He’d have been Five this Month
When he was gone, I had expected tests, explanations, reasons: validation. What I got was a crisp A4 paper saying it was a 'normal miscarriage'. I stared at it dumbfounded: how can a baby’s loss ever be 'normal'?
The doctor said these things happened often. I would soon be pregnant again; he smiled encouragingly. I sensed immediately that to him, and everyone at the hospital, my precious baby was just an unhappy mass of cells-gone-wrong and delivered in a Petri dish, entirely replaceable and meaningless … just another early miscarriage.
Nothing really big had happened here. It was only for my husband and myself that the last few months had come crashing down in numbing pain. For us, and for those other women in my ward: Rebecca, in the bed next to mine who’d wept all night after her last ultrasound; Anne, who’d just lost her second baby but was drinking plenty of orange juice because her mother said she should keep her strength up as she’ll soon be carrying her third; Mary, whose waters had broken 24 weeks too soon and was taking anti-depressants while waiting for the gradual death of her fourth baby in 3 years … and for the other woman, whom I’ll never know, but whose screams we listened to that evening, as we sat in our beds exchanging empty words of consolation. I can never hope to describe the chilling despair in the screams of a woman delivering a dead baby. Then there was the commotion, and a young man was running down the ward carrying a still baby boy and weeping, 'Ara t’oħti, ara t’oħti ... Look at my sister’s baby!'.
As I wept that night I wasn’t just weeping for my baby. I was weeping for all the pain and the sadness of all lost babies. Life had never been so black: but now, less than twelve hours later, my doctor was all smiles and full of hope! It was surreal.
He was soon joined by well-meaning friends and family. People often said I should be grateful that I hadn’t lost a 'real baby', it wasn’t like he was full term was it? And besides, I’d soon be pregnant again and forget all about this. To this day I often see similar dismissal offered as consolation to a grieving woman: Just the other week, a colleague was talking about the loss of her term baby. Someone reminded her, '... you said he’d have had heart problems: see nature knows what it’s doing ...'. But the mother simply answered, 'Heart problems or not, I’d have loved him anyway you know!' ... an awkward silence followed. The problem is that so many people, innocently indeed, try to console the grieving mother with what, to her, is but an insult to her motherhood.
The thing is that, probably, any grieving mother - I, for one, have been there - wants validity: something deep inside me still needs to believe in that baby’s soul, in that baby’s validity as a human being. I shall never forget the sheer relief I felt when I found myself a new doctor and after explaining that I’d had a ‘normal miscarriage’ - but had taken it rather badly - instead of with dismissal I was answered with something along the lines of, 'Of course you took it badly. For you this wasn’t a pregnancy ... this was your baby! From the moment you saw that positive pregnancy test you had seen a baby in a push chair ...…now that baby’s gone and, whatever I say to you, you'll still feel the loss.'
Miscarriage is like any other loss I guess. People react in stages and people react differently … but at some point or another we all need to grieve. As with all losses in life, if a woman (or a man for that matter) in your life goes through a miscarriage there’s hardly anything you can say to make it better. So if you can really bear to face their pain, just acknowledge it, listen if they need to talk and hold their hand if they need it … I think that once they are whole again they will be forever grateful.
Do be sensitive and try not to belittle their feelings, but don’t worry too much about saying the wrong thing: to a woman who’s lost a child it’s hardly likely a few words from you can cause much more pain really. I’ve heard it all: from ' ... don’t worry dear, my aunt had seven miscarriages, all in a row: this is only your first', to ' ... it could have been worse; ... my sister lost hers at full term … you should see what that’s like!' The thing is I soon learnt that all these translated as, 'I’m sorry, you’re in a mess and I can’t help you, but I do care ...', and I felt these people’s compassion rather than heard it. No, compassion doesn’t take the pain or the loss or the emptiness away, but it sure helps one live with them ... until life allows you to move on.
Yes life does go on. Thank God it does - and there’s beauty and light in it far, far beyond the pain of miscarriage. But somewhere in the depths of my mind there will always be my baby, in a Petri dish, and bereaved relatives of someone else’s baby wailing its loss in the hospital corridor. The
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