Miscarriage in White

Rebecca Parfitt - 17 May 17

It just so happened on the day I miscarried I chose to wear white. I rarely wear white, except for that day, the day I lay on the hospital bed whilst the doctor cleared the remains of the ‘fetal matter’ – my baby – from me, I was wearing white.

There is a rule of silence for newly pregnant women, we are advised to ‘keep quiet’ about our pregnancy for the first three months, ‘just in case’, until we reach the ‘safe’ time. But the first trimester is coloured green with nausea, frequent trips to the bathroom to pee/throw up. Not forgetting the extreme tiredness that saps the energy and all you want to do is crawl into bed and sleep for weeks. But no, we mustn’t let on, we mustn’t talk about it. We must carry on as normal. Women have done this since time began. But this silence feels more like a gag on womankind, not a saving grace, not a dutiful act of self-protection as we are encouraged to think, but more of a deep-rooted condescension and unease with the female body, its fluids, function and capability. Even as I write this more articles by women who have endured similar trauma emerge in the press, Hadley Freeman, for example writes in the Guardian of this silence as ‘verging on the misogynistic.’

On my first and only visit to the midwife, I was given an enormous folder stuffed full of information on breastfeeding, birth choices and screening for disorders. But there was nothing on miscarriage, no little slip of paper to tell me what to do when the worst happens.  Nothing to say, as the weary doctor at 2am in the morning confirmed, ‘You’ve had a miscarriage. It’s very common, it’s just nobody talks about it.’ The statistics estimate that 1 in 5 known pregnancies end in miscarriage. But it’s a dirty secret – as if its commonality makes it a small thing: ‘just one of those things’. I’m hearing this phrase a lot and it’s not helpful, it’s apathetic but that’s what people say when they have no answers.

My partner and I broke the rule, we did tell a few people before the 12 week mark. I’m glad because otherwise it would have felt like the baby never existed. We shared the joy with our families but I wish we’d told them sooner so they’d have had more time with the good news. My partner, who is Filipino, noted the oddness of this rule, ‘In the Philippines we don’t do this. We tell everyone as soon as we know and if anything goes wrong, we talk about it.’ Talk about it – what a healthy attitude to pregnancy. Because how do you explain you’ve suffered a miscarriage if nobody knew you were pregnant? How do you begin the process of grieving for someone who was never born?

At 11 weeks, I attended pregnancy yoga for the first time, another participant asked me how pregnant I was, I told her, she looked horrified and said, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t have done anything until after 13 weeks – just in case.’ Somehow I felt I shouldn’t be there, I wasn’t pregnant enough, like I was ‘jinxing’ my pregnancy by declaring myself to strangers. A few days later something did happen, I lost my baby. But not because I dared to tell a stranger. And I didn’t lose it. The only mothering role I was able to fulfil was at midnight in the hospital toilet when I was trying to provide a urine sample, I caught my baby in the tin foil cup I was supposed to pee in. I took it down the dark corridor to the nurse who said nothing in response to my saying, ‘I think that’s my baby.’ Instead she ushered me away into the consulting room. A couple of hours of tears and waiting followed before I was presented with a form. It had two options, both were asking me how I wanted to dispose of the ‘fetal remains’ . Exhausted and traumatised, unable to comprehend the idea of taking it home with me – all I could think of at 2 o’clock in the morning was that I didn’t have anything to carry it home in. I didn’t have a Tupperware box to put it in. Stupid, I realise that now, but nobody explained anything and I wasn’t prepared for those questions. So I opted to have the remains cremated by the hospital in a communal incinerator.

We left the hospital with nothing, no baby and no information. I did not know I would continue to bleed and experience pain for weeks after. As my pregnant body shrank back to ‘normal’ size I had no idea how to care for myself. I rang the doctor who made me feel like I was wasting his time. He told me I am ‘supposed to go through the pain and the grief and the suffering’ and that they would not give me anything for it. It felt like nobody cared.

Our baby died, we do not get to have a funeral and I must live with the guilt of what I did (or didn’t do) with the remains. But not only this, I must also be quiet and ‘Go home’ – something I had been told to do many times by the doctors that day – ‘Go home’. Rhian Edwards’ poem ‘A Bird That’s Best To Miss’, on her miscarriage, asks:

Is it too late

to call anyone or too early?

This resonates. The female predicament: the worry of imposition on others – don’t inconvenience or embarrass them with your blood, nothing can be done anyway. The overwhelming impression I received from this experience was that the miscarriaging woman should do so at home, behind closed doors so no one will know. But I will talk about it and I will write about it. Though I have to resist the urge to run up to every single woman I see and ask, ‘How many miscarriages have you had?’ But everyone I have spoken to has a story. My grandmother opened up for the first time in 60 years about her miscarriage as a result of hearing about mine. It seems not much has changed, the advice the nurse gave her was the same I received: ‘There was probably something wrong and the pregnancy couldn’t continue.’ But I have no real explanation and I never will. I will never know what went wrong.

What I do know is that we need to talk about this, and yes, I know it’s so very hard to do. Midwives need to talk to us about it too. As awful as it is, and it’s the last thing you want to hear when you’ve just found out you’re expecting, but I would have been grateful for a small leaflet or a little word from the midwife at the very beginning. It would have helped me navigate through. If only so I could have had more than a few seconds to consider what I would do with the remains. I am comforted by the recent discovery of the Japanese Jizo. The statues are believed to be protectors of children and unborn babies in traditional Japanese Buddhist teachings. To know there is a guardian for the unborn and something other than a headstone that can symbolise our loss is important to me.

But I’m also talking about it because our baby deserves to be remembered. Also not forgetting that for 11 weeks, I was a mother too. Perhaps wearing white wasn’t so absurd – it’s the colour of purity and innocence. It also allowed me to see the bright red colour of the life, the tiny body I had been nurturing inside me.

Poem extract from Rhian Edwards, Brood, Seren, 2017

Hadley Freeman article source: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/may/13/hadley-freeman-miscarriage-silence-around-it

Rebecca Parfitt

I am 35, a poet and writer who has worked in publishing for over a decade. I live in Cardiff and am founder and editor of The Ghastling magazine. My debut poetry collection, The Days After (Listen Softly London, April 2017) explores relationship breakdown, loss and contemplation of motherhood and the hope for new beginnings.

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