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| Wednesday, 13 September 2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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When I lost my first baby I was devastated. It had seemed to come about so easily. I got pregnant almost straight away, and then suddenly, with no warning, I began to bleed. When I lost my second baby I felt like I lost myself. We’d been afraid after the first time, yet somehow we’d begun to hope again. And when we made it to 12 weeks, supposedly a safe point, we’d told our parents first in a big Christmas Day announcement, and then our friends and family. And then suddenly, as soon as everyone knew, I began to bleed again, and I miscarried our second baby. The British culture doesn’t encourage people to talk about a miscarriage. It feels too awkward somehow. I think people are afraid of how to respond when it happens. Perhaps they’re thinking that it wasn’t even a real baby, so yes, it’s a bit sad but never mind, there there, put it behind you and you can try again. I tried to never be upset by what anyone said to me afterwards. It wasn’t meant to be…God knows best…It could have been a lot worse…At least you know you can get pregnant…I knew that the words were coming from people who loved me, and who just didn’t know how to respond, but oh, how those words hurt. And in all honesty there was nothing right that anyone could have said. The only ease came from my husband just holding me, in silence, as we both mourned our lost babies. For me, the actual physical miscarriages, though horrific in themselves, weren’t the worst part. It was afterwards, the living with it. It was the sense every day of where I should be at in my pregnancy, how I’d be growing and changing that broke my heart. I would torture myself thinking about when I would have had my scans, how the baby would have been developing, when I would have been going on maternity leave. And because it’s not a recognised grief you somehow have to deal with it internally. When people say ‘how are you?’ you sense that they don’t really want to know that you feel like there’s the most enormous gaping hole inside of you and everything you felt yourself to be is pouring out of it. And so you say ‘Oh I’m fine’ and hate yourself for the lie. When you have a miscarriage you suddenly hear whispered stories of other women who have miscarried as well, as though you are suddenly granted entry into a secret society. And the stories tumble out, and go on and on, until the statistic of one in four pregnancies ending this way suddenly seems more believable. But it all left me wondering why, still, this isn’t acknowledged and talked about openly in society. Is it because people think it’s not really a baby? Nowadays you can find out you’re pregnant incredibly early on, and I think that most women who want a family, from the instant they see the test in their shaking hand showing positive, begin to imagine this little person. Yes, physically, the miscarried child is but a tiny imitation of a full-term baby, but in the minds and hearts of the parents that child is their future, and it’s been snatched away, more often than not with no explanation or reason as to why, leaving many women wrongly paranoid that it was something they ate, something they did, their own fault somehow. There is no NHS support system in place. After the scans that confirmed my babies had gone I was sent home with no follow-up care, no grief counselling, nothing. I could feel a false smile on my face most days at work. I curled up inside at every pregnant woman I saw, and I felt like I saw them everywhere. I worried about what I might have done to have caused this, or what might be wrong with me medically. I was terrified at the thought of trying again for another baby. I didn’t think I could bear to trust again, to let my dreams and hopes flow into another person growing inside of me, for fear that if I miscarried again I might lose myself all together. Things did get easier, and we did try again, but I was almost relieved every month when my period came at the same time as grieving because of the horror it reminded me of. I still felt empty inside. I don’t think I found my peace again until I went to Japan. Over time I had read everything I could find on the internet about miscarriages, and one article from New York Magazine said that in Japan they have a word for a miscarried or aborted foetus – mizuko (‘water child’). I had been to Japan before and loved it there and wanted to return anyway, but now I needed even more to go back to this country that had a word for the babies I’d lost, a culture that somehow acknowledged that grief. We took a break from trying for another baby, and just planned a fun trip to Tokyo. Whilst there we went to a temple, the Hie-jinja shrine in Akasaka. I had read in the guidebook that the temple was often visited by women wanting a safe childbirth, and by those who had lost babies too. I didn’t go there for religious reasons. I didn’t feel any kind of superstition that being there might ‘fix’ me. I went because I wanted to feel part of something, an acknowledged grief and longing. It wasn’t a large temple, nor spectacular, but sitting in the courtyard there, seeing the statue of the mother monkey holding her baby, I felt peaceful deep down inside in a place that had been grieving for a long time. Those significant dates, due dates and miscarriage dates, remain ever etched on your heart. On my first due date I took the day off work and went to Kew Gardens. I wanted to be somewhere beautiful, full of growing things, new life. And even now that I’m pregnant again and have seen my two due dates pass me by once more, I stopped on both days and ached for my little ones who didn’t make it here. I suspect that I will always remember their non-birthdays, and that I will cry for others who I hear have miscarried. I feel incredibly blessed that so far this pregnancy has been safe, and that in just a few weeks time we will hopefully have our third little baby safely arrived and in our arms. Since Japan I’ve tried to embrace what happened and see how it has made me who I am today; to see that I found myself again, found a courage I didn’t know I had, and to take strength from all of the love I was wrapped in by those who cared.
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