Miscarriage Still a Stigma

By Topilla Isaac

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Being a first born made me a ‘co-parent.’ This is because I had to step up when my parents were not at home. I had to take care of my siblings. So I literally cleaned my four siblings and washed their diapers as well. It is not an interesting task but one thing I did enjoy was playing and feeding them, especially when they were less than one year. My experience with my siblings made love children and in a way children loved me.

So before I had the opportunity to hold my own child, I kept thinking how that experience would be. The thought grew and it became a strong desire within me. I kept thinking how I would have to bring them up and provide for them. What I did not think about was the process of pregnancy. I did not think a lot about when my wife will be heavy with my child. Never thought about my responsibility throughout the nine months period.

When a woman first gets pregnant she is elated and overcome with waves of profound joy that they just want to share the news with anyone who would lend an ear. But caution advises otherwise.

Wait till that first scan and you can comfortably with relief share the grand news that you are expecting a baby. Oh, the announcement is followed by warm embraces, congratulatory messages and gleeful best wishes for the course of the pregnancy.

Yet, there are some who never get to feel the warmth of that embrace or experience the receiving of innumerable regards. In the most unfortunate and unanticipated circumstances, some expectant mothers have experienced a fatal and robbing loss; miscarriage. In some cases the miscarriage occurs so early on in the pregnancy that it does not produce a baby and consequently there is no funeral. How then do you mourn the loss of that which appears to have not occurred? Paradoxically, how long should this period of mourning last?

Equally painful are those who no sooner had they announced their pregnancy, than they lost the baby. The undeniable biological fact is at 12 weeks a foetus is fully formed with all the organs, muscles, limbs and bones in place even if it’s the size of a lime. At 15 weeks a baby can hear you and its surroundings and is sensitive to light. For a number of months she carried a baby and as fate would have it nothing came of it in the end.

With what mettle do you go back to articulate the loss of a baby the world expected? More precisely, how does your own body mourn the sudden unprecedented loss of the baby it had warmed up to and lovingly and protectively embraced? As a global society one of the areas that remain a no-go zone to speak on is miscarriages. The harsh truth is miscarriages are happening with expectant mothers having their dreams shattered with the loss of pregnancy before 24 weeks.

This is regardless of your social economic status. And yet, we speak of death as a norm, why can’t we do the same with miscarriages?

We lurk in the bushes acting benevolent but really we are hiding away from reality lest it catches up with us. With this ‘benevolence’, mothers who have suffered this tragic loss are encapsulated in neuroticism — the state of being in a negative emotional state, without room to share what this loss means.

But, the unappreciated fact is we were expecting another human being to join our beautifully chaotic world, they just failed short of completing the journey. The absence of their physical presence does not mean they never existed. If anything their mothers still ruminate the precious time they spent with them and probably more profoundly the miscarriage itself. The norm is you go into labour; scream your lungs out bringing the baby forth into this world. The only difference here is, there is only one cry in the room.

With miscarriage comes the feeling of self-blame, wondering and recalculating the advice you took or didn’t execute to completion. In this whirlwind of blame comes the external finger pointing questioning what dangers and risks she put the baby through. With these chaotic noises come feelings of confusion and hopelessness, compounded by deep-seated grief.

These are just a few of the many experiences and emotions women who have suffered miscarriages undergo. If we extended the same compassion we have to those mothers who lose their living children, it would go a long way in comforting these once expectant mothers. Allow them to have this consequential grief, foreign as it may be for us to understand. They too have suffered a loss and, “Sorry for your loss”, is an equally applicable sentiment.

Of equal importance is that we too have lost a fellow darling human being to miscarriage. A grandchild we will never hold, a niece or nephew that will not visit or a child we will not walk down the aisle. In this vein, it’s time to do away with the quick assumptions that a couple has waited far too long to have a baby. Are you aware of any contributing factors such as persistent miscarriages? How about: “When will you have another baby?” Even worse and retrogressive is the barren branding from extend families. The resounding cultural shame!

This notion that talking about “uncomfortable” things is impermissible is a major contributing factor to miscarriage being misunderstood and stigmatized. But, if we offered comfortable open spaces for these particular mothers to share their stories, we will better understand miscarriages and them. The experience isn’t anywhere near good. The comfortable open spaces can start with the husband being more open and speak about it to the wife but also to other close friends who care and would listen with understanding. One never knows who you will help in the process of talking about it.