If you use social media in any form, you will be aware by now that October is Baby Loss Awareness Month. This is a time when people who are keep quiet for the rest of the year often speak out about their experiences. It’s incredible. Witnessing other people’s testimonies is what helped me begin to speak out two years ago. I was in the depths of depression and despair at the time, and I had not yet been able to accept or face up to the fact that when we lost Gracie Wren, I nearly died too. Suddenly, my news feed was full of people saying things like, “I am the one in four,” referring to the fact that one in four pregnancies ends with loss. I realised that although miscarriage and baby loss are very common, and although speaking about it is one of life’s big taboos, my experience matters too.
That statistic, one in four, is both helpful and unhelpful. Knowing that we are far from being alone is very helpful, but like all statistics, it depersonalises something very personal.
We live at a time and in a society when we do not expect to lose our children. We expect parents to die after a long life, before their children. Any family that doesn’t conform to this norm can make people uncomfortable. Our baby died, I nearly died, and this is such a common experience that society expects us to get up and carry on as though nothing has happened, because thinking about it makes people feel bad. I felt obliged to keep quiet because I knew that if I talked about it I would cry, and people don’t like that because it makes them uncomfortable.
That was two years ago. Since then, I have talked about it a lot and cried a lot. I’ve had more losses. I am open about the fact that there are seven children in our family, even though only the eldest is living.
Statistics are misleading. One in four pregnancies ends in loss, but I know several families who have four or more children who have never experienced loss. And I know families who have experienced multiple losses, a lot more than I have, who have never had the chance to bring home a living child. Speaking about this is one of the biggest taboos of our time. Not all mothers have living children. Not all mothers who have living children only have the ones you see.
So if this is so common, why does it matter? If twenty-five percent of pregnancies end with the death of the infant, why are people shocked when it happens? And why does it matter?
The received wisdom is that it’s better not to announce your pregnancy until after the scan at twelve weeks. The term that is often banded around is that it’s “safe” after that. But there are so many things wrong with this way of thinking, which is encouraged by midwives and medical professionals. It contains within it the assumption that if you lose your baby before twelve weeks, you won’t tell anyone. And it also encourages the belief that there is a magical transformation after which the baby you are carrying is safe.
The reality is that unborn babies can and do die at any time during pregnancy, sometimes for no identifiable reason. Research is constantly taking place to attempt to reduce this, and there are things that expectant mothers can do to decrease the risk for their baby. (I’ll write about those another day.) But the reality is that carrying or being an unborn baby is still dangerous for the infant and the parent, and tiny babies are so vulnerable that the danger doesn’t entirely go away even after birth.
As well as the mental and emotional impact, there’s another aspect that is even less spoken of. Every pregnancy changes the mother’s body, and some of the changes are permanent. Even if the pregnancy only lasts a few weeks or months, there is no going back physically any more than emotionally. One of the giveaways that I am pregnant is that tap water, any still water, tastes strongly metallic, and as the pregnancy progresses it gets harder to drink it without gagging. Outside pregnancy, I can drink tap water, but it still has a metallic aftertaste that was never there before. There are other physical changes – stretch marks, the size and shape of your breasts – that will never change back after pregnancy.
What does all this have to do with Baby Loss Awareness Month? Everything I write here is about increasing awareness in one way or another, so all my blog posts are relevant in October. But there is one other aspect of this month that I want to mention particularly to people who are supporting a loved one who has suffered a miscarriage or baby loss.
Having a whole month dedicated to trying to reduce the taboo is amazing. It’s a very positive and rewarding experience for so many of us. It leads people to speak out who were not able to before.
And at the same time, October is difficult. It’s impossible to spend any time on social media without being reminded what month it is, and that can be triggering.
Dear Lord, thank you for this terrible, wonderful month of October. Thank you for a whole month every year when those of us who need to are encouraged to speak out. Thank you for every person touched by loss whose sealed lips will be loosed this month for the first time. And, dear Lord, please give each of us the strength we need when our grief is triggered by another’s words or image. Help us to support each other in our grief and to be there for those we love. Amen.
Joy in the Mourning 