To the world you may be just one person, but to one person
you may be the world.
You never understand until it happens to you.
These statements are fitting to describe the new normal
for those who have lost a baby or young child. I walk through each day
reminding myself that the world does not revolve around baby loss...and that
99.9% of the people I come into contact with on a daily basis have
suffered loss of a loved one. But there are certain situations where
the impact of baby loss simply cannot be denied, a primary example being
subsequent pregnancies and children for those who have experienced
loss. While some will never go through pregnancy
again, many will endure at least
one or more pregnancies after their loss.
I am in my third pregnancy – the second pregnancy following
the death of my first born. Pregnancy after loss does not even begin to compare with pre-loss pregnancy. And because of
many variables, this entire pregnancy has been a much different experience than
our second pregnancy. This was a topic
of discussion during one of our recent support group meetings, and I finally
threw out the suggestion of extending an invitation for our providers to join
us for one of our meetings to talk with us specifically about life, and
pregnancy, after loss. I made the
suggestion fully knowing that our practitioners are very busy folks, and with
the understanding that there could certainly be no expectation of all of them attending
one of our meetings. But, I’ll be
honest, I held hope that maybe one or two (out of 7) of them might make 30
minutes to speak with us, based simply on the understanding that interactions during prenatal visits tend to be structured and limited (in terms of regularly branching out from conversation about new baby to conversation about dead baby). I really felt like it could have provided them with some beneficial perspective, not just in terms of their interaction with us, but in terms of their interaction with any and all parents experiencing loss in the future...
I suppose that it was presumptuous to think that anyone outside
of our group would see the benefit and/or need for this kind of
discussion. (And, perhaps, it was
presumptuous to believe that none of our practitioners has first hand
experience with loss.) As it turns out,
it didn’t really matter. The invitation
was extended to one of the docs, who more or less shot the idea down, and it
never went any further than that. I
never expected that any of the docs would show up in the first place, but I was
holding out a little bit of hope that a midwife or two might have a little
interest….
So onward we trudge through the remainder of this pregnancy
and related appointments. Onward we
trudge through the repeated assumptions that life has been all sunshine and
roses prior to this pregnancy. Onward we
trudge through the ‘how many pregnancies?’ questions every time someone new can’t
be bothered to read a chart. Onward we
trudge feeling like we have returned the status of being a number instead of
being someone with noteworthy history. Onward
we trudge carrying the disappointment that even the people who should
understand more than any other practitioner out there, the ones who told us
that our daughter’s heart had stopped beating, don’t really get it…
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