“Why so sad?”
I lift my eyes from the bubbling lino on the waiting room floor, focusing on the smiling woman who is speaking to me as she walks by. She is a nurse, clipboard in her hand, her face full of warmth, but she is not stopping for an answer; her question is her encouragement. I return a small smile. I see she is pleased, then she is gone. The blare of morning television fills the room from a small set on the wall. I look around at the others sat here: couples of a similar age to me; a younger woman with someone much older, perhaps her mother; a few people alone. How many of them are sad?
My wife is with a consultant in a nearby room, almost certainly confirming that our second pregnancy is ending (again) in miscarriage. I sit out here, feeling the numbness begin to wash over me as I cling to a hope that it won’t be so. I think about the nurse’s words. I don’t resent them. There is no obvious reason that I look so down. There is no sign on the wall above me. Around me, the others, here for their own scans, await their good news; they are expectant of it.
Of course, there will be bad news here too. Statistically, it must often be so. According to pregnancy charity Tommy’s, 1 in 4 women will have a miscarriage in the first 3 months in the UK. Of all miscarriages in the UK, 85% of those happen before 12 weeks — the usual time to have the first scan.
“Sad” is, in one respect, a straightforward word. Are you happy or sad? Young children understand it, even when being “sad” may simply reflect the limits of their world — a broken toy, for example, could make you sad. As their vocabulary develops, they will learn other words, with more subtle nuances: distressed, dejected, mournful, gloomy, disconsolate, distraught. That nurse was just employing a well-worn phrase, intending to give comfort, but the word was accurate. As the numbness passed, it was the word that worked. Other emotions would later emerge, multiply and grow out in a web of grief, pity, frustration and hurt. For now though, simply: sad.
People don’t broadcast their sadness in the same way as their joy. And what greater joy than seeing new life enter the world? Colours, balloons, drawings: walk near a unit for new mothers in a hospital and you will see on the walls an explosion of joy. This is how it should be. Celebration of new life; society’s continuation. That makes it all the harder though when, a few minutes later, my wife and I have to walk past all these photos (and a family ecstatic with sleepiness and joy) on our way to the exit, carrying our new-born grief with us.
What, for those who suffer loss? It is no coincidence that people tend to keep their pregnancies secret until after that 12 week scan, when the greatest risks have been navigated, at least statistically. Even having avoided the signs that something is going wrong, it is possible to find out the worst only at that scan. “I’m so sorry,” is all the sonographer can offer.
Miscarriage is not a topic commonly discussed. It is easy to shut out. It is not often portrayed in our books and our films. I was aware it was a possibility, but had no idea how common it really was. The statistics didn’t correspond with the stories I knew, and I was unprepared when it happened to us.
The impact high-profile women make in the media when revealing their experiences emphasise how much of a taboo it has been. “Keep things hidden until 12 weeks,” goes the unsaid rule. Don’t rush to share the good news too quickly, lest it all turn sour.
What then, when the worst does happen? What is there to grieve over? What has been lost, if it happens so early? Grief feels without full substance. It is hard to grieve over a concept.
Walking through a cemetery, I found myself in a section where the headstones were smaller, closer together. Helium balloons, crumpled from their lost air, rose up from several. There was an abundance of primary colours amongst the flowers and toys. I read one of the stones. On it, “Born Asleep” was written. I felt silent tears bursting out of me.
What is there to show for a miscarriage so early? Part of miscarrying at home meant that, in addition to the visceral physical trauma my wife went through — hours of pain — the “products of conception” (as they are coldly known) needed to be saved, to take into hospital for testing. What would we have done if we received them back? No, we were content for the hospital to deal with them respectfully.
There would be other things lost too. The joyous moment of telling family and friends. That shared excitement of the imminent arrival — the incredible change in status to expectant parents. Soon to be a mother and a father. What wonder! But when you have never even told those people and the pregnancy slips through your fingers, did it ever happen? Was it ever really there?
How soon afterwards life becomes grey normality, as you are left grasping after something that has already passed.
I remember when my wife told me she was first pregnant. I felt like I was floating the whole day. We went to the Tate Modern, to the viewing platform. We sat by the bar, watching London stretch out below. I felt a buzz in my fingers as they touched the table. A shift in my entire existence. Weeks later, my wife told me she was bleeding. The fear started, the worry grew; a scan would later confirm it. Each stage, hope upon hope that it would not be so.
With the second pregnancy we felt joy again, and although at first we held just a little something back, it passed the length our previous pregnancy had lasted and we allowed ourselves to hope. By the third pregnancy, it lasted longer still. We paid for an early scan and saw a heartbeat. The chances of miscarriage when a heartbeat is visible at that point is extremely low. Christmas was approaching; I could visualise the scene in under two weeks, as we arrived in the car in our silly Christmas jumpers and hats, with our 12 week scan photo to break the news. Or would we wait until the morning and reveal it by the tree? I daydreamed about the possibilities.
It was crushing when the miscarriage came, again.
After three miscarriages in the UK you are referred to a recurrent miscarriage clinic. A worldwide pandemic, however, meant postponements for our appointment, then a cancellation. It was many months before we were able to move on. Don’t try again until we can do the tests, we were told. Perhaps you should do IVF, we were told. No, don’t, said others. Tests, analysis, on both of us. Money spent on private appointments, tests not covered on the NHS. Still no answers, no reasons.
Our fourth pregnancy came 23 months after the third miscarriage. This time we didn’t wait for 12 weeks. We told people. It would end in another miscarriage, but at least there had been a time, however short, when we could share our hope and anticipation — even if it was still tempered with trepidation. It made it real.
Tangible items help: A beautiful painting my wife made after the third, with three columns made of delicate layers, each representing a day; a piece of jewellery, interlocked rings to represent those we lost; candles lit.
I make no claim for what I have gone through. My wife has gone through trauma and pain of which I can barely imagine. Each of the miscarriages were “managed at home” — far from some sort of simple, clean process. It is a particular feeling of helplessness as you tell your mother-in-law on the phone that her daughter is having a miscarriage, when she didn’t even know of the pregnancy, while your wife howls in pain on the bathroom floor for hours, hoping for an ambulance that never arrives.
She went through something awful while I was powerless to help. The investigations continue, and they are intrusive also.
The stories of a man’s ineptitude, frustration, helplessness and inadequacies in the face of childbirth seem endless. But the same is true of miscarriage. Every month my wife is reminded by her body of what we are hoping to achieve, while I can stroll on, quite easily forgetting about it. It isn’t fair. How can I support her?
I think about how I felt, floating, that first day my wife told me of the pregnancy. Standing at the top of Tate Modern, looking out over the city, considering a different future.
When I’m thinking about it I don’t like to tell her, because I don’t want to remind her of it. But I have learnt that she needs to know I’m thinking of it too. She is not on her own. We can support each other. Even if I haven’t had any physical impact, I can still speak to her. She needs to know that I feel pain too.
We grieve for the babies we have lost, and we grieve for the status we do not have. What meaning does life bring?
Recently, I read Viktor Frankl’s powerful Man’s Search for Meaning. In the first part of the book, the neurologist and psychiatrist describes some of the appalling suffering he witnessed in a Nazi concentration camp. I certainly did not expect to find anything in the book to relate to my situation, but in the second part he moves on to describe his approach (since returning to his original profession) to helping people find meaning in life. He relates some of the cases he worked on, including a man who lost his first wife and children to the gas chambers, and could not have children with his second wife. I was struck by Frankl’s observation:
“Procreation is not the only meaning of life, for then life in itself would become meaningless, and something which in itself is meaningless cannot be rendered meaningful merely by its perpetuation.”
I realise I have been struggling with my grief for a long time. It is made worse, because the nature of our experience makes it feel like the grief is not validated; therefore it is harder to face the grief directly and process it. I have sometimes, on my own, burst into tears, without being able to specify why.
Part of that reason, as well as grief, is meaning. The status which was within our reach, that I felt that day at the Tate Modern, has flown away — for now. Perhaps I have been defining my meaning too much in being a father. I expected it, and as it has not happened I feel incomplete.
But as Frankl writes, procreation — parenthood — is not the only meaning of life. It cannot be, for life itself becomes meaningless.
This points the way to finding meaning in other ways. Should anybody’s meaning in life be defined in only one way? Even for the parent, there should be more to their life than their parenthood. What is his or her life, if they can only define themselves by their relation to another?
I made steps in the right direction last year, when I left a well-paid but busy job I had worked hard to get, in order to devote more time writing a novel. Something I had long meant to do: here was something else to give me meaning. But I know that, too, is not enough. I need to keep exploring, keep searching for meaning in life. To live my life to the fullest I can.
In the Oxford English Dictionary, there are multiple meanings listed for “sad” — most of them now obsolete. The very first recorded use, long before the entry for the meaning we most commonly associate with the word now, is this:
“Having had one’s fill; satisfied, sated; weary or tired (of something).”
This, in fact, should be a navigation point on the map of my life. The direction I take must be diametrically opposed to it. I do not wish to be weary or tired, to be satisfied. I do not wish to have had my fill of life. I need to live it; to fill my life with colour.
In a sense the nurse, that day, was asking more than she realised when she used that word. The grief was, and is, natural. Grief is not easy to process. But there remains hope.
One of the great paradoxes of trying for a baby is the more you plan for it, the more stresses you create, and the more you reduce the chances of having one. There is another statement in Frankl’s book that feels appropriate here:
“Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.”
The grief is with us, and is part of our lives. But there is every reason for us to expand our lives as much as possible. It may give a greater chance of success in our hopeful journey towards parenthood, but ultimately, it will also provide meaning in life. This, surely, is the most important thing there is.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
***
You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
—
Photo credit: Mike Labrum on Unsplash