“Sometimes I think about them every day. Like how they would look now and, you know, how they would behave and I does cry up to now, by myself in the night I would just cry sometimes.”
These are the words of a mother who lost her twin babies more than three years ago. She never sought professional help to deal with the loss of her children and has just been pushing through life ever since.
“You know you hear things happening, people losing them baby and they just have to go on living. Me two children was full term. I feel them move on the same day and that was the due day and now looking back it is like everything is a dream,” she said of the experience.
“I know I start feeling pain and when I reach the hospital the doctor say them baby dead. Like that is all I could remember and they say they have to cut me and take them out. I don’t know what really happen after that. It was pain, going in and out of consciousness and then like for days I don’t know what happen.
“When I finally catch back me self I in a next hospital and the doctor tell me how they had to cut out me womb to save me. At first I didn’t even understand that he saying I can’t get any more children. I was just like thinking about how them babies dead. I bury them and everything and up to now when I like look at the cut and so I does really feel it but like they say God knows best.”
She already had other children, but she said the pain of losing the babies at birth is ever present.
“You know people say how I done get children and so, but they don’t understand. I does feel the pain. And especially like when it just happen, is like nobody didn’t understand how I was feeling. It was like thank God I was alive and that I could take care of me rest of children, but for a while it was like I couldn’t even take care of me.
“I just had to take it one day at a time. Like when I go through one day I thank God and ask He for the strength to go through the next day. I used to feel like nobody didn’t understand how I was feeling and that for me was the worst part,” she told me.
In the three years since she lost the babies, the trajectory of this mother’s life has changed for the better and even though life is still difficult as she seeks to provide for her children, mentally, she said, she is in a much better place.
“For me, just going home and getting to sleep without any real stress is the best thing. Yes I does study what I have to cook sometimes and then other times them children can get me vex. But I don’t know how to explain it, it is like the first time I really getting to live and I thank God. I don’t want to tell you everything but just know that for me life is better.
“But I still have to deal with the pain, you know, that them babies dead. And I does cry sometimes. I never know about counselling and so is now when I talk to people sometimes they does ask me if I did get any counselling. I never get that but you know when I sit down and tell people about it sometimes I would feel better,” she related.
“I would tell anybody, losing a child at birth is not a easy thing. Some people, because the child ain’t like born and grow and so [think] you would not feel it. Is like somebody tell me, ‘but you didn’t like know them children, you have to study about them that alive’. Well, I had to let them know that I did know the twins. I know it was two a them. I know it was a boy and a girl. I know how they used to move. I used to talk to them, so when they gone and I feel it, I cry for them because I carry them for nine months just like me other children,” she continued.
“I does feel is better you don’t tell some people because they don’t understand and for me is a pain that would always be with me. Is not like I would cry every day or so but I would never forget them and I will always remember how I feel when the doctor tell me that all two of them dead.
“But you know as the saying go is a pain I just have to live with and I doing what I have to do to live and provide for me children. It is not easy but we living and once you get life you get hope.
“I could tell you more but I don’t like this public thing and so I don’t want you to put me name or anything but I just want people to understand that even if they baby dead at birth or before or so the woman will still feel pain. And I think it must be worse for people who don’t have children. I can’t understand how they would feel. I just wish people could, you know, like understand, that is all,” she told me.
The pain this sister spoke about is one that many women go through and do so silently.
It was this kind of pain that caused La Trisha Layne, a Guyanese nurse living in Barbados, to start up a virtual space for women who suffered miscarriages. Up to late last year the Miscarriage and Pregnancy Loss Support Group, which can be found on Facebook, had more than 11,000 members, less than a year after it was started.
Layne had suffered a miscarriage at 12 weeks and she had related how alone she felt with the pain after her loss.
It was her painful journey that opened the door to thousands of women around the world to share their experience and she had said she hoped more people could understand how painful miscarriages are for women. She believes that this grief is often misunderstood as there is the belief that women can just move on and try again.
Jessica Zucker, clinical psychologist and writer in the US, shared that she specialises in women’s reproductive and maternal mental health and has done so for over a decade. But it wasn’t until she experienced a 16-week miscarriage firsthand that she truly grasped the anguish and the circuitousness of grief she had heard her patients speak of for many years.
“After my miscarriage, I poured over the research which shows that a majority of women report experiencing feelings of shame, self-blame and guilt following pregnancy loss,” she wrote.
“Patients had spoken about these feelings during our sessions together, but after undergoing this profound loss myself, I became incensed: why do women feel so alone, isolated, and badly about themselves when the science clearly states that pregnancy loss is not a fault of their own? I wanted to somehow make a dent in this cultural conundrum,” the psychologist added.
Wherever you can, let’s try to be understanding when a sister loses a child before birth or at birth. We can never understand the pain unless we feel it so let’s be kind, it will go a long way.
