October 15th is the International Day of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness. In fact, the whole of October is miscarriage awareness month.
This would have been a random piece of information that meant nothing to me up until August 18th, 2021. I debated so much about writing this down, too many reasons telling me not to. Those reasons are exactly why I am penning this note. This is also an apology note to the people we lied to when we first heard the news. I was ashamed and was in depths of utmost guilt, bowing down voluntarily to the pressures of social stigmas attached to something so common, yet hushed up, a miscarriage.
Statistically, one in every four pregnancies results in a miscarriage. I am that one.
I lost my pregnancy at 6 weeks, 5 days, a spontaneous miscarriage, leaving no gestational product behind. This clinically means, I didn’t have to undergo any further procedures and that my physical wellbeing will be restored within 3–4 weeks. This sums up the gist of happenings that turned my life upside down. What I want to write about is the other half, emotional wellbeing.
My loss, to the whole world, is just another figure, another case mirroring the global percentiles. But it becomes much more when you live through it, cry through it, and still show up in whatever brokenness that you are. The mere thought of putting my incessant thoughts into words made it real & opened up wounds that I had never registered in the first place.
All through the 10 days of knowing that I was pregnant, I had to fight the urge to give up or give in to hope. Since day 1, the chances we were given were 50–50. With every passing day, I struggled with being nonchalant about the situation. Very few knew what we, my husband, and I went through. It was a deliberate choice to keep the news close to our hearts. We didn’t know how else to face the news of being pregnant but with halved chances of being parents.
I had started to bleed even before I came to know that I was pregnant. I brushed it aside as just another episode of Auntie Flo (my menstrual cycle) making an undue appearance. Not only that, it is usual for me to spend a large part of my mornings in a half-dazed state, thanks to the horrendous lifestyle that covid has put us all into. The only pertinent symptom I had was my ability to nap in a matter of seconds. Chalking up the exhaustion to yet another Covid induced languish I went on with my days, even started to work out and follow a stringent diet to shed those extras. For someone, who was not expecting to be pregnant, it didn’t make sense to get a pregnancy test done for a few extra naps and random nauseous bouts. Still, the morning of August 18th, something pushed me to take a home pregnancy test, even while I was continuing to bleed. I have no logical reasoning to give for this spontaneous act of mine, that led to the most trying 10 days of our lives.
The most common question I faced while explaining to people that I lost a pregnancy was — how come you didn’t know you were pregnant? Well…. not all pregnancies are planned. We were so sure of it not happening that I had to argue with my husband to get a blood test done to confirm the 2 pink lines. Not knowing what to expect, I set out to get a beta HCG test done, we got the results within 3 hours and a tele-consult with a gynecologist. With bleeding and cramping increasing by the hour, we rushed to get a scan done to confirm if the pregnancy was intrauterine and not ectopic. (Notice how casually I use clinical terms — just another coping mechanism and aftermath of googling early pregnancy symptoms). Stick test, blood test, an ultrasound, and 3 different medications later, we finally settled into the 10 day waiting period.
Now came the hard part, what do I tell people? We couldn’t announce that we were pregnant, that didn’t make any sense with a 50% viable fetus. We were prepared for what my body threw at us, what physically would go down in case this episode turned upside down. But boy, did we underestimate the mental toll this will have on us. Days and nights of feeling sick were nothing compared to the uncertainty that we lived through. The emotional rollercoaster of going to bed praying that I would wake up, still being pregnant. And the helplessness of it all. We kept googling (not proud of it), we kept messaging my doctor, who amazingly had the patience to respond to each text and reached out to every person I know who had a baby to see if they can provide some solace through drawing a parallel. We did whatever we could think of to keep that tiny glimmer of hope alive while struggling to remind ourselves that the chances are only 50%. We prayed, we cried, we stood resolute by each other as others mindlessly asked questions that neither of us had answers to.
At the end of what seems to be an eternity, we lost the pregnancy as I was about to enter the 7th week of gestation. I knew I had lost it even before we headed to the hospital, an empty uterine cavity confirmed it. Call it by whatever medical terms you want to, but it will always be my baby that I lost. A void filled with what-ifs and almost’s.
We were about to hear a heartbeat. I was almost going to complete my 2 months; we were almost going to be parents…
Despite the stats showing the commonness of the truth, the world, my world is still unaware of the manners in which you approach a woman in grieving. Yes, we grieve the loss, just like any other loss. The child may not have existed in anyone else’s universe, but it did, in mine. My child existed, in all its glory and gore of 6 weeks and 5 days. How does it matter if the pregnancy was planned, unplanned or it was just an immaculate conception?! The choice is, of course, yours, to parent or not too. Here, I am operating under the premise that we want to be parents, someday.
The experience is surreal. Pregnancy is a very subjective, personal period. No one story is similar to the other. For me, I never knew I was pregnant until I knew I won’t be for long. I did not feel the storied warmth and glow of motherhood, but I did definitely feel the fatigue and nausea. My irritability score did skyrocket, and the number of naps required tripled. I felt all that, I did see the tiny round that my doctor called a gestational sac — these are the only evidence of my child existing. Of me, almost becoming a mother.
People write songs and dances of the glory of motherhood, of pregnancy but they forget what these barely pregnant women go through in the initial days of pregnancy. Even worse, they totally skip on the 25% of women, who never got a chance to hold their babies in their arms. Skimming through quotes and stories on miscarried pregnancies, a line struck — never in my arms but always in my heart.
I never got to see the tiny blip of a heartbeat, does that make me less of anything? Does that make it okay for people to say that, move on and try again? Do you know how much it hurts to hear the words; it was not meant to be? Why was it not? Did I cause this? Maybe my workout regime was harsh? Maybe I ate something that I shouldn’t have? Was it because we took that long bike ride or was it because I lifted a heavy box of books, the other day? The questions and thoughts that crop up are never-ending. You hear people say, never blame yourself. But how can you not? Grieving a loss of a person you never got to meet is hard, confusing, and even devastating. All you can think of is the immense possibilities of what could have been.
I am thankful, truly, to the people around me who didn’t throw out insensitivity. But my reluctance in discussing my trauma with anyone, including my friends and family made me realise that I was scared of being judged. Of being labeled as incomplete. I didn’t know miscarriage was as common as one in four until I became the one. I didn’t know how to cope after a miscarriage until I had to improvise on my own, I didn’t know the first thing about grieving a loss of a child that never made it past the womb, yet I am.
This makes me wonder, would it have helped if the word miscarriage was not so hushed up within our society? Would it have helped if the pressure of being a mother was not outrageously exaggerated? Would it have made me reach out to people proactively with no apprehensions of being judged and blamed? Would it have helped me heal and find peace in knowing that I am not alone in this journey of grief? Would it matter if I could finally let myself cry out the tears that I held back in fear of dismissal?
Yes, it would have mattered to me and to all those who are silently carrying an unborn child in their hearts. If you ever come across a woman who has lost a baby that she wanted, ask her the due date and she will tell you exactly when it should have been, no matter how long ago it was or how many more children she had. Because I know that the coming April 12th, 2022, will not be an easy day for me.
