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Burial
We had several choices for what we could do with Loila’s remains: have them cremated, bury them, or allow the hospital to dispose of them (“respectfully,” I was assured.) We left her at the hospital for two months while we grappled with that decision and everything else. I wrote in my journal, “Some days, I think I would like [to bury her]. Sometimes I think it would be too much effort, or too much emotion.”
Grieving
“It’s as if my soul is being stretched to accept what before was impossible.”
Eight days after my D&E, I wrote in my journal: “I told my parents almost a week ago, ‘I always thought grieving meant crying. I didn’t realize it meant hurting.’ Even then, I didn’t realize it also meant anger, dimness and confusion, doubt, mistrust, depression.”
At first, the grief was overwhelming. I spent every moment on the verge of tears. . . .
Losing Loila
I can’t overstate the loss I felt going into the hospital for a D&E. I was losing the possibility of delivering my baby naturally, the closure of having a body to grieve over. . . .
Waiting
Many women would feel differently, but I knew immediately what I wanted: to wait for this baby to come naturally, to give her the dignity of a birth. To be perfectly frank, I liked giving birth to my children. Don’t get me wrong - it hurt like nothing has ever hurt before or since, I moaned and wailed and complained, I was scared before and slightly traumatized after each baby - but it was a joyful experience too. Those labors are precious memories for me, gifts to my children. Like I would eventually realize a name could be, a birth was a gift I could give to this child. . .
Naming Loila
It was half a year, and more, before I gave “the baby” a name. Why not sooner? I can’t remember now, to what degree I just didn’t think of it, and to what degree it seemed too presumptuous. I’d never heard of anyone naming their miscarried child. It wasn’t till I suffered my second miscarriage that it became necessary to give them each a name, just to tell “the babies” apart.
To another parent grieving the loss of a miscarried or stillborn child, I would strongly urge them to name the baby. Miscarriage is grief in a vacuum - the emotional impact of losing a child with nothing concrete on which to hang that grief - no mementos, no pictures, not even memories. A name is tangible; it is an identity.
Loila
My heart remembers.
Eight days after my unexpected breakdown, on October 31st, I had some light bleeding - never a good sign when you’re pregnant. I spent the day lying on the couch. It’s torment to find yourself on the brink of catastrophe with nothing you can do to prevent or prepare. Paradoxically, the only “action” I could come up with to meet this emergency was to rest: ironically, I would soon learn that it was weeks too late for any preventative action.
Between 2005 and 2008, I lost four tiny babies to miscarriage. In an effort to help others who may be experiencing similar losses, I want to share the story of that journey. If you click on the title above, and then follow the “Next in Miscarriage Journey” links at the bottom of each post, you can read through my story sequentially.