Nearly a decade of infertility and loss taught Kate Cooper just how far a miscarriage can travel. She shares her experiences in this piece.
My dad stepped in and stopped her after a few rounds of: Do you have any happy news to share yet? Are you pregnant yet?
By that point, we had two miscarriages behind us, were wading through month after month of trying and disappointment, with IVF still to come – and my Yiayia (Greek for grandmother), bless her, hadn’t stopped asking. The only saving grace was that we were living over in the UK at the time. Otherwise, if this line of questioning was happening in person on the regular, I could not have been held accountable for whatever smart-arse retort might slip out of my mouth.
She came from a generation, not to mention a culture, where this was just the natural order of things. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage. She didn’t know what those words were doing to me every time she asked.
So, Dad sat her down. Just the two of them. He told her what was actually going on, and he asked her gently (but firmly) to stop.
I wasn’t in the room. I don’t know exactly what was said, or how she took it. What I know is that after that conversation, she never asked me again.
She passed away a few years ago. Neither she nor any of my other grandparents ever became great-grandparents. It just simply wasn’t how our story has unfolded.
What no one tells you about pregnancy loss is that it doesn’t stay contained to the person or people going through it.
Instead, it travels quietly outwards through your family, your friendships, your work life, your relationship with your own body and mind, and if you’re navigating this with someone, your relationship with each other. Into parts of your life you never expected the loss to reach. You’re prepared – or at least the pamphlet thrust in your hand by the medical staff and your late-night online scrolling try to prepare you – for the loss itself. No one prepares you for how far the loss travels outwards.
You’d think the people who love you most would be the easiest part. Often, they’re the hardest. There is a particular kind of guilt that comes from watching your own parents quietly grieve the potential grandchild they’ve just lost – a grief they try to hide from you, not wanting to pile on.
And sometimes the people who love you don’t know whether to say something at all. Friends who once seemed to be travelling alongside you suddenly find themselves somewhere you desperately want to be, while you’re still trying to make sense of the pregnancy that ended. One minute you’re all on the same train; the next it’s like one of those regional trains that splits mid-journey at the fork in the tracks. Your friends in the front carriages, now merrily off to Baby Land. And you’re in the back carriage, in near darkness scratching your head thinking ‘hang on, I thought my ticket said Baby Land’.
When everyone around you seems to be getting there while you aren’t, it’s remarkably easy to start wondering if the problem is you. A love/hate relationship starts to build with your body. What did I do wrong? I took two Panadol the day before the symptoms started – that must have been it – it’s my fault. It’s like you’re transported outside your body and watching it like a silent, painful movie.
If there’s someone navigating this alongside you, they’re having an entirely different experience of the same loss. The one who was carrying the pregnancy not only has the acute days and weeks but then has to try and physically navigate their way back to balance again. And the one who didn’t have to navigate feeling the most helpless they’ve ever felt – like being just on the other side of a pane of glass, watching someone you love in pain, a pain you can’t carry for them.
And then, somehow, you’re expected to find the strength to try again. Never mind how you’re feeling, the smart watch/app/thermometer/insert whatever is the latest & greatest tracking tech says your hormones have spiked. It’s go time! And if you’re not navigating all of this with a partner, that can feel especially isolating.
And then, joy of joys, you get to take all of this to work.
Trying to concentrate on work while waiting another week for a scan that might confirm what you desperately don’t want confirmed. Suddenly discovering how progressive (or not) your organisation is and whether there is a leave policy for pregnancy loss. I was lucky, if you could call it that, that when we had our miscarriages, after taking a brief day or two off for a procedure, I could work from home. But they never saw the hot water bottle I was hugging under the desk to ease the cramps after the acute phase of the miscarriage was over.
My Yiayia never got to hold a great-grandchild. She never got to teach them how to make rumballs at Christmas, to buy them ludicrously loud or unnecessary gifts, to tell them the same stories she told me. That grief is quiet and not often discussed – it sits with the people standing just outside the person or couple trying, and losing, and trying again.
You see, there was nothing but love behind her asking. She just, like so many people who love someone going through this, didn’t have the words for what to say.
October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. Not because this matters for only one month – in fact, the people living this are wading through this day in and day out. The miscarriage is still the uninvited third wheel in the relationship come November.
The miscarriage still joins you at work, while you keep running forensics on your body to figure out what went wrong.
Your parents are still grieving the potential grandchild.
And your friends are still wondering whether to ask, or if asking will make it worse.
October gives us a reason to talk about this a little more loudly. Maybe November – and all of the months after it – is when we remember to keep checking in. Because long after the physical symptoms have stopped, it isn’t always visible how far, how wide or for how long that loss is travelling.