Miscarriage

One possible post-holiday conversation:

This conversation won’t be happening, because that’s just not how we talk about it in our society. But for a moment yesterday I imagined giving this response when someone asked me next week, as playgroup and dance class and general term life resumes.

Obviously I knew before my first pregnancy that miscarriage was a possibility. That’s why it’s often recommended or suggested that you wait until the first 12 weeks have passed, the main danger period as it were, before making your pregnancy publicly known. Before I got pregnant, I decided that approach was not for me. I saw the pain and heartache it brought to someone close, to be asked again and again when she was going to try for another child, just days after she had miscarried. The questions were completely innocent; very few people knew of what had happened. I didn’t want to be in that position.

My feelings changed though once I found out I was pregnant. There was a mix of wanting to keep it to ourselves a little longer, and a completely unfounded worry that I would somehow jinx it by telling people. This change in heart surprised me, but I went with it and we were very lucky to have a healthy, beautiful boy and an uncomplicated (though not easy) pregnancy.

I was also surprised by the number of people that admitted to their own experiences with miscarriage, once I told them I was pregnant. Even a friend who had been trying around the same time as me, and came out on a cocktail night just after she miscarried, yet she never mentioned it until I was pregnant – I was so shocked that I’d had no idea and she hadn’t talked about it at all. Even girls’ nights have their topic boundaries, it seemed. It was like getting pregnant was the first veil to be drawn back, allowing a deeper glimpse into the aspects of parenting and becoming a parent which are just not spoken about much. Friends told me how many miscarriages they’d had, when they’d had them; they shared their stories with me to reassure me that if I miscarried the first one, that was no indication of things to come. That it was completely normal, and many women experience it. I had read the books, seen the figures but had no idea just how many people I knew had had one.

I imagined that a miscarriage would be a neat, contained event; quickly verifiable by a doctor. Movies encourage this tidy view – a woman usually wakes up bleeding, goes to the hospital and the doctor sadly informs her that she has lost the baby. She can go home, grieve, and move on. As with so many things, the reality is messier, although perhaps not in the way you imagine. It never occurred to me that a miscarriage is something that can happen over days, not just minutes or hours. Not did it occur to me that doctors may not be able to confirm immediately, that they may need to wait for days too, before they can determine whether you are miscarrying, or if there is some other reason for the bleeding and cramping.

In that time, you’re kind of in limbo. What do you say to people if you want to explain why you’re not particularly chipper, “I’m miscarrying at the moment. Carry on”? You can’t say that you’ve miscarried, because until you get the confirmation, there’s always the slimmest, tiniest chance that your instinct may be wrong and the bleeding is for another reason and your tiny little blob is hanging on as hard as it can. Whilst I can say it definitely to myself, I can’t say it definitely to others until it is confirmed. Besides, you haven’t miscarried, it isn’t finished yet. It is a bizarre thing to walk down the street, going about your day normally, knowing that you are, in all likelihood, losing your baby, at that very moment. (..and the next, and the next. In fact, all the moments that exist between the start of the bleeding and the end)

Such a huge thing to happen, but so small and invisible. Not huge in the “Oh, I’ll never get over this” way, but huge in the ‘Wow, my body really knows what it is doing and I have no control over it” way.

Yet another veil lifted. I’m not sure how many more veils I want to see behind.

Everyone’s experience is different, there are so many variables and factors at play. I am grateful to go through it at a very early stage, barely with enough time to get used to the idea of being pregnant. Physically, it is not as taxing or painful as others with later miscarriages have described. This early on, it’s rather like having a bad period with lots of tests and time in hospital and a good solid dose of hormone activity. My anxiety levels yesterday were through the roof, almost like my body was pre-empting and getting the fear over and done with it before it all started. One more jaunt to the hospital to go, to check hormone levels. Presumably the hormone levels will be dropping drastically and they will finally be able to tell me what I’ve been feeling since yesterday morning – this one is not meant to be.