I remember talking to an acquaintance, a friend of my husband’s, after our second 2nd trimester loss. I mentioned something about preferring this hospital over the one where we delivered our first still child, and she snapped her head up at me, gobsmacked.
“Hospital?” She was fully confused. “What do you mean?”
That was when I realized why so many people have a hard time ‘getting’ the grief that follows pregnancy loss.
They don’t ‘get’ the pregnancy loss in the first place.
I’m not sure how, or why, but it seems to surprise a weirdly large amount of people to learn that I delivered my 18, 20, and 27 weeks-old babies, in hospitals, with doctors and nurses.
That I received pitocin. That I labored and was given pain medication for contractions.
That I held my babies in my arms.
That I organized cremations, burials, and funerals for them.
That I named them.
That I loved them, and still love them, exactly the same as I love my two surviving sons.
You Need To Know That A Stillbirth Is Still A Birth Story
I guess I’ve been on the other side of loss too long to remember the ignorance of not needing to know.
I can’t imagine a space anymore where I wouldn’t know how much goes into a pregnancy loss, and how much goes into grieving it.
But for those who do not know…
It is not just a death but also a birth.
We deliver these babies into the world, through sweat and tears, in the same labor and delivery wing where you birthed your own children, under the guidance of nurses timing our pushes.
It is not just a ‘loss’ but also a baby.
This sounds like such an oversimplified statement, and yet I have often felt like my pregnancy loss is treated more like an event that has just kind of happened to me rather than as a human child I brought into the world with my own body and soul.
You cannot leave the hospital without your child. Legally. This is not a personal decision.
You must organize to have your child’s remains handled, either via cremation, autopsy, or burial before you are allowed to be discharged.
And you do this from your hospital bed. In the labor and delivery wing.
While outside your hospital door, all you hear is laughter and newborn cries and happy visitors passing up and down.
Sound torturous? It is!
Your body still produces milk, still bleeds; episiotomies still exist and C-section recovery is still sometimes a reality.
I had a former employer ask – in all real and true sincerity – why I needed more than a day off to recover from my almost seven months along pregnancy loss.
There was some sort of misconception that I had just dispelled a bit of tissue over the course of twenty minutes and should be back at it like nothing had happened.
The emotional impact and very real need for mental recovery not even withstanding; the physical recovery alone, she honestly had no comprehension of.
But she is not alone.
I don’t think enough people really know, or even seek to know, what a stillbirth is physically like.
It’s like every horrible part of delivery without any of the euphoria; every difficult milestone of recovery without any of the joy.
And not just done in the mere absence of euphoria and joy, but under the crushing weight of all-consuming, inescapable despair.
This is what it’s like.
This is what we live through.
This is why it’s so hard.
This is why I talk about it; so they can learn.
Learn, listen, and stop being so damn surprised.
Wow so very powerful so true well said
Exactly this. People seem to think that you just simply stop being pregnant. They don’t acknowledge that your baby has died, that you have given birth, that you went to the registry office to register the fact that your baby lived and died, that you organised and went to your baby’s funeral, that you are bleeding and your milk has come in the same as if your baby had lived. People don’t seem to think that there has been a death because your baby never took a breath, because they never lived outside of your body. Thank you for writing this.
My heart breaks for anyone to have to experience this once, let alone three separate times! The closest I have been to this is having that a friend that had to deliver her 40 week old baby, stillborn, and I absolutely could not grasp was she had to go through! In my inexperience, I thought that maybe they should have delivered the baby under general anesthesia so she wouldn’t have to experience the birth of a baby she would not go home with, but she talked about the closure that she received going through that birthing process and then spending the next 24 hours with her husband, three children, and her baby that was not living. While I would wish this on no one, I hope that understanding spreads through your experience! Growth and awareness, the only reasoning behind tragedy in my mind.