Last weekend, I attended the Pregnancy and Baby Loss Awareness Summit, organized by the awesome Tade Alalade‘s
BeiBei Haven Foundation.
I knew it was going to be a moving experience,
but it completely blew my mind. Women shared their stories raw and
unfiltered, and apart from being completely moved to tears, listening to
them schooled me in ways I didn’t expect.
Even though I have never suffered a
miscarriage before, I thought I perfectly understood the emotions women
face when faced with such loss. With the experience from my failed IVF
cycle, and first-hand stories I’d heard from my mother, close friends,
and our community members, I thought I perfectly understood the pain and
suffering that comes with this experience, and I even wrote an article
about coping with the Aftermath of a Miscarriage. But earlier this year, all of that changed.
One of my closest friends, I’ll call her
Amanda*, got married the year after my twins were born. She was
diagnosed with fibroids shortly after her wedding, and eventually had
surgery to remove them, sometime in 2014. After the surgery, when she
didn’t get pregnant immediately after, as she’d anticipated, she and her
husband proceeded to see a fertility specialist, where they were also
diagnosed with male factor infertility.
They were advised to move on to
IVF, which they did in August 2015. Towards the end of September,
Amanda sent me the image of the pregnancy test she’d taken, and for the
life of me, I couldn’t see a second line…and neither could she. We
thought it was a negative result, and I proceeded with all the pep talk
that follows the disappointment of a failed cycle. But when she e-mailed
the picture to another friend, who happened to open it on a desktop
computer, she could make out the faintest of lines. We then proceeded to
expand the picture on our own mobile devices, and there it was. A
positive. My friend was pregnant!
The joy that followed was unimaginable.
We were beside ourselves with joy! Finally, after years of medical
issues, they were finally pregnant. Her due date was around my birthday,
and we joked about how my Godchild and I would be birthday mates.
One day, while at work, at 17 weeks, her
water broke. When she called me on her way to the hospital, my heart
sank to my feet, but I kept a brave face for her, as we held on to hope
that her baby would still be fine. But by the time she got to the
hospital, a scan showed she had lost pretty much all of her amniotic
fluid, and the baby, who was still very much alive at the time, would
have to be evacuated. I immediately rushed to see her in the hospital,
and I had to exercise all my self restraint to prevent from bawling like
a baby. She had been administered meds to induce labour and was
beginning to feel early contractions. This was on a Friday. By the time I
left her that evening, she was in a lot of pain already, but nowhere
close to birthing her baby. And she was in that pain until Saturday
afternoon, when she gave birth to her son, who was already dead.
If I, an outsider, found it to be one of
the most traumatic things I had ever experienced, I couldn’t imagine
how it was for Amanda, who had to go through the throes of her
miscarriage for over 24 hours. It was heart wrenching.
In the weeks and months that followed,
there were questions. Was the miscarriage caused by a possibly
infected cervical stitch? Should she even have gotten the stitch in the
first place? Had she been working too hard? Could they have avoided
this? Would she ever be able to get pregnant again?
We tried to console her with the usual
platitudes, but she retreated into her shell and completely shut
everyone out. Before the miscarriage, we used to chat on BBM daily and
talk on the phone at least three times a week. Afterwards, messages and
calls would go unanswered…for weeks. Understanding this natural
reaction, I remember even explaining to a few mutual friends that she
needed time. But by the fifth and sixth month, even I started wondering
when this dark cloud would shift.
Eventually, it did shift. We finally
were able to talk, and I understood when she told me that all she wanted
to do during the weekends, when she didn’t have to put up a brave
face at work, was to stay under her sheets, cry, and then watch the ID
channel on TV, as solving crime puzzles helped keep her mind off her
miscarriage. Her experience made me understand that not only do people
cope in different ways, there are no timelines to grief. It could last a
week…a year…a lifetime.
The summit on Friday opened my eyes to
the fact that women heal in very different ways. One of the
speakers said she hated hearing the platitudes. She hated hearing the
“It is well!”, “God is in control”. She preferred people keeping silent
than saying the wrong thing. Another of the speakers said she hated the
silence, and worried people were thinking all sorts of things if they
didn’t voice them out. What I took away from this was there is no cookie
cutter way to help people through this. You just need to show the
grieving woman love, support and solidarity…even if it is simply by
holding her hand.
In one of the heart breaking stories,
one of speakers talked about watching life ebb out of her twins, as they
waited in vain for the main doctor to arrive, while they were being
attended to by someone who appeared to be a trainee. By the time the
doctor arrived at 5am, the twins were already gone. In a counter, Dr.
Juwon Alabi of South Shore Women’s Clinic talked about the numerous
risks doctors face, commuting in the early hours of the morning, and how
he himself has encountered a few security threats in the course of
doing just that. In the end, it was agreed that our hospitals should
have enough doctors to keep on rotation, so that at any point in time,
there is always an experienced physician available.
I learnt about the futility of self
blame. Someone in the audience tearfully talked about losing her child
at 40 weeks, and wishing she had read enough so she could have prevented
it. Oh my goodness, my heart broke for this woman. I was happy when the
wonderful Yewande Zaccheaus assured her there was nothing she could
have done to prevent what happened, and that it was absolutely not her
fault.
Another lesson I took away from the
summit was that of compassion. I’m sorry to say, but some of us don’t
know the meaning of the word. When my friend Amanda* had her
miscarriage, I was sickened by the things that filtered to her ears. She
heard office whispers about how she caused her miscarriage by working
too hard. How she thought it was her father that owned the company,
considering the number of hours she typically commits. How she had been
foolish to fly to Abuja several times for meetings. How, how, how!!! How
on earth can all these ‘hows’ change what has happened or offer
compassion to someone already heartbroken? One of the speakers talked
about how she was blamed for her miscarriages, and even her still-born,
because of her active social media life. “Why won’t she lose her baby
when she is always posting pictures on Instagram?!”.Really? These kind
of comments are borne solely from spite, malice, and maybe even envy.
Please, if you have nothing positive to say, it is much better to say
nothing at all.
But what gladdened my heart was the
message that there is always light at the end of tunnel. All the
speakers there are now mothers to gorgeous kids today, and the one that
got me the most misty eyed was the testimony of Reverend Laurie Idahosa.
After suffering years of infertility and finally conceiving a son
through IVF, he had died hours after his birth. I cried as she talked
about asking to be able to take her dead son home. She said they’d had a
200-person baby shower, and had a nursery full of wonderful things for
their baby…a baby who unfortunately would never be able to enjoy any of
these nice things. At the very least, she wanted to be able to bring him
home. She talked about cradling him in his nursery, and as she cried,
she was able to release herself to the will of God. A year to the day
her son was buried, she gave birth to another son. Three years later,
another son followed, and two years after, yet another. All of them
conceived naturally. Isn’t God just wonderful?
To all the women who have walked, or are
still walking this road, my heart goes out to you. It is impossible for
anyone to be able to fully understand how you are feeling. Even women
who have also suffered loss will not understand the peculiar pains and
turmoil of the next woman. Grieve however you feel you need to. There is
no textbook method to this. Find what works for you, and do it. If the
people around you are struggling with what to say to you, or don’t know
how to relate with you in your pain, please understand that, most times,
they mean no harm and even though they might not be saying the ‘right’
things, they love you very much and want to be there for you. And please
don’t blame yourself, your husband, your doctor, your hospital, etc.
Dwelling on what coulda, shoulda, woulda been won’t heal your loss.
What’s important is for you not to miss the learning points, and if it
means changing a few things next time, at least you know now. And
remember that though it might seem darkest now, there is
always…always…light at the end of the tunnel.
Baby dust to all!
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