I had a silent miscarriage, and so had no way of knowing that things weren’t as they should be until a planned check up where an ultrasound showed both that I was carrying twins, and that neither had a heart beat. I was heart broken. Neither being a nurse nor knowing the statistics surrounding pregnancy loss had prepared me for this.
I retreated into myself and struggled to come to terms with my grief over the following two weeks, as I took a pill to get my body to eject my dead twins. Finally I had to have surgery, a D&C, to remove them. I wept before going under anaesthetics, and wept again when I awoke. The next day we buried them in my parents’ garden and read prayers. We named them, Edmond and Guy, and planted a tree over their grave. Then, nominally, we moved on. For the next 6 months though, I lived a parallel life, the real one and one in which I had not lost them, marking each milestone of the would-be pregnancy until their due date.
A month later I found out I was pregnant again. Over-joyed, I couldn’t help feeling that my joy was for nought and that this baby too would be lost. I had anxiety attacks throughout the pregnancy and could only be fully reassured at my check-ups when I could hear the baby, and see him moving around. The wonder when he was finally born, healthy and beautiful, was unimaginable. He was the boy who had lived when we never thought we’d make it out of the first trimester.
It is only two years after their due date that I have felt ready to publish my experience (see link below) and to talk more openly about the experience.
This year I will: visit their tree with my now one and a half year old, and light a candle in church for them.
https://erika-cb.medium.com/dealing-with-a-miscarriage-1ad3bbefb472