“you’ve not written in a while”, my husband mused just the other night
I didn’t know how to tell him
that some things hurt too deep to articulate
that I was not yet ready to voice some truths
in this small space I take up on the internet
that maybe I never will
But it seems that I’m voicing it after all
To this small internet space
Because to voice it is cathartic
I look at the calendar
and realise I am just over one month away
from what would have been my due date
for a pregnancy that was fleeting, brief
and yet felt like every answered prayer
a miracle fluttering awake
like a bird in the palm of my hand
But if I were to dial back seven months
I feel the cramps kick in at work
they are loud and painkillers do not silence them
I desperately cling to hope
when Google tells me it’s normal
yet something in me knows
that this won’t be the case for me.
I drive home
chanting the mantra that this will all be okay
but later I find myself whispering to my husband
that there is blood
and he tells me it will still be okay - and neither of us believe him
and then there’s the 111 call that he powers through for me
his frantic energy mirroring mine
and the six hour wait for an emergency walk in appt
and blood, still blood
we order pizza
I slip in and out of sleep
avoiding the bathroom at all costs
because I cannot bring myself to see more red
my husband is panicked, to the bone,
out of his depth
but he is holding it together for me
he masks his pain at a reality that we both, on some intrinsic level,
know is happening
as much as we try to convince ourselves it’s not
he is silently, desperately, googling Reddit answers
to the question “is bleeding in early weeks of pregnancy normal”
I am calling my mum
breaking the news that I was supposed to be surprising her with that very night
(is life not cruel that way)
not with a cake and a baby sleepsuit
but with me, sobbing,
that I think I am losing my baby.
The clock strikes midnight
and I am sat in a cold testing room
with a doctor who cannot reassure me
who cannot tell me what is happening
if I am losing this baby
if I am losing this promise of life
our thousand tiny yearnings, the microscopic size of a cake sprinkle,
dissipating into nothingness
he can only tell me, in his bored, uninterested voice
that I have to wait three days for an ultrasound
to confirm my tragedy.
Those days are a blur
and no one, not even my husband,
truly knows the emotional devastation I carried
moving through limbo in my pyjamas
day to night to day again
checking for blood
always checking for blood
the volume of tears
and intensity of prayers
a secret between myself and God
I remember
the pain and violation of that internal examination
as I cried out my heart
because I knew deep down
that there was nothing to find
the words “I’m sorry your womb is empty”
and my mum softly kissing my forehead
as she held me tightly
my mother, usually a poker face of emotion,
gently crying with me
clutching me to her, to save me
as I broke
into a thousand little pieces
Not a life shattering moment…
but my life shattered in that moment.
I am dismissed
with a pamphlet on “how to manage the grief of a miscarriage”
and the words “maybe next time”
I am still waiting for Next Time
I am haunted
by two lines I may never see again
I walk from the hospital exit to the car
she is mothering me but I cannot hear it
over the humming in my ears
and the crashing of my world at my feet
the mental turbulence of “what now?”
of knowing that any next test will never feel the same again
that if there is a next time, our happiness will be dimmed…clouded over grey and heavy
our hearts cloaked in fear and anxiety
as we try to protect what we cannot
Because only God gives life and only God takes life
I staggered through the hormone crash
the headaches and emotional sickness
from which I have still not recovered
the fatigue and grief
the metallic taste coating my teeth
the breakouts on my skin
the two kilos my size four body gained but cannot lose
I shifted into self loathing
hating my body
for its incapacity to carry life
I succumbed to the weight of grief
that envelopes me every cycle
with every freshly-shattered hope that was carefully guarded but not enough to not hurt
and every negative pregnancy test.
It is a state of mind
of hormone tracking, “mindful eating”,
chewing every supplement under the sun
exercising, “de-stressing”, “trying but not trying”
symptom spotting, suppressing the urge of “early testing”
measuring time by cycles, not seasons
In every thirty day window
my heart ticks against the days
counting, always counting
in this endless cycle of cycles
that feels like a rigged game
losses and odds stacked high
holding your breath every month
with an invisible grief that is twisted up with a whispered rush of adrenaline
because this cycle could be it
but even that fades out until you don’t really believe in any of it anymore
Infertility
and pregnancy loss
and the TTC journey
is lonely. it is consuming. it is terrifying
sometimes I look at my husband
and see nothing but him holding a mini me-&-him
in a little baby sized BVB football kit
and my heart cracks clean down the middle
for the millionth time
for not being able to give it to him
it is something I carry every day
there is a Before and an After
and in the After
not a single day goes by where I do not think about those nine days
that changed me forever
I cannot escape it
like I cannot escape the thoughts of
“I wish I had married younger”
“I wish we had started trying earlier”
“what if it happens again”
Will it always be this hard
Every month I sit, heavy
with the finality that Motherhood may never belong to me
it is the weight of a rock on my chest
and I cannot breathe
I now have exclusive membership
to a club I never asked to be a member of
cost: a lifetime of what-ifs, stacked like unpaid bills
pieces of myself I never agreed to surrender
the quiet ache that blooms beneath my ribs, paid again and again
There are months where I have prayed every day, multiple times a day
for a miracle, hope worn thin like old fabric
then there are other months
where I have not uttered a single word to the Heavens to ask
because my heart is tired now,
cannot pray from its bleeding wounds
does not respond to my trembling hands
when I try, in vain, to stitch up its ragged ribbons
it wallows in quiet heartbreak, instead
a currency no one keeps track of but me.
No one teaches the heart of a woman to endure
to grieve silently, in slow motion, thirty days by thirty days
one day at a time
it is torment to wait…always, a wait
nor does anyone teach the heart of a woman to love
fiercely, unconditionally
something that was never hers
a lost heartbeat that never was
little bundle of cells
that couldn’t stay, but did
like a whisper carried in the wind
a tiny trace that time can’t take away
little light of mine
nestled in my heart
Until we meet in Heaven, little one x
