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Losing James
I walked into the Pregnancy Loss Clinic on Monday, May 8 (the birthday of one of my children), drowning in trepidation. I couldn’t believe that my miscarriage could be successfully managed without a D&C. I was sure there would be something in my medical history that made me ineligible for the medication, or that the process would fail.
Why?
An ongoing issue for me in dealing with my first, and subsequent miscarriages, was the desire to understand why it had happened. I was dumbfounded to hear my doctors say, “We don’t investigate miscarriages until you’ve had three.” Reeling from my first loss, it was hard for me to imagine multiplying that pain by three before anyone would throw me a lifeline…
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. . .
Two More Words
“I’m sorry” implies empathy, and empathy is powerful.
I received a wide variety of responses when I told my friends about my miscarriages. They ran the gamut from “You wouldn’t have wanted a handicapped child,” and “It’s a good thing, actually. Mother Nature takes care of the ones who can’t survive,” through “Oh well, I hope you can be as brave as someone else I know,” to a friend who hugged me and wept and just said, “I love you so much!”
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.
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.