Many years ago, I sat in a restaurant with a woman who poured out her heart to me over the loss of her child to miscarriage. Miscarriages are common enough, a sad part of the real world for women. When we hear of such a loss, what is our reaction? Sympathy? Compassion? Sadness? Would we ever think to say that she should be happy? Or that she maybe wasn't pregnant in the first place? Sounds crude to even imagine such a reaction. Yet those were exactly the reactions this woman had dealt with.
You see, her miscarriage was different than most. She gave birth to a healthy child at around 40 weeks gestation. He's alive and well today. But she was originally pregnant with twins and one of them died much earlier in that pregnancy. The response from her family and friends was mixed. Some offered tentative condolences, not quite sure how to handle the fact that she was still obviously pregnant. Some congratulated her that she had a healthy baby. Some thought she was crazy to believe she had ever been pregnant with twins.
Regardless of what everyone else thought or how they responded, one thing was certain: this woman had lost a child and needed to grieve. But how and when does that occur? How does a woman grieve a death and celebrate a life all at the same time? It is complex. It is confusing. It is real. In this case, I believe it took years for her to feel free to fully embrace the pain of her loss. How many women are never given the permission to acknowledge that grief?
In our day of advanced technology, women learn so much sooner that they are pregnant. Miscarriages that would have gone completely unnoticed because they occur so early are now officially documented. I read somewhere that a high percentage of pregnancies actually begin as twins, yet in most of those cases only one of the babies survive to term. Add to that the frequent use of fertility treatments that result in higher numbers of multiples, and it is clear to see that there are many, many women facing the conflict between the emotions of life and death.
Having a living, healthy child does not diminish the pain of the death of that child's sibling. Ask any parent who has suffered the death of a child at any point in life. The fact that a child dies in utero and hasn't yet been held and kissed and touched only means that those longed-for moments are also lost.
Do you relate to this story? I encourage you to embrace the grief. Give yourself permission to feel it fully and allow yourself the time to heal.
