BY AMY (GUEST WRITER)
On TMC we are so passionate about raising awareness & talking about topics that are still, unfortunately, considered taboo. We have Amy from Raising Rothlet sharing her experience on baby loss.
BABY LOSS
As I sauntered through my second trimester in August 2017, I was worried that our daughter might be born late and be a Pisces and not an Aquarius like us. I was worried that I was going to miss out on the girls weekend away booked for February. I was worried that I’d still be fat for bridesmaid duties in April. I was worried that the morning sickness was going to continue throughout my whole pregnancy, I was worried that the nursery carpet was too dark a colour, I was worried that the balloons for the baby shower wouldn’t all fit in my car.
How fast these worries melted away, when we heard the words ‘I’m sorry there is a problem with your baby’. We weren’t prepared for the words ‘I’m sorry there is a problem with your baby’ – we’d seen her wriggling on the scans, listened to her heartbeats and lain side-by-side in the evenings, counting them.
We weren’t prepared for every plan we had to peel away from the comfortable certainty to which it had clung. We weren’t prepared for the complications, the six days in hospital, the worried faces of consultants, the moving goalposts…. We weren’t prepared for words like ‘hysterectomy’ being flung around. We weren’t particularly prepared for the labour, or for the little creature that emerged from me, ten fingered and ten toed.
We weren’t prepared for that not to be the end of it, but two months later for my body to still be insisting that it was pregnant; for the operation to sort this out to go a tiny bit tits up. But then, neither were we prepared for our newlywed love for one another to mature so quickly or grow so deep. For the overwhelming kindness of our families and friends, for the tears of strangers. And, thinking we knew about ‘the state of the NHS’, we weren’t prepared to be so impressed by the compassion and competence of the embattled staff, from the student nurses up to our consultant who, as he marched the corridors clicking his pen, achieved almost messiah status in our eyes.
Every one of the billions of people on our planet is a miracle of fate, and now we’ve made another little miracle of fate, what do I say when people ask “is this your first baby?” It depends on my mood at the time how I answer. What I would always like to say though, is that sorrow can come to any kingdom, no matter how happy. That shit happens to everyone, and this particular shit happens to more of us than we know.
That if we turn our faces to the sun the shadows will fall behind us; that some good can come from almost any situation. I am grateful for the experiences I’ve had, for the things I have learnt, for the love I’ve been shown, for the way I am changed, for the certainty that I married the right man, and most of all, for the new life that grew in my womb and healed my heart.
We really appreciate Amy sharing her experience of baby loss with us, you can read her post all about decision fatigue here. xxx
YOU CAN FIND AMY ON;
INSTAGRAM: RAISINGROTHLET
INSTAGRAM: THE.FAMILY.BURROW
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