INTRODUCING ME

I am a 37 year old woman, and I have enjoyed a dynamic and happy life, full of the usual drama and challenges that your average modern western woman faces. I have been a workaholic, passionately dedicated to developing my career, running a business and being a social innovator.

I was married 2 years ago to a man (F) I first fell in love with 10 years ago. We have been trying for a family for a couple of years, but 5 pregnancies on, still no babies. Every time that we have tried to get pregnant, we get up-the-duff immediately – so we feel pretty blessed about that.

The tricky thing has been keeping the pregnancies. I have never carried a pregnancy longer than 11 weeks. I have had three pregnancies end before 5 weeks, one at 8 and a half weeks and one at 11 weeks. All but one of these miscarriages I had at home. The 8 week pregnancy was a molar pregnancy and I had a D&C at the hospital.

I feel pretty intuitively connected to my body - I know within days of conception that I am pregnant, weeks before the pregnancy test can detect it. These miscarriages have helped me to trust my intuition and my body more and more.

My husband is 48, and the both of us can feel the clock ticking loudly. We have both expressed a sense of regret that we have left it so late to have children, but we also know in our hearts that it has taken us all this time to become a strong family unit which is fully prepared to bring children into.

We were “cautious but confident” about this pregnancy, and were a fortnight from trumpeting that we were expecting from the rooftop.

We had just given ourselves permission to fall in love with the little being that was growing inside me.

WEDNESDAY: DAY ONE OF FIVE - The bad news

It was 3am, and I woke with period like cramps, 11 weeks into my 5th pregnancy.

Hubby was doing a night shift and so I was home alone. I went to the toilet and noticed a bright pink mucous on the toilet paper. I held my head in my hands. Even though it was ‘inconclusive’ I knew at that moment what lay ahead for me. A wave of sheer horror swept over me “Oh, no…. how can this be… not again….not this one…”. I paced through the dark house, running my fingers through my hair, as I dialogued with myself.



“Shall I ring F and let him know?”

“No, there is nothing he can do, except worry. I need him to be calm and rested to support me through what is to come.”

I allowed my mind to picture the scenarios ahead - the scan with no heart beat, the blood and the cramps, the devastated expectant grandparents and family…

Then came the tears, they sprang quickly to my eyes and streamed down my face. I knew at that moment that I had a choice - to get into grieving, or to go back to bed and give myself the sleep that I would need to help me with the days ahead. I summonsed all my courage, took 2 paracetamol, 2 ibuprofen and did breathing and relaxation exercises until I fell asleep.

Hubby came home at 7.30am and crawled into bed. I made a decision to let him sleep before telling him. When he awoke after midday, I told him that I thought that I was miscarrying. He told me later that he wished that I had told him straight away, but I am pretty comfortable with my decision to make sure that both of us had good sleep under our belt to handle what lay ahead. I am convinced that the sleep is what has helped me to be so resilient.

Luckily it was a quiet day at the Accident and Emergency clinic. We were able to see a doctor within an hour and have a scan within two. The tears were flowing thick and fast now, making it very difficult to talk to health professionals. I was very grateful to have F to do the talking. They asked the usual questions, took blood pressure and blood samples. But the only thing that really mattered was the scan.

The Ultrasound tech was a pretty but simple woman in her early 20’s and I remember thinking, I don’t want to hear about my dead baby from her. I had lots of crazy thoughts that day. The first scan (exterior) didn’t have enough detail, but the internal scan showed the gestational sac, and our baby, no heartbeat. The baby hadn’t developed in size from the first scan at 8 weeks, so must have died soon after the first scan. This fit with a sudden decline in the severity of my nausea that I had experienced at the same time. Intuitively at that time, I knew that something was not right, and I so went and had a blood test, but the bloods showed no determinable decline in HCG levels. Besides, what can you do?? Upon pronouncing our baby dead, the technologist said we could have as long as we needed before leaving her ultrasound room.

F and I clutched each other and sobbed silently. What is there to say? Of course we will keep trying. Of course its not our fault. Of course we love each other.

The well of our grief and loss and tears is so dark and deep and seemingly endless.

We went back to our hospital room and through the tears planned the next steps. Even though I consider myself 'a natural woman’ I wanted to take the surgical option. I was so scared of a long drawn out natural miscarriage. I didn’t want to see or handle “The Products*” of our pregnancy. But the earliest surgery wouldn’t be possible until Monday. It was a Wednesday. It was inevitable that I would be miscarrying over the weekend.

We wanted for the products to be tested (we are leaving nothing to chance now) and we also wanted them returned to us so that we could bury our little treasure at home.

There were forms and plastic pottles with formulin and rubber gloves foist upon us in BIOHAZARD bags. Could this be any more impersonal?

We pulled ourselves together and left the hospital. We had been there for 4 hours, and had gone through an entire box of tissues. I had done top-notch ugly crying, my eyes were almost puffed closed. We hadn’t eaten all day, just in case surgery was an option. We asked for pain relief in case I started miscarrying and were given scripts for 30mg Codeine, paracetamol and ibuprofen.

Hubby and I went to a restaurant for dinner. We chose a place with a cosy booth so that I could have my back to everyone and slump against a post. I ordered a lovely glass of wine with dinner, my first wine in over 3 months. It was like nectar. At that moment, I felt like I was in a safe cocoon woven with the sensations of great love and wicked loss. I have never experienced anything quite like it. While we sat at the cafe, F sent off a text message to tell our family that we were losing our pregnancy, that we were ok, but that we didn’t feel like talking about it yet.

We went home and started a movie marathon that lasted 4 days. I took paracetamol and brufen together to help weather the painful period like pain that had started. A steady flow of blood began and lasted for the next five days. None of the pain was unfamiliar - it was like having a very bad period.

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THURSDAY: DAY TWO OF FIVE - The contractions set in

We woke late. F had taken the day off to be with me. He made me pancakes in bed. We went for a slow long walk along the beach together. We watched several movies. I cried frequently, but just for short periods. I was becoming tired of my tears.

I was reveling in the cocoon, feeling safe and sad and comforted by F. I was completely unable or unready to deal with people and the outside world. I switched off my cellphone, and turned off my email. We cleaned the house together, knowing that we would be spending a lot of time at home, and needing things like the toilet to be especially clean.

We got through the day, and F managed to get some painting in. I had an afternoon sleep. F brought me dinner in bed. We watched a couple more movies before going to sleep. During the day, the period like pain included sharp cramping. These would come and go in waves. I didn’t notice the pattern at first. I took my first codeine to deal with the pain. The cramps still pierced through. I can only imagine how painful they would have been without the medication.

At night I was able to go to sleep, only to wake at 5am with the piercing cramps having evolved into full blown contractions. I took the full arsenal of drugs at my disposal; 2 codeine, 2 paracetemol, 2 brufen.

I was fast going into shock. I had nausea, faintness, and I was shivering in our warm bedroom.

F got up and got me a bowl (to pass 'products’ into) and a basin (to vomit into), some rubber gloves and the pottles of formulin. I was sure that the severity of the contractions meant that I was going to pass the gestational sac. F joined me on the floor with cushions. I was barely conscious. When I had the energy, I went up on all fours to rock and move with the contractions. I tried to keep my breathing calm and steady. The pain was so intense that a couple of times I drifted out of consciousness. I tried to breathe into the pain instead of howling, as I found this gave me a greater sense of being in control. Gasping and crying out made me feel like a victim. Breathing and blowing and rocking made me feel like I was doing something - like I was facilitating the passage of my baby through the cervix. I was, in a way, birthing. And I figured I should treat it like this. I have never had a pregnancy long enough to go to antenatal classes, so all that I know about birthing is pretty rudimentary. Breathing, and positioning your pelvis in a way that lets nature and gravity do its thing. So, I spent time on all fours or squatting.

I passed some blood and had a gush of watery blood - my guess was that this was the amniotic fluid from a popped gestational sac. But this was all that passed, before the contractions subsided an hour later.

This was the most intense hour of pain in my whole life. My husband (himself a nurse) was concerned that something was going wrong. But it turns out, this is what a natural miscarriage is like.

The pain was contractions to try and open an unripe cervix. This, and the next bout of intense contractions over the next two days failed, because we didn’t see the gestational sac until Sunday morning.

FRIDAY: DAY THREE OF FOUR - Getting back in control

I woke up with a big smile on my face. I had survived the night, WE had survived the night (Jeez this miscarriage stuff is hard on our men) and the sun was shining into our bedroom. Breakfast in bed - Pancakes again. And icecream. Perfect. Gold stars for F.

I was feeling physically more fragile than the day before, as things were really raw and tender in my abdomen. Walking around the house was slow and so I kept moving around to a minimum. I folded some laundry, lay in the sun, made some crackers, watched more movies. F encouraged me to go for a walk, he really wanted to get me into the fresh air. I just wasn’t up to it. I probably would have been fine, but I was feeling self-pitying and I didn’t feel like doing the right thing.

SATURDAY: DAY FOUR OF FIVE - Using Birthing Practices

Brunch - we went to cafe up the coast, I was still feeling allergic to seeing people and didn’t want to see anyone from our local community in case I had to talk to them. I couldn’t face seeing anyone I knew. I had started 'showing’ (read: I got fat!) so there were no prizes for anyone who had guessed that I was pregnant.

We told people early on last time and then lost the baby at 14 weeks. I am still unsure that it was the right thing to hold off telling people. I think that we women are protecting them from the realities of a very common experience, and this means the shock is even more devastating when miscarriage becomes a part of their lives. Its our cultures’ best kept secret. But its a tricky line to walk. Last time we ended up hatingt that people knew about our pregnancy when it came to letting them know the bad news. We weren’t going to put up a facebook status saying we miscarried… so for a year afterwards we would run into people asking how our new baby was. Ouch.

This time, we had told our closest people - our family and our near and dear friends and that feels about right because these are precisely the people that we needed support from as the days and weeks unfolded ahead of us.

At about 8pm the contractions came back. This time, I was prepared. I had thought more about treating my miscarriage like a birth. I went online and investigated the props that they have in birthing suites and thought what might be useful for me. A stroke of genius - we have a step ladder in our kitchen. It is old and heavy and about a meter high. It is perfect for supporting me on a squat, or helping me stretch out a cramping abdomen. Sometimes I perched on top of it with my feet up high - a really supported squat. I watched “How to train your Dragon” with F in the lounge. He did some acupressure to relieve pain during birthing and dilate the cervix. I even did “pushing” and contracted and relaxed my perineum muscles to assist everything moving along.

I figured the reason why I didn’t pass the gestational sac was because my cervix wasn’t dilated enough. I remembered a piece of wisdom that my mother told me - she said that that sperm naturally dilates the cervix. Of course it does! Because that’s how the egg and the sperm manage to meet. I was too tender and not in the blimmin’ mood for 'getting it on’, but I asked F if he would be prepared to offer up some semen for the “job at hand”. He laughed and agreed. I helped him to get excited. Was it my rainbow socks, my puffy eyes or my bed-matted hair that did it for him? Not sure. Anyway he came in a cup and I suctioned it up into a syringe and lay on my back and inserted it as high into my vagina as was comfortable. I lay on my back 'cycling my legs’ which felt good for the contractions as well as helping the semen get to the magic spot.

I went back to my stepladder and kept in a squatting position and kept with my breathing regime. The contractions weren’t as strong as last time, but I was also more in control. I passed a stream of blood, but no sac. I was disappointed to think that my sperm idea didn’t work. And again felt terrified that I would have to have yet another set of painful contractions in order to pass it. Medicated on codeine and paracetamol, I went to sleep.

SUNDAY: DAY FIVE OF FIVE - Passing the gestational sac

I awoke to contractions again. Ding Ding - here we go again, round 3.

They were gaining in pain and frequency. F insisted I take 2 codeine - he was sick of seeing me in such terrible pain.

I was just getting my set-up together - the stepladder and some cushions - when I felt the sac slipping down. “Here we go!” I called to F. “can you please bring a bowl, the specimen formulin pottles to me?” I was in the bathroom. I put on a glove, reached into my underwear just as the sac slipped down. I got the feeling that the semen trick had done its work overnight. The contractions this morning were 'merely a formality’.

The gestational sac was surprisingly heavy, and about the size of a small kiwifruit. It was dark, dark red in colour with lots of other tissues and parts all wrapped up. I couldn’t see the form of our foetus (but I wasn’t trying very hard). I slipped the sac into the formulin pottle, put it in the biohazard bag and cleaned up. It was all so very clinical.

Where was our experience of our little pre-birth baby that we had fallen in love with in all of that?

What I had managed to salvage of the miscarriage was the need to treat it physically like a natural birth. To breath and behave in a way that is commensurate with birthing. To honour and listen to my body - it is giving me information. In my case, it was communicating that it couldn’t dilate the cervix sufficiently.

Now I feel like the process is complete. 5 days of grieving and letting go. The thing about having had multiple miscarriages is that it does seem to make the process easier, because I trust that I will feel normal again. Also, this time around we can access professional help to help us have a healthy full-term pregnancy. I’m ready to let them in, but I am wary of them over-medicalising our pregnancy.

I also have to say that nothing, bar nothing, has made F and I grow closer than our shared experience of miscarriage. This is a real blessing for us and makes me even more excited and confident about the amazing family that we will go on to create.

I am also reminded about all those millions of much missed-pregnancies – some late or carried to full term by women called to be braver and more courageous than I was. I hope that some of you will feel compelled to share your stories. We yearn for them, because they validate our own lonely isolated experiences. Although we can’t take away the pain, together we can alleviate some the sense of aloneness and isolation of miscarriage by sharing our stories.

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TOMORROW

There are 14 messages on my cellphone. That’s tomorrow’s job. I will start tomorrow by pretending that life is back to normal. I am a fake-it-till-you-make-it-kinda-gal. If I do it like I mean it, my body often plays along. I have a few kilos to shed and a fitness regime to get back on top of. And a job to get. But I’m going to take it one day at a time.

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FOOTNOTE:

* Could they have thought of a more impersonal and dispassionate way to refer to our babies and their womb-home?