Miscarriage is the Hardest Goodbye
Goodbyes are
only for those who
love with their eyes
Because for those who
love with their hearts
and soul there is no
such thing as separation
Rumi.
I never saw my baby, that stormy 8th July 2009. I only felt its goodbye slip from me in a hospital bed where I lay, holding the hand of my husband. Only minutes before, when I felt the sudden rush and pain of my uterus cry its last grip onto my child, I called the nurse bell. A quick sweep of the covers, and I was told everything was ok, there was no progress, I needed to wait longer.
One day, in the summer of 2009, a warm July day, I spent the weekend at my twin sisters, it would be the 5th. As we wandered around a car boot sale, in the company of my then 11-year-old son Tom, and my two nieces, I had taken a toilet break. I was 15 weeks pregnant. I was alarmed but calm, when I saw blood in my pants and when I wiped, but there was only a small amount. The rest of the day was spent with a dark fear I kept pushing away. I am good at dissociation. I had lessons in this type of trauma response from decades ago.
So, driving back home I settled back into my routine, ready for the working week to start. Ignoring the tug of concern, pushing its grip from my thoughts. But the bleeding slightly worsened. The fear grew closer. Something was different but I ignored my intuition. Until I couldn’t anymore. After the bleeding became more frequent I rang my doctors, and was soon scheduled an appointment at the Women and Children’s hospital for a scan.
I remember that day. A storm ripped through the sky, the dark clouds robbing all the colours of summer. I can only recall fragments of that day. I was on the bed. The radiographer was sweeping the probe deftly across my then swollen abdomen. But she had turned the screen from me. This was the first sign. The crack of thunder outside shouted warning to me, get ready. This moment will send a fracture of lightening right through your heart. Nature has wisdom. Always trust the universe.
The fracture splintered my whole body when the sonographer slowly removed her gloves, after an additional trans vaginal examination, and informed me that there was no heartbeat. There aren’t any words. Pain is all I can give you here. A white heat of agony, in which no sound is made, no movement is registered, words that were spoken fell like dust, unreachable to my broken state. I do remember robotically replacing my trousers, getting off the couch and being directed to a room. I passed the waiting area, where expectant mum’s waited eagerly for their scans, for photos of their growing child. I remember that room. So full of hope. Curiosity. Expectation.
But I was no longer expecting. Anything. I was no longer pregnant. Yesterday I was. Today, a gloved health worker took that away with 5 simple words. There is no heartbeat. I have never experienced loss like this. I pray that I never do again. Having to say goodbye to something you thought was yours, but you were never going to have. Having to grieve something that you never laid eyes on or held or smelled. A future you had mapped out ahead, so full of promise, beauty, and happiness, dead. No heartbeat.
I was given a cup of tea, and leaflets with kindness and good intentions. But I was numb. I didn’t taste the tea I drank, I didn’t read the words of the leaflets, my ears didn’t hear the guidance. My existence was suddenly suspended. In those words, no heartbeat. I became the nothingness of it. I was nothing. My baby was inside me. Dead. I felt dead. I would leave the hospital, drive home, with my mother who came with me on this dreadful day. I would get into my pyjamas and sit. I felt nothing. My sisters came (my travelled further, my sister only a bus away) and sat with my nothingness.
Their comfort was real but feeling nothing is an unchanging state. It cannot be made better with words, or affection. It cannot be made worse, because nothing is found beyond pain. It protects from the pain that hovers over you, waiting, patiently, as long as it takes for the stupor to lift. The worst part of the experience was the expectation that I would pass my baby into the toilet, when the time finally came to release what they described as the products. I was 15 weeks pregnant, the foetus had died at 13 weeks, so for 2 weeks I had not known I was carrying a death.
Having measured each stage of the pregnancy with eagerness and curiosity I knew that its size added with the placenta would mean I would definitely “feel” and see what came away if I let the miscarriage happen at home. I wasn’t afraid of pain. I’d already had one pregnancy and given birth to a healthy 8lb 11oz boy. I was afraid, in fact it was abject terror at the thought of feeling this loss physically. As such, as I now reflect back, I can see that I was dissociating even then, at this new trauma. Emotionally numb and physically incapable of letting go of this baby.
In the end I returned to the hospital the following day, by which time my husband had flown back from Germany, having received the bad news over the phone. I felt emotion for him. This was his first baby. What a devastation for him. But I felt nothing. I was induced in the hospital after being examined and told that my cervix showed no signs of opening. I was given something to dissolve under my tongue and by the time the next examination was conducted staff, talking amongst themselves, described seeing the start of some”products” coming away.
I begged them to put me to sleep. I wasn’t frightened of the pain. It was the thought of experiencing this baby leave me. A consultant gynaecologist came to talk with me. Not an unpleasant man, he politely explained that if he did put me to sleep and perform what is loosely called a D & C, it would reduce my chances of fertility in the future. So I declined.
My husband and I were given a side room, to wait. For the inevitable. To witness our loss. It came. I felt the lead up to the moment. As I lay for hours, waiting with my husband at the bedside, my jaw started to chatter, and I started to shiver. This was all of a sudden, and there was no pain as such. Then, I felt a sudden gush, a pressure, a painless release.
I called the nurse and she came, she looked under the sheets briskly, and showed no concern, advising that it was just some fluid. But I knew. And I laid in it. I knew.
I called the nurse again. She called the Consultant. I will never ever forget how it felt, as he guided the sheets apart, and raised my knees, parted my legs and said:
“Oh, yes, it’s over now”.
The nurse standing with him asked if I would like to see the foetus. I have never regretted my answer. No. I wanted to remember that baby, as the potential he or she had. Not the vulnerability of its lifeless form. And so it was done. I dressed and went home.
I have not forgotten that pregnancy and that loss, I never will. I have a love for something that never became. A life, even though short, enhanced mine for all the weeks it grew inside me. I send love and prayers to any reader who has ever experienced the loss of a baby, no matter what age.
Saying goodbye can be a choice or it can be forced upon us without any warning. These are the times when we don’t have a rehearsed farewell. Instead we hang on, unprepared for the finality of the end. After all, goodbye is a wave to the end of something. If we are lucky most partings are temporary, particularly with loved ones and valuable experiences. But this was not temporary. The permanence of those words on that stormy 8th July 2009 spell out a new wound to my heart, one shared with all the previous injuries, collected from decades of trauma, some more healed than others, some still raw and ugly.
I went to on suffer a further 6 miscarriages, from which a referral was done and, under the care of a consultant, I went on to have two beautiful and health babies (a girl and a boy). There can be hope and there is help.
There is a website for support for anyone reading this and needing more support?
info@miscarriageassociation.org.uk
tel: 01924 200799
