Never forgetting our precious lost babies
CHANCES ARE YOU OR A WOMAN YOU KNOW HAS HAD AT LEAST ONE MISCARRIAGE AND AS EMMA WALKER TELLS ALISON COMYN, IT IS A SUBJECT WE SHOULD ALL TALK ABOUT MORE, FOR OTHERS TO UNDERSTAND
THEY are the nappies we never changed, the rugby matches or weddings we never attended. And just because we never met them, doesn’t mean we didn’t have the same hopes and dreams for them and don’t mourn their loss as much.
More than one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage which is around 15,000 women or 20% of pregnancies in Ireland each year, although the figure could be significantly higher because many miscarriages are thought to occur before a woman even realises she is pregnant.
Prince Harry’s wife Meghan Duchess of Sussex recently spoke in the press about how profoundly her recent miscarriage affected her, opening up a topic for discussion which for some reason is still seen as something that should be hidden away.
Drogheda woman Emma Walker has had two miscarriages, and now helps other women and their partners remember their lost babies in the Miscarriage Association of Ireland’s memory book.
‘I’ve never shared this story, and it’s only this year that I feel ready to do this and volunteer with the Miscarriage Association of Ireland,’ says Emma, who lives in Mell with her husband Anthony, and their children Luke (11) and Laoise (5). ‘I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks in February 2012, and I had one at 20 weeks a year later, so they were quite different. The one at 12 weeks was a missed one; they think I may have lost the baby at five or six weeks but was still showing the signs of being pregnant. With my daughter Rose, I had a medical condition which could lead to massive bleeding, and your problems don’t usually start until 15 weeks, but she held on and she held on, but I lost her at week 20.’
With her first miscarriage, Emma recalls not receiving much support.
‘It was all very quick, and I remember being handed a leaflet, and being handed paperwork and hearing a sorry,’ she says. ‘I remember thinking, what do I do now, do I take sick leave, is there miscarriage leave? It’s just something so many women don’t think about.’
Thanks to a sympathetic employer, Emma was able to take a month off work, but says she felt awful doing that.
‘I felt so guilty, but I’m so glad I did, as the pregnancy hormones don’t settle in a few days and I wasn’t ready to have the conversation straight away with people about what happened, ‘she recalls. ‘I needed to get my own head around it as the tears didn’t come for a week, I was in shock.’
After that miscarriage, Emma says she wanted to try again straight away, but was persuaded to wait over a year before trying again.
Delighted to find out she was expecting once more, she was naturally nervous throughout the pregnancy.
‘I had a massive bleed at around 15 weeks, and thought I was losing her then, but after being taken into the high-risk clinic, there was lots of support and the extra staff makes such a difference,’ she explains.
But sadly, it was not to be and Emma lost Rose on December 19th 2013, almost seven years to the day this week, and she thinks about her all the time.
‘When you’re pregnant, your aspirations for becoming a parent are there straight away, so regardless of how early you miscarry, the loss can be great,’ she explains. ‘It’s all grief, it’s all loss and it’s all very particular to a female body, and we have to remember the partners too, who can often feel like there is no one to talk to about their loss too’.
In the past, it was supposed that if lost babies were forgotten or not spoken about, to erase these babies from people’s memories would take away the pain from the parents too.
But when a woman loses her baby, time may heal the pain but will never erase the memories. Memories are precious and should always be treasured.
‘I’m training to be a mindfulness teacher, and this is one of the reasons I became involved with the Miscarriage Association, as there are times women may not want to put the grief on people, thinking ‘oh it’s gone, we’ll move along now’, where it’s okay to stay with something a while, and talk about it one year later or ten years late,’ says Emma.
‘You learn to live beside grief, you don’t get over it, and you might think of your miscarriage and feel emotional and you might not, but the important thing is to allow yourself those feelings and time to grieve.’
Healthy pregnancy isn’t an illness, but the loss of a pregnancy can have a devastating effect on a person.
Emma is also keen to increase understanding amongst employers of what women go through when they lose a baby, and it should not be just treated like any other illness.
‘ There are some great guidelines for employers on the UK Miscarriage Association website and I would love to see more understanding and guidelines in Ireland too,’ says Emma. ‘ They’ve done research to say that if you do invest in people with miscarriage, they will show motivation, they will show productivity, they will feel understood, and you are better off putting in their time, and whether that means leave or bringing them back with reduced hours, or simply noticing and asking if you’re okay today.’
Emma says there may need to be a change in the language used when talking about miscarriage, and even a cultural shift in our thinking.
‘When women say ‘I was pregnant but I miscarried’, it nearly takes away from the baby and the joy of being pregnant,’ she says.
To lose a baby through miscarriage can mean you have little or nothing to mark the presence of the baby in your life. A big fear can be that other people will forget your baby because you only have memories and no mementoes.
‘It’s very important to acknowledge it happened and it’s part of your life, and everyone remembers the date, and the Miscarriage Association of Ireland have a specially commissioned Book of Remembrance to commemorate lost babies,’ says Emma. ‘ They are in beautiful, leather-bound books – we’re on volume eight - and it holds special memories of our precious little babies who only got the opportunity to share our lives for a short time.
‘ The Book is on display at any event at which the Miscarriage Association of Ireland is represented.’
Emma just entered her two little babies in the book last week, and she says women, and men, must give themselves permission to remember and grieve.
Helpline details on miscarriage.ie, they are 10am- 12pm and 8pm to 10pm Mon-Friday.
WHEN YOU MISCARRY, YOU LEARN TO LIVE BESIDE GRIEF, YOU DON’T GET OVER IT