The bereaved parents club

Disclaimer: This may contain several triggers for anyone who is struggling with infertility or has experienced a miscarriage, stillbirth or infant loss…it is also a very personal account of my experience.

“What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us” – Helen Keller

October is pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. As with most “awareness days/months” you don’t really have any association to them unless you have been directly impacted. You are, up until that point in time, unconcerned.

This was me. Despite my best friend struggling for years with infertility, I was not aware of a month that had been set aside to honour and bring awareness to the extremely sensitive and “taboo” subject of pregnancy and infant loss.

That all changed in 2016 and I have never been the same since, thankfully.

My husband and I had been married just over a year and given my thyroid condition; I was expecting to undergo fertility treatments given all the challenges most of us with Hashimoto’s face. Much to my surprise, this was not the case and in March 2016, I was pregnant.

We were nervous, excited and incredibly surprised. As the Portuguese saying goes (loosely translated), if you play in the rain, you will get wet, so not entirely sure what we were surprised by, but anyway.

I scheduled our first appointment with the OBGYN, who to this day is one of the most amazing humans I have met. Thankfully I had been prewarned about what to expect at my first appointment and it wasn’t a belly scan.

And there it was, this little bean, with a raging heartbeat! The flurry of emotions that came with seeing our tiny baby on the screen cannot be described.

Having hashimoto’s I was in the lab more often than not having blood drawn to make sure my levels were fine. I avoided everything I was meant to avoid, from biltong to smelly cheeses to coffee and even stopped my antidepressants. I fought through the nausea that was an all-day affair and read everything I could about pregnancy and what to expect.

I remember we told the family on my dad’s birthday, March 26th 2016, I was about 7 or 8 weeks pregnant then and we’d had the first scan, but we weren’t ready to make it public until that magical 12-week mark.

We had our 12-week scan to check for any abnormalities etc. and all was perfect, and the bean had grown substantially and now looked like a tiny human…still a little alien, but more like a human. We also found out that day the bean was a girl.

I’d had a onesie made for our pregnancy announcement that said, “A Craig and Lara production” and then it was out there for the world to see. The well wishes poured in and the excitement had started to increase as we started to look for baby gear and even started receiving some gifts.

We attended a wedding in France at the end of April, thankfully the nausea had gone so I was able to enjoy the sights and be a tourist without feeling as though I was about to vomit, although my already pathetic bladder was now a little more pathetic and I still had to find a bathroom fairly frequently.

Fast forward a few weeks to May, I was 16 weeks pregnant. We’d returned from our trip, I had thought my belly had stopped “growing” but wasn’t too concerned, until I went to bathroom that morning and there was the tiniest amount of blood on the toilet paper.

PANIC!!!!

We went to my OBGYN immediately. Part of me already knew our little girl had not made it, but that did not make it any easier to look at the monitor and see a grey, lifeless body inside my belly. It appears she had died in utero a few days prior, and my body was holding onto her, so I had to be admitted to “induce” the birth followed by a D&C.

What followed next was a tidal wave of grief and emotions. Tears would not stop.

The day everything changed

I felt like a complete failure. I felt worthless. I felt unworthy. I felt guilty for not being able to keep my little girl safe.

Even with 2 doses of medication to induce the birth my body held onto her lifeless body.

In the early hours of the following morning, my body finally released her, and I gave birth to the most perfect little girl no bigger than the size of my hand.

I didn’t want to see anyone. Did not want to speak with anyone. I couldn’t face the shame of having “lost my baby”. I spent days crying, hating myself, willing it to all be over. For weeks, I merely existed. I was a shadow of my former self. I didn’t know this person who now despised pregnancy announcements and seeing pregnant women in the shops, blissfully unaware of the pain and trauma I was dealing with.

Well-meaning comments like “God needed another angel”, “it was meant to be”, “everything happens for a reason”, “at least you can get pregnant” or “just try for another one” stung so deep that I resented every single one of these statements despite knowing they were well intentioned.

Often, I am sorry for your loss is more than sufficient.

With the help of a wonderful therapist and the resumption of my antidepressants, I began to function rather than just merely exist.

My husband, my pillar of strength, who himself was grieving did everything he could to reassure me and allowed to me sob as often as I needed but did not allow me to blame myself.

It’s an incredibly isolating event.

Society flinches at words like miscarriage, stillbirth, infant death, cot death, SIDS. It’s as though there is a short circuit that happens in the brain and it’s easier to avoid the topic all together because it goes against the ‘normal’ sequence of events.

Yes, it is uncomfortable. Yes, it makes no sense. Yes, it is shocking. More so for the families who deal with it every single day. For us loss parents it’s not just a month of awareness but rather an everyday affair.

Some of us are repeat offenders. In April 2018, I found myself pregnant again, Julia was just shy of a year old. Completely unexpected and I had just resigned from my job and about to start a new job.

My first week on the job I broke the news to my boss that I was pregnant. Fairly much the exact same chain of events. All was well, a perfect 12-week scan. I was hesitant to make any announcement, but what are the chances of it happening again? I mean I had a relatively uneventful pregnancy with Julia, so we told the family and our closest friends.

Late June at 15 weeks and few days pregnant, I was admitted for bleeding. Again, I knew it was over. This time, our son, Will, did not make it.

For 2 years, I refused to even consider trying. Then we did and I found myself pregnant in August 2020. A mere 4 weeks later, at 8 weeks pregnant I was admitted after discovering it was a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.

Every day I am acutely aware there are children missing.

Every day is a mental struggle to not berate myself for being a failure.

Every day I wonder who Hope & Will would have been.

Yes, I am blessed to have a healthy 4.5-year-old. Yes, I am grateful. Yes, she is my miracle child. She is however not a replacement for my children who did not make it earthside.

She is also likely to be an only child. She asks often about having a sibling and it hurts to the core. She doesn’t understand why. I’d love nothing more than giving her another sibling on earth, however all evidence suggests the probability of that happening is slim.

While going through 2 second trimester losses and an ectopic pregnancy broke me, it softened me and taught me to be more empathetic, it’s given me the fortitude to push through difficult and challenging situations.

Fellow loss parents – I see you.

In closing, for those struggling, reach out for support, you do not need to navigate this pain alone. Feel free to reach out to me if you feel comfortable to do so. If you know someone who has gone or is going through this and you don’t know what to say or how to support them, a simple I am sorry for your loss goes a long way. Allow them the space to grieve, acknowledge their children existed – it means more to them than you know.

Light a candle for them on October 15th.

Zoe Clark-Coates said it best “We adapt, we accept, but we never get over it”

This is my truth, until next time,

Lara