TRIGGER WARNING - BABY LOSS
As baby loss awareness week now approaches, it's my first as an angel mum. I feel accompanied and almost harrowed with the loneliness and pain the burden of losing a baby brings.
Sadly the statistic for baby loss in the UK is 1 in 4 pregnancies. Which is absolutely massive. So it is with great honour that I've been asked to write the first-ever baby loss awareness blog for Your Baby Club UK.
Firstly I can appreciate how heavy this kind of blog post is to read. Especially if you've never experienced the trauma of losing a baby. This is one of the reasons that baby loss is still such a huge taboo. But with more speaking out than ever before and platforms like "Your Baby Club" holding space for sensitive subjects like this were slowly stamping out the taboo and changing the narrative for those yet to walk this way.
Losing a baby is hands down the most painful experience of my life, nothing could have ever prepared me for the overwhelming emotions I felt after losing our baby. A pivotal emotion for me has been the feeling of loneliness.
Our angel was an IVF baby and we'd been trying to conceive this little one for the last four years. My daughter is also an IVF baby, so I'm-well acquainted with the kind of loneliness you may feel when struggling to have a baby. But this "lonely" seemed different, it seemed darker and it felt heavier. Heavier than anything I've ever experienced before.
On reflection it was a catch-22, I wanted to be alone so I pushed everyone away and here I am highlighting the intensity of the loneliness I felt. And that hell right here pretty much sums up what losing a baby has been like for me. The biggest swarm of feelings and emotions that I couldn't even begin to process. Because in all honesty I just didn't know where to start. I just remember sobbing for hours and hours wishing it would all stop. My head felt like it could burst with the sheer magnitude of emotions and thoughts that were racing through my mind.
As I sit and type each letter I feel engulfed by all of these feelings once again. It instantly brings me back to the statistic surrounding baby loss in the UK. Estimates suggest that there are 250,000 miscarriages every year in the UK plus 11,000 emergency admissions for ectopic pregnancies. So why don't we talk about it more?
At the beginning of the year after finding out super early that we were pregnant with another little miracle,(following two very intense rounds of in-vitro fertilisation). I excitedly subscribed to all of the "mamma" social media accounts and websites and got fully involved in the massive online communities of parents also excited to meet their new bundles of joy.
"I'm so sorry, there isn't a heartbeat"
Until 13.5 weeks when a small scare and emergency scan, quickly turned into the hellish experience that led me here to write this for you today. I'm pretty sure I'll never be able to un-hear those words "I'm so sorry, there isn't a heartbeat". I can still hear his accent, I can still hear my partner's voice as his voice broke from words into his own sorrow and pain. I can clearly remember this loud, resounding howling that filled the room, which after a couple of minutes I realised was coming from me.
From that moment forward I no longer had a place within that community. I no longer belonged amongst the hundreds of mum accounts that I'd spent the previous weeks and months communicating and building relationships with. All of a sudden none of that was relevant to me. This felt huge, a wave of jealousy, anger and sadness swept across me and it kept on coming in waves. I felt like I was drowning.
The content on many of the mothering feeds is all focused on the journey from bump to baby and beyond. From light humour to the reality of just how difficult parenting can be. The highs and lows of motherhood and some of the unpleasant effects of pregnancy, as opposed to the real lows that millions of us around the world are exposed to. The raw and very real darkness that comes hand in hand with losing a baby.
We are mums too
Sadly many of these accounts don't tend to share content, behind the scenes of those two pink lines. For millions of women in the UK and around the world, the struggle to bring babies into the world is very real.
There are entire demographic out here that feel as if we don't belong on these pages, when in actual fact we do. We are mums too. No matter where our babies are right now or what path we had to take to arrive here. We do belong here.
So I guess this post is dedicated to every single parent that holds their babies in their hearts instead of their arms today and every day. I see you and so do all of the team here at Your Baby Club. Together we can continue to throw light on the shade and break the silence around baby loss.
