For those who don't live to breathe

Why don’t we have a grieving ritual for miscarriage?

When I lost my baby at 11 weeks into my pregnancy I had no idea what to do. Was I to grieve like a mother whose baby had died (that was how I felt) or should I get up and make breakfast for the family, cry a little and get to work?

Well the answer was clear to me. Everyone knows that miscarriage is a risk you take when you attempt to have a child, I knew that it must be painful because my cheery mother-in-law still talks about her child in heaven, and everyone knows that there is no ritual or ceremony that we share to celebrate the life lost, the baby returned to heaven: so I went off to work.

In fact it wasn’t until time came for me to chance the gift of life again that I had to face my pain, my grief my tears, my fears that had clumsily been stored away. It was at this moment that I became angry and disappointed but also confused as to why there is no ritual for the loss of a child through miscarriage.

Why did this pain have to be so private, why did this pain have to be so minimised?

It seemed like every woman I met in the weeks after Michael Gabriel died rebirthed their unhealed stories over and over again, as if my experience opened the door for their pain to escape.

If that wasn’t challenging enough the language used by medical staff denies the use of the word “baby” and replaces it with terms such as “spontaneous abortion”, or “remnants of pregnancy”, maybe with the hope of convincing the mother that they are overreacting and that in fact a piece of flesh has moved away not a life - a son or daughter.

But this lie is short lived and only adds to the confusion. The mother knows the life that was there. The mother knows the dreams they have already dreamt for that child’s life and they know it was more than flesh.

If the mother faces the reality that it was a child, they are hit with the paradox that this child of theirs is not offered a funeral or given a name but is flush down the toilet or thrown out with the hospital waste. And that truth made me feel shameful and it still makes me sad when I think that’s where my little angel went.

We have funerals for dogs and cats, we have divorce parties and house warmings so why is the loss of an expected child so forgotten and ignored. I wondered why groups and individuals who spend many hours defending the moment when life begins don’t advocate for honouring the moment when it ends.

The most dangerous result of no ceremony, funeral or ritual is that women who don’t get to grieve are at risk of experiencing unresolved grief, which may be accompanied by symptoms of anxiety and depression

A woman can expect to miscarry one in four pregnancies, this risk increases with age. Statistics show that women are now older at the time of their first pregnancy, with the help of technology they have more information earlier about the child they carry.

You might ask well what could we do, or what should we do? The only wrong answer to that is, to do nothing.

I encouraged my sister to have a funeral for her daughter Catie, we knew Catie was a girl, she, like her brothers and sisters, was conceived with the assistance of IVF. Those that had died before her became statistics of that program but they were also deep wounds in my sister’s heart.

On the day of the funeral we all met at the cemetery, we buried Catie in a tiny little shoe box, we all cried together as we watched the windmills spin on those tiny graves marked by toys and teddy bears, people brought flowers and we remembered that she was born and died. Women cried for my sister and for themselves, secretly envious of the process, people wrote notes and brought dinners and Catie left this world in the ceremony we afford to those who live to breathe.

This ceremony is the one we use to celebrate death and it seemed most appropriate, it was beautiful, it was sad, but most of all it was healing. I am sorry I didn’t know to do the same for my son.

So I hope that times will change and as a society we will begin to recognise the need for a ritual to celebrate the life lost. We now bury those babies that survive to 20 weeks of gestation but when doctors drew the line in the sand they forgot to think of the mother: the mother whose whole world changes the day she realises she is carrying a new life.

It is important that women have choices, and have access to a ritual, a ceremony of goodbyes so they can cry and be comforted before they heal and move on in joy.

It is amazing how much love and happiness a child can bring into the world, even those who have lived for only a few weeks inside the womb. I believe that our purpose in life is to bring love to this world and hope to those we know. For those children who die before they have had a chance to live outside the womb, they have achieved their life’s purpose in a few short weeks, more so than I in more than 20 years. All of these beautiful children have died peacefully, content in the knowledge that they have achieved their purpose in life. Bennett J. Sheridan.