Grieving the Baby, You Never Held
I’ve lacked the motivation to write for weeks which is unusual for me. My stomach has been in knots with worry, and I haven’t been able to focus. I have been emotionally tilting as I try and make sense of the past month and how I will move forward.
A few days ago I decided to open my laptop and press my fingers against the keys. Every letter feels foreign, but I know once I finish writing this, the words will be more familiar than anything I have written before.
There’s a part of me that wants to pour my broken heart out to you however I am also scared of what you all may think of me. Will you think that I’m a mess? That I don’t have it together? That my feelings are unjustified? The truth is, there is no right or wrong way to feel after a miscarriage and how you will come to grips with why it has happened to you.
Starting this new pregnancy journey, I was aware that the statistics aren’t in our favour. Until experiencing my own pregnancy loss, I was unaware of the ‘comforting’ things people say when you experience a miscarriage that are meant to make you feel more at ease. Things like, ‘a third of pregnancy loss occurs in the first trimester’, and ‘you know you’ll most likely go on to have a healthy pregnancy’. Truth be told, all you want people around you to do is listen and let you grieve.
If you’ve been following along, you would know that we were ready to start growing our family again. And within a matter of weeks of writing my last blog, we received wonderful news that we would be welcoming a beautiful new soul into our world. So many hopes and dreams filled my mind and heart and I had begun planning. I was elated and excited for this next chapter, I just couldn’t wait to meet our baby. Sadly, what I didn’t plan for was the weeks that followed.
At four and a half weeks, I had a bleed and then a diagnosis of an angular pregnancy. A couple of weeks later, a heartbeat was found and the baby had moved into position. Starting to let go of my anxiety and fear that I would lose our baby, I went into our follow up appointment with great ease. My husband and I were chatting and laughing with the sonographer as she set up for the scan. But it was the pause and tone of her voice that began the fall into grief that I could never be prepared for.
Losing our little one so early along has left me feeling confused. I didn’t look pregnant, I hadn’t told a lot of people and I wasn’t far along. It is almost like the pregnancy didn’t happen. But it did and it was real. In my mind we had created a life for our little one, filled with hopes and dreams. But now I am left missing a person that I never got to meet. That I will never hold. It sounds like a dream, but it is a nightmare.
It's taken me a week to get to the point of putting my words down to paper. Amongst all the kindness of family and friends, I have strangely felt so isolated and alone. The loneliness of being the only one who really knew this little person or felt them.
A week following our sad news, I took Leo for a walk, and on our way home I stopped into the shops to look at the flowers or as Leo calls them, ‘yayas’. Standing tall and strong amongst the colourful bouquets stood a sunflower. It was almost like it was waiting for me. In a hope to start healing, I bought that beautiful sunflower home.
Before Leo was born, I visited the Van Gogh installation and was mesmerised by his work. For him, the sunflower was an emblem of positivity – and in Dutch literature, they symbolise devotion and happiness. As these flowers decay, they remind us of the cycle of life and inevitable change. For me, this sunflower represents the hope and joy we experienced when we found out about our little one and also the fragility of life.
As the days and week move on, I know I will be fine. Life is really brilliant, even on the cloudiest of days. We just need to find the sunshine at the end of the day and hold on tight to our loved ones.