss of him from their lives was inconceivable to me. My family knew how much he meant to me, how could they not grieve even just a little for the life that was lost? For the joy that he would surely have brought to their lives? How could Alex’s own father, my husband Michael, not be crying alongside me because his little boy had died? Surrounded by my husband and family all trying to act like nothing was wrong I felt obliged to keep up with the brave face; however eventually I broke down. It was a warm summer’s night and Michael and I were eating dinner on the front patio as were our neighbors on theirs. I had started to bleed just a few days before and the flow was so heavy that I was feeling constantly tired and light-headed. Michael was lovingly encouraging me to eat, telling me that I needed to keep my strength up. Keep my strength up for what? I demanded to know; Alex was dead and nobody else could care less about him. Vicious words spewed from my mouth; what sort of man was he to not shed even one tear for his own son? How could he not care about our child? I began to cry hysterically and my voice rose with each accusation, the neighbors tactfully went inside. Michael’s eyes filled with tears at my vitriol and he began to gently explain to me how helpless he felt not being able to do anything to help Alex, so the best he could do was to take care of me, and once I was physically ok he could then grieve himself, but I was his priority and he needed to take care of me right now. He broke down telling me this and finally we just held each other and cried; soul wrenching grief for the baby boy that we had both wanted so badly. We had fought so hard to get pregnant in the first place, endless doctors’ appointments and so many blood tests I’d lost count. How could God do this to us? Surely he knew what wonderful parents we would make, what personal sacrifices we were willing to endure for our child? It turned out that Michael felt the loss of Alex just as deeply as I did, for him too the dream of life with our son was gone, everything we had anticipated and looked forward to disintegrated when we heard the words, “I’m sorry, but there is no heartbeat, the baby has died.”

I eventually regained my strength and recovered physically from the loss of Alex, but it took many years to let him go emotionally. For years afterwards I went into a slump on the date that he had been due, to me it marked his birthday and I would try to imagine what he would be like as a 2 year old, a 5 year old, an 8 year old. I envisioned him as the spitting image of his father with an unruly mop of brown curls and big clumsy tripping-over feet, and my love of reading and thirst for knowledge.

We fell pregnant again only a few cycles after losing Alex, my body began to experience the same symptoms as before and I knew I was pregnant yet I was reluctant to have it confirmed as that would make it too real therefore susceptible to something going wrong. I got my next period a couple of days after it was due and my fertility specialist confirmed that I had been pregnant, however I had suffered “an early failed pregnancy” rather than a miscarriage as the pregnancy hadn’t been confirmed at the time of gestation. In total over a 2 year period we suffered 3 miscarriages and 4 early failed pregnancies, each time I kept an emotional distance from the whole thing as going through that loss with Alex had taught me the dangers of giving my heart to my baby before he or she was strong and relatively past any dangers.

Michael and I found the hardest thing to accept was the medical establishment’s loss as to explain why this kept happening. We had every medical test known to man yet there was no indication as to why I could get pregnant yet not stay pregnant. The only advice we were given was to “Just keep trying; one of em’s bound to stick!” Cold comfort to a woman that had lost 7 babies. IVF wasn’t an option for us as getting pregnant wasn’t the problem, which is what IVF is all about, getting women pregnant that can’t otherwise do so. And the miscarriage rate is higher in IVF than in other assisted reproduction techniques, so there was no point in us joining a program. In the end we decided that we just weren’t meant to have a baby, we tried to feel comforted with the thought that the universe knew better than us on some things, perhaps we had bigger things in store. Now years have passed and I still think about Alex, but not with the bone-deep grief that I did for so long. Saying goodbye to my baby boy was a long, tortured process for me; I had to let go of my dreams for him, yet mostly I had to forgive myself for not sustaining his life when he needed me most, for my very failings as a woman and as a mother.

All these years later I still find myself puzzling over my definition of what a woman is; do I really need to have borne a baby to class myself as a real woman? I haven’t quite figured that out yet, the best I can do is tell myself that everything happens for a reason and my babies, all 7 of them, are now angels watching over me.