October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss awareness month, and I’ve been struggling with figuring out just what I want to say. I honestly feel like anything I could post simply would not do the magnitude of losing your child justice. I find that phrases like “I am 1 in 4” feel marginalizing. It almost seems to make something that is so significant, feel like more of a statistic than what it actually is: the death of a child. I think it fuels the misconception that this “happens all the time,” when I can assure you, as I look around me, it does not. I see almost every person around me easily and successfully having babies and growing families. I see happiness and joy surrounding my harrowing pain.
And, while early miscarriages are unfortunately far more common than talked about as well, losses in the second trimester; fatal diagnosis; and still birth are just all not common. I’m glad they’re not, don’t get me wrong. But if feels so minimizing to chalk up our babies to a number. I honestly would argue that what happened in our situation, and many other women I have come to know, that the probability of that happening is much slimmer than 1 in 4. For example: I was diagnosed after multiple OBGYN and fertility clinic visits, scans, imaging, and surgery- to have a very rare and severe version of a septate uterus. This is a uterine anomaly that occurs in roughly 1-4% of the population. And of that 1-4%, I had a condition that my fertility specialist said she “had not seen in my 30 plus years of practice.” It happens so often though, right?
I think what people forget is the stories behind the loss. The parents that found out their child had a diagnosis that wasn’t compliant with life, and who had to make the horrid decision between terminating the pregnancy or carrying their baby as long as they could. The ones who were blind-sided by loss, who entered the delivery room preparing for a baby only to hear the bone-chilling words of “there is no heartbeat.” These are parents. These are babies. These are lives.
It is all unimaginable. Women go through labor, often for days. Many, like myself, decline any sort of pain medication in order to optimize their potential time with their child and in hopes of not interfering with any life that there may be left in their baby. Whether born still or born living, we hold our babies. We gaze at them and love on them in the moments we have, knowing they will be both our first and last. We have to say goodbye before we barely get to make acquaintances with our own child. We also have to make end of life arrangements for our children. We have to pick a funeral home, and an urn or a tombstone. We have to leave the hospital without our child. And then, we have to carry on every single day empty handed. Living life without someone that was our everything. It is classified as a complicated, traumatic loss when your baby dies.
I think this month should normalize speaking of an otherwise shamed subject. It should acknowledge and recognize this pain. It should support, empower, and cradle loss parents with empathy and boundless grace. It should work to break the stigma and seek to understand, so that parents, who are grieving the loss of a child, do not have to do so alone. It should allow them the decency to grieve individually. Together, we should learn to recognize that this is much more than a statistic, but rather a life taken way too soon. And, we should stand behind the ones who are left behind to bear it.
I can assure you, this is far more than a statistic. And, if we began to support loss parents like they deserve, maybe their healing wouldn't be so hard.