I have put off sitting down to write this article for days now. Apart from time constraints, I have realized that this is such a painful topic for me to write on, that I am battling to even write the word “miscarriage”.
In days gone by, I don’t think people recognized the pain that couples go through when the lose their babies, but these days we are all more informed and sympathetic to other people’s losses.
I hope that our story will be a story of hope and inspiration to anyone out there, that has experienced a miscarriage. When I was a child and people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, my standard answer was to get married and have 4 children. When I was 1st pregnant, my mother in law gave me a gift box of baby clothes. And I only managed to dress my newborn in them almost 5 years later, and after many miscarriages.
We had been married for a couple of years, before we decided to embark on our journey into parenthood. It took me a couple of months to fall pregnant, and you can imagine the huge excitement, as we were about to bring not only our 1st baby into the world, but my parents 1st grandchild.
Everything seemed fine, until I went for a scan, when literally our worlds fell apart
Our baby had no heartbeat. Before I knew it the doctors were rushing me off for 2nd opinions, and x-rays. Only finally, when I was checked into hospital later on that day, did the kind nurse who happened to be an old school friend of mine explain, that our baby was dead. I had to have a general anesthetic, and have it removed. No one spoke to me about our baby after this. I never knew whether it was a boy, or a girl, or what it looked like. Our baby remained nameless and we went home childless. I honestly felt as if I had died inside, as this was by far the worst emotional pain that I had ever felt.
People all reacted differently. Some people just couldn’t talk about it, while others were sympathetic, and most people were encouraging and, consoled us with the fact that it wouldn’t be long before we had our own beautiful baby. At this stage it seemed to me, as if all my friends were either pregnant or Moms. Over time, although the pain of losing this baby is still so strong.
We came to accept our situation, and try for another baby
This time it took longer for me to fall pregnant, and earlier on in the pregnancy I lost our baby. The rest of the 4 years are a bit of a blur for me. The extreme highs of falling pregnant, and the absolute devastation of losing a baby went on and on and on. Apart from that the doctors had started doing tests on us, and it seemed like a never-ending rollercoaster of emotions, while sitting in various hospitals, and Doctors rooms. No one could find anything wrong, and we had no answers.
I then fell pregnant with twins. Once again everything seemed fine, until out of the blue things fell apart again. And when I knew something was amiss and had a scan, our one little twin had died, and as hard as the doctors looked they could find no heartbeat. The other little baby was perfect. We knew this time it was meant to be, as I was sure that the strong baby would survive. But a couple of months later, we lost our 4th baby.
After this I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to be pregnant again, as I didn’t think that I would cope emotionally. We were using no birth control but “weren’t trying to fall pregnant.” I did fall pregnant, and not far into the pregnancy we lost our 5th little baby. The sheer agony was still the same. I had changed gynaes once again, and saw him for the 1st time during my miscarriage. The 1st thing he did was give me a rhesus negative injection since I am A negative, and my husband is A positive.
I now knew that this was it, and that my body, mind and soul could not take this torment any longer
I started feeling abnormal (the childless one). The pain was as bad for my husband and myself, but at this stage we couldn’t even communicate it. We both decided that it would be better to adopt, than to continue to lose any more babies. We put our names down and after another journey, there was finally a young pregnant girl carrying a baby, that we thought would be ours.
Soon after this, I fell pregnant, and as much as I tried not to get emotional, the sheer joy of carrying our precious little bundle arose in me again. As always things started off well, and a couple of months into the pregnancy I started to miscarry. But, this time something was different. I didn’t rush to have a scan as I had always done, but went in the next day, prepared for the worst. To our absolute delight, our baby was still alive, inside me, and fighting for her life. I was put onto daily progersterone injections, which my husband had to give me to, and by 6 months I had a perfect pregnancy.
Our beautiful, perfect little girl was delivered at full term with a Caesarian
Having our 1st baby was so overwhelming, and such a blessing after all we had been through. I held her constantly, almost too scared to put her down, in case she vanished. She had given us the gift of parenthood. Although I sometimes let the shimmer of my long lost dream of having 4 children slip through, it did not matter any more. We loved her with all our hearts, and we did not plan on having any more children.
To our surprise, I fell pregnant about 1 ½ years later, and although I felt extremely nauseous in the beginning, the pregnancy was perfect, and I gave birth to a healthy, bouncing baby son. I have never felt so blessed, and I was on a high. From being barren to having a pigeon pair, was more than I ever could have dreamed of. While I was still breast feeding our son, and had lost all my pregnancy weight, my tummy started growing, and I found out that I was pregnant, quite far into the pregnancy.
Just over a year later I gave birth to our petite, pretty little girl
I broached the subject with my husband about having a 4th child, and he wasn’t so sure, but we agreed that if I fell pregnant by the end of that year, that we would have one. My prayers were all being answered. I gave birth to our wonderful baby boy. Sadly, I lost his twin during this pregnancy. The pain of losing another baby, even though we now had a family of our own was still excrutiatingly the same. I focused on counting my blessings on the 2 little pigeon pairs that had come in and fulfilled our hearts, souls and lives.
Looking back, I am so pleased that we never gave up hope. I also believe that we are better parents for what we went through. Every single day of my life I thank God for our 4 precious blessings. I still carry a place in my heart for each of the 6 little souls that we never met and lost. But as the old saying goes, “It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.”
If I could advise anyone, that has had a miscarriage, would say:
- Never give up hope
- Pray
- Surround yourself with supportive people
- See a doctor
- Do as many natural therapies as possible, (another article)
- Live a healthy life
- Take vitamins and supplements
- Adoption is an answer for some
- Read up as much as you can
If you need someone to talk. Please reach out. Email info@blog.liferetreat.co.za
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