“I was almost halfway through my pregnancy”

A couple of months ago, there was a huge response to a Group Therapy post from a woman who had had a bad blood test result during her pregnancy at 11 weeks. The further tests came back all clear. This is what happened next:

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“This post is a continuation of my story, one you may have read about a couple of months ago when I got an adverse blood test result on an 11-week pregnancy. Long story short, I got a clear result from the subsequent CVS and counted my lucky stars.

Happy ending, right?

Wrong.

After out little boy got a clean bill of health, we arranged his room, filled his cupboard full of itty-bitty blue clothes and named him. He was healthy and vigorous; he kicked so hard, that by 16 weeks my husband could feel him from the outside.

Then, during a routine doctor’s appointment a few weeks later, a shock. As the doctor was giving me a tour of my son’s anatomy it became apparent there no flutter of his heartbeat. My little pocket rocket, who had been so active just the day before, lay there, silent and still. As the doctor became more and more tense, pressing the ultrasound wand into my belly forcefully, my heart pounded blood through my ears in a roar as if to make up for the silence of my womb. But my son’s heart remained quiet. “This never happens,” my doctor muttered, reassuring himself as well as me. But I knew after those first few seconds, even while my doctor persisted hopefully, that my baby was gone.

I was almost halfway through the pregnancy.

Even worse; as I was so far along, everyone knew. As fun as Facebook and Twitter are sometimes, it is in times like that you realise that they also have pretty shitty drawbacks. The notifications I would have had to attend to 10 years ago were multiplied by 100, not to mention infinitely more humiliating. Now, even vague acquaintances knew my failure as a mother and a woman.

I posted that I had a miscarriage, while in my heart, I knew it was so much more. Miscarriage does not express the horrific nature of a child’s death in utero at nearly 20 weeks. After surgery (I couldn’t do the induction—I could not labour, birth and hold a dead child, it would ruin me), I had to organise an autopsy, a cremation and a service. I had to take hormones to stop my milk coming in. I’ve never had a miscarriage at 12 or less weeks, so I don’t know how that feels. Maybe all women feel like they lost a child, not an embryo.

He had a name; he has a cupboard full of little blue clothes he’ll never wear. They’re still there. What do I do with those now?

Irrationally, it upsets me when the media talks about Lily Allen or Amanda Holden having a ‘miscarriage’. These women lost their children at 6 and 7 months respectively. Unlike mine, their children were viable; they could have been born alive. Somehow, the word ‘miscarriage’ does not hold enough gravitas; it does not accurately convey the extent of what was lost. There needs to be a new word, a word that makes those who hear it instinctively shrink away from the sound; a word worse than the worst swear word you’ve ever heard.

Lily Allen recently said when discussing her loss: ‘that kind of thing changes a person’. I agree, it does. The greatest fear any parent has is losing a child. Is there any pain that can compare? As a mother, it’s your job to nurture and protect your children, above all else, above your own life, especially when they’re inside you. I failed at this. Dismally. And as much as you know you should move on, that you need to stay sane to care for the child you already have, something inside is irrevocably broken and it can’t be completely healed. Life will always be just that little bit greyer. I’ll always wonder what he might have looked like, what he could have been in life. I’ll always seek a second glance at boys around his age. A Sunday afternoon at the beach will never seem as carefree. I don’t know if there’ll ever again be a time when I can smile and laugh without feeling guilty.

The love of a parent for a child took me by surprise. It was not a love I even knew existed until I fell pregnant with my daughter. The love I felt before for my family, my husband, while strong and profound, was not even a shadow of the love I realised I could feel the second I peed on that stick. But along with the love came the fear. Because to experience that kind of overwhelming love also meant I could lose it. And as many women know, it’s not a loss you can easily survive; it’s not a loss you even want to survive.

Along with the grief came its flatmate, guilt, and the futility of the inevitable, incessant questions: Did I eat something wrong? Did I exercise too much? Should I not have had sex? Were there hidden bacteria in something I touched? What about the cat? Did my daughter bring home some kind of Ebola from daycare? What could I have done differently? What the fuck did I do wrong? Why did this happen to me???

All useless questions, but they run through your head anyway. But just as I was sinking to absolute bottom, thinking there was no way back, the reality of Facebook and Twitter—the reality I had despised not even 24 hours prior—became my unexpected saviour.

Suddenly, women who had been through the same thing started contacting me to offer their love and support, tips for getting through (‘drink your weight in wine’, offered one) and sharing their very personal stories of loss. I found out there was hardly a woman I knew that hadn’t suffered this kind of loss in some way, whether it was fertility struggles, miscarriages or even stillbirth and SIDS. Much to my shame and chagrin, I discovered someone I considered a close friend had had three miscarriages, another had had four. And one friend had lost a baby at 40 weeks. I feel ashamed that I wasn’t there for them, and angry at society that they felt they somehow couldn’t share the experience openly because they feared judgment.

It was thanks to these very courageous women that I started to see a way through the crippling anguish.

Which leads me to the point of this long and rambling blog, why don’t women talk about their losses more? It was through this sharing that I was able to pick myself up off the gin-soaked floor and get dressed in the morning.

Why do we keep this horrible experience to ourselves? Are we ashamed? Guilty? Do we think this makes us less womanly? Are the questions that ran through my head, in fact, the padlocks slapped on our willingness to be open with each other?

I fell into this ashamed category when I last posted about my abnormal blood test; I hid behind a pseudonym like a coward. Not this time. This is far too important. It’s time to break free of the fear of being judged.

My name is Vanessa and I have many friends who read Mamamia. I am 35, live in Sydney’s northern beaches, and I experienced a fetal death at nearly 20 weeks for no apparent reason. How about you? “

Vanessa, my name is Mia and I had a fetal death at the exact same stage as you. My little girl would be 11 years old had she lived. Like every other woman who has been through what you have been – and are going – through, I stand beside you in support, holding you up.

I send you love, support and a thousand tissues for your tears…..xxxxxxxxxxxx