Post-miscarriage Internal Battle
It has been two full months since I last went for a stroll down the beach. The last time I was here, it was a day before I had my miscarriage at week 9.
I had been experiencing minor cramping for several hours by that point. Previously that morning, I had discovered what I thought might qualify as "spotting", though I had doubts since the stain more closely resembled rusted metal on a seaside swing set than the colour of blood. Blood is a colour that women know too well.
I had gone about the rest of the day feeling deeply concerned as it was my first pregnancy, but not alarmed because I had faith in my baby and my doctor husband. Though, my online searches for information, or rather for a glimpse of hope, unearthed clinical articles that described in almost comically toned-down terms of high-risk of threatened abortion. The medical term for high-risk of miscarriage.
Feeling isolated and unprepared for the physical and emotional pain of losing my first baby, I asked my husband to bring me to the beach. The need to escape my harsh reality and find solace and tranquility in walking along the beach barefooted and feeling the wind blowing against my skin, was intense.
Through out the days before my miscarriage, I found myself saying the same thing over and over again,
"If you aren't meant for us, we're willing to let you go. Fly my child to Our creator and become a member of His Heaven. Mummy and daddy will always remember you."
Our baby would have enjoyed the beach as much as his/her parents do, wouldn't it? 😊
My husband and I had been growing accustomed to the very welcome idea of a baby due on September. For us, the sorrow felt less abstract, because now we could not help but see our friend's kids as a walking, talking representation of what we had lost.
Battling with my own emotion for the past couple months, today, I decided to win this silent, internal battle by revisiting the place where it began to make its ending known...
On that stone bench, I sat my tired, pregnant feet down, as I contemplated on the probability of my baby's survival. At 26, I was not considered high-risk for a miscarriage. And coming from a healthy family, I thought I was capable of carrying a pregnancy to full term.
I wanted to be optimistic like my husband, but I could no longer ignore the absent of my pregnancy symptoms. They had tapered off day by day. My breasts were no longer sore, I had slowly stopped having strange cravings, and I even managed to get through a 10-minute drive to the beach without falling asleep.
I remember how the waves of contractions that came hours before temporarily calmed and set my tired body at rest, as I enjoyed the delightful feeling of water splashing around my feet and wind blowing through my hair.
This was the very same beach that my husband and I had once taken a stroll on as we animatedly talked about our little one - the name we wanted to give to our baby, the kind of stroller than I wanted, the dreams and plans he had for our baby - type of talk.
He was immensely happy with the prospect of having a little girl or a little boy dotting on him. He was truly a proud new father.
On this rock, my husband and I had stood watching the sun set, secretly wishing that my pregnancy would survive. I had told people: my parents, then my immediate family, then my close friends, within days of setting eyes on that little plus sign. The more anxious I felt, the more people I confided in, believing on some level that announcing my pregnancy would oblige it to go on. I simply dismissed the conventional wisdom that pregnancy announcement shall only be made until the second trimester, owing to the fact that the chances of miscarriage decline rapidly after week 12.
"I just need to get out of the danger zone," a friend once confided when she was five weeks long. "Then, I'll start announcing." The zone is the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and the danger is miscarriage.
Or is the danger in the telling?
However, this alleged oversharing turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. I could not have endured that week alone. When the physical side effects of miscarriage receded, the sadness resurfaced in various forms.
No matter how many times I was told that the miscarriage was not my fault, I could not escape a sense of self-blame. A reel of probable causes played through my mind: I had not started taking folic acid until it was too late, or I had overworked myself while cleaning the house, or I had spent too much time outdoors when his family came down to visit, or I had not consumed enough nutritions.
But then I thought about the countless women who had endured one or even many lost pregnancies, or have never successfully carried a baby at all. I felt guilty and selfish for my own sorrow, when I was lucky enough to be given a chance to carry a baby in my womb even it was only for nine weeks.
This was the strangest part of the sadness: experiencing it in tandem with the baseline joy of an otherwise happy life. As much as I wanted to fold in on myself, to retreat from my responsibilities, and even deny myself life's pleasures out of some sense of duty to the loss, I had to commit to being my old self. I often felt compelled to cry, but I smiled instead thinking of my little angle, who is waiting for my husband and I in Heaven.
Have I won this battle? Yes, I accept my fate with a solemn heart. But I will never stop talking about my first baby because despite the stigma that is clouded around 'miscarriages' among our society, my baby's existence is real and I do have someone to grief about. I am as much as a mother as those mothers out there with children at their hips.
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