Miscarriage - A love letter to my baby

A public post I wrote about miscarrying our baby at 12 weeks in January 2021, because these stories are not told enough.

I began to miscarry at 11-12weeks pregnant on 1st January 2021. This post is about my emotional and explicit physical experience. Please only read on having considered if these are safe words for you to read right now.

I found out you died Baby.

I was (am?) 11-12 weeks pregnant with you.

On Thursday, New Year’s Eve 2020 we cut short our happy holiday with extended family to make the border closure deadline. We made it, but had to make a 20hour trip home with no accommodation stops.

We stopped in Orbost Victoria early in the morning, 12hours into our journey. As I watched the kids play in the playground I suddenly felt a gush that I knew instantly was blood.

I had dreamt of bleeding and breaking waters the night before so viscerally that I had woken and placed my hand on vulva to check that it was dream.

Turns out it was a premonition.

I started praying and talking to you, asking you to stay, if you were ok.

I find birth and miscarriage such an animalistic experience, I find comfort in the messy human mammalian experience. As if mother nature holds me with both tenderness and disdain, as both perfectly uniquely divine and also just another organism, like any other, in the whole system.

I felt that animal narrowing of focus, as I sat on the public park toilet with cramps, my piss and shit and blood mixed together.

Experiencing the extremes of both ends of the spectrum, a rising emotional swirl grabbing for hope and a deadly calm knowing that nothing can be done regardless.

Orbost urgent care had no doctors or ultrasound and sent us onto Bairnsdale. “Happy New Year!” said a nurse arriving for her shift, as I walked back to the car. My mouth dropped open, but I couldn’t answer.

Happy New Year! Said the nurse at Bairnsdale.

The doctor at Bairnsdale warned me “If we see baby it can reassure you, if I cannot see baby I need you to know my ultrasound skills and equipment aren’t designed for early pregnancy. It doesn’t mean it’s definitely bad news just that you need review in Melbourne.”

Ok I said. But when he couldn’t find you at 11-12weeks I knew that was a very bad sign. Dad and Esperanza and Sage had to wait in the car in the carpark.

I went into the Mercy Hospital alone, you and I together in angst. As we had come from NSW we had to be treated as high risk of COVID. Windowless consult room, no toilet, closed door, conversations with staff through the door.

No support person, no Aaron, good god I wanted your Dad. Full PPE for physical examination and remaining consults over the phone from the front desk. Over the phone the Doctor said, we can’t know without ultrasound but I agree it does not look good.

I stank after 19hours on the road, but it felt about right for the circumstance. I only had just enough phone battery to stay in touch with your Dad. They told us with a public holiday and COVID risk it would be a long wait to see Dr and ultrasound clinic ready for full PPE.

On their advice I decided to go home, shower, hug my family and wait on our urgent test results and return for the ultrasound appointment the next day.

I kept grieving and hoping and grieving and hoping. It reminded me of when I was in labour with Sage and he came around the bend of the birth canal with his hand up and an elbow in my right hip pushing on all that bursitis and fibro pain and I kept withdrawing out of the contractions the pain was so acute. Like a knife in my hip. Different from the contractions I wanted to lean into.

This was the same, a pain so sharp, that I knew I had walk into to get to the other side, but desperately wanted to avoid it and stay in this place with possibility and hope that I would still get to meet you earth side.

I walked into the ultrasound waiting room alone, a sonographer called me in.

I could tell immediately her approach was to remain distant, no eye contact, politely cold. I felt compassion for her and wondered how many women had she had to tell some form of devastating news to without any partner or support person in the room in the last year?

The ultrasound TV screen was up. I watched as she measured my uterus, my baby. Silently.

I couldn’t see your heartbeat.

But just like when I saw you at 7 weeks (and at that time your heartbeat too), my heart soared and I thought - My Baby!

I knew you were not alive, but the flood of love and delight at seeing your tiny form still flooded me.

“I can’t find a heartbeat, I would like to do an internal ultrasound to be sure, is that ok?”

I was alone again to undress, my body began to tremble as my body started to process the news, just like a deer or other mammal whose nervous system tries to move the emotion through shaking. My legs shook as I lay back on the bed.

“Do you still want the screen on?”

Yes. Yes. Yes.

So I could see you one more time. Tiny, but perfect. And so fucking wanted Baby.

I nearly asked for a picture but couldn’t get the words out. But you are seared in my memory regardless.

“I still haven’t got a heartbeat. I’ll send this to emergency and you can discuss options with the doctors there. Take your time and just go to emergency when you’re ready. Take care of yourself”.

I text your Dad, waiting for us in the carpark. Alone. Still waiting on his COVID test result and unable to be with us. Desperate to be with us, supporting me. “Baby is not alive.”

Then I shook and trembled. Just like when I laboured your big sister and brother, I leant down leaning on the chair, swaying my hips, as the power of this grief began to move. I sobbed. I breathed. Every time I started to want to hold it, the grief, the expression I breathed and let it move.

I let my grief love you just like my joy had. I don’t know how long it took me alone in that room before I walked through the heavily pregnant women in the waiting room and hoped they were here in labour and would soon meet their healthy babies.

Fuck, I wish it could be us.

“Happy New Year! Such a lovely summer day.” Said the nurse at emergency.

Aaron finally got his test result and was able to come in to be with us for the Dr consult.

We sobbed together in the waiting room unravelling the dreams of you we made together.

Cried as the Dr warned us of what we might see when you leave, that there would be recognisable …. parts. It is curious to me that they describe the miscarriage experience with every euphemism but birth. Cramping, more severe than period pain. Acute pain in the cervix as baby passes. Lots of blood. Like….birth?

I’m sorry she said. “I’m sorry for your loss, and this terrible news to start your year and to describe this detail, but I think it helps you to be prepared.” I would love to thank her more profusely now, as while I know all of the medical staff did their best, highly pressured with sudden new COVID policy, she was the only one who sat with our grief in that way.

Did not try and pretend it was not happening, cajole a polite smile from me, chit to chat, say Happy fucking New year, point out that the “Bleeding had prepared you for bad news though?”

It is what I observe in my work for children All. The. Time. Adults are fucking terrible at holding sadness, anger, rage, grief – one of the many truths this experience will even further ground into the very knowing of my cells is that we need to make the full spectrum of the human experience ok. When we sit alongside their disappointments and suffering, we can fully join them in their joy and celebration.

In September last year we had a miscarriage early, 6ish weeks. I was devastated as Aaron was going to be away for 6months for work starting in January we had thought the timing perfect for his return. Not many knew of the pregnancy or the loss.

But I had celebrated you Baby, I was sooo sick including vomiting at the school gate so even if I had wanted to (which I didn’t), I could not have kept you quiet.

By end of term my uterus had popped up and my belly began to round, I had already started unconsciously stroking you.

Your siblings were THRILLED.

When I told them that you had died tonight, I hope you felt how deeply loved you are.

Sage 3yo – Cried, The baby is dead? Is gone? But I really want her to come out to play with her! Please! After a few rounds of this he was ready for some train track play and a movie as agreed.

Your big sister, Esperanza 6yo, oooh her hurt. Her sobs, her soul deep questions of life’s’ greatest hurts that we ask for a lifetime.

Asking all the questions adults ask but, with the inexperienced desperation that there might be an actual answer or solution.

Why?:-

“Why? Why did the baby die? Why can’t it come out alive? It’s so unfair! I don’t understand why. I want our baby alive! But I really want to be a big sister to a little sister.”

The panic to stop the hurt:-

Will you have another baby please? Please try mum? Why did you tell me! You should have just let me forget about the baby! Can we do fun things to try and forget about this mum? So it doesn’t feel so terrible?

Yes. And No. Some moments are the moments we will lean into the grief, like now, we can’t run from our sadness it calcifies inside us. And yes, sometimes we will laugh and play and take joy and not think about it for a while.

“I’m sorry mum, I’m so so sad the baby died. I love you so much.” She who made me mother - so wise, so treasured, so healing to be in relationship with.

Baby I share all this because there will be no funeral with family and friends. There are no possessions of yours to pack away as we reminisce together. They are all the little things I will undo alone.

The deleting of the app that showed how you grew.

Cancelling midwife appointments and ultrasounds.

Deciding what to do with those first ultrasound pictures.

Still protecting you from your big brother as he leaps into my arms for a hug, all arms and kicks. Then remembering I don’t need to protect you anymore.

The marking of your life on the positive pregnancy test I kept and tucking it away with the tests from Esperanza and Sage and Baby 3.

Together with our family we will have ritual and ceremony and honouring of you though.

I’m so grateful to women who have shared their own miscarriage experiences publicly, that allowed me to know immediately I wanted to miscarry at home, have some earth and a plant ready to bury you and farewell you in.

I hold up this grief to say LOOK see how I hurt can you be here with me can you love me still in this? Can you love all the women and families who have lost their children this way and make space for them to tell their story? Not lost private hurts in the “don’t tell before your tests and scans”. Can you trust me to be this sad, devastated and still be ok? I am both deeply devastated and deeply resilient.

I am grateful to share this with all our loved ones who were excitedly awaiting your arrival along with us.

There is something so acute about a loss so common but that still feels flawed. How can something so loved and wanted and joyful be unable to come to life? I can’t make it make sense, it will though. As my loss in September made sense at some stage in 2020.

I’m waiting for you to leave my body now, with my bleeding slowed to mild spotting and some aches and pains.

I have medication to help you along if needed. Just like waiting for the ultrasound I want it to happen. But can’t quite bare the idea of you leaving. It feels macabre but I still want to hold this physical piece of you.

This place of physical waiting means I can stay here a little, and our loved ones wait with me. The world stops a little for us, as I know once your body leaves mine, the world will begin to move on again around me.

I have drafted gratitude posts to some wonderful mentors and teachers of 2020. It is in fact these very mentors that taught me the things I needed to grieve you well, not efficiently, quietly, privately or sensibly but with mess, flow, release, honesty and all I have.

But rightly Baby, I write my gratitude to you first.

I have become a new woman with each of my children. A woman I like, love and respect more and more as a I age and with each new child and evolution in motherhood.

I know you will do that for me too Baby, not in the way I had hoped, but you have transformed me already.

I already sense of some of the lessons. That we must embrace leaning into, welcoming and holding all the feelings we are so enculturated to avoid.

I instantaneously have a few less fucks to give about the opinions of others.

I note the passions I still hold, even as I sit in this devastation, and it guides me to where I will put my creative energy as we move through this. And, I wonder about the recent health decisions I made for you, and wonder if they were made for me.

But mostly I share all this to hold you up Baby, like Simba on Pride Rock. I just can’t have you slip away as if you weren’t momentous and wonderful and adored by your Dad, sister, brother and I.

To say LOOK, see how LOVED this baby was.

See how cared for. See how I mothered this baby so well. I parented your big siblings over spew bowls, a messy, dirty house, too much tv time and quick made meals while I focused on growing you.

See how special and perfect this baby was.

See how LOVED and MISSED this Baby will be.

So loved Baby, so missed.

Mummy