This week (9-15 October) sees Baby Loss Awareness Week in action. It’s a time to reflect, remember, and discuss our experiences to help others to feel less alone.
After experiencing two early miscarriages this year in February and June, I found talking about my experiences to help others was the best way to work through the trauma I experienced and still feel.
Never could I ever have imagined how life-changing the experiences could be, nor how difficult it would be to get any sort of direction on where to turn from the health care system – investigations don’t generally happen until you have experienced three miscarriages.
Lonely experiences
On both occasions, I experienced bleeding at work during my night shifts. These were lonely experiences, trying to weigh up what to do, what to think, in a toilet cubicle at work.
I looked for hope (and potential facts) on Google, messaged my partner for guidance from afar late at night… so many shifts ended in a handover to the day team, while feeling uncomfortable with bleeding (once bleeding through my scrub trousers) and scared, often culminating in trips to A&E in the hope of an emergency scan.
While caring for animals and their owners at work, our own well-being can too often be neglected, but I found it too difficult to continue nursing throughout most of the process of losing the babies and took time off.
Suffering in silence
I had to go to hospital for multiple ultrasound scans, in silence (the ultrasonographers explained nothing). It was difficult enough that my husband wasn’t allowed in with me due to Covid, but waiting in silence for some news of what could or could not be seen was torturous.
The experience of physically losing my first baby lasted for weeks, even involving contractions for hours in the early hours of one morning.
I ended up having procedures under general anaesthetic for both miscarriages. I had time off after each procedure, but the time required to fix myself enough to be able to face a shift at work without bursting into tears was a real unknown.
Compassion deficit
I received no compassion when I called my workplace’s HR department to discuss whether I would get any sick pay or compassionate leave during my time out of work, nor was I directed anywhere for mental health help – I was simply given the basic facts about what you are paid, or not paid, at certain points throughout pregnancy.
Veterinary nursing is so all-encompassing as a career and we can be so hard on ourselves on a daily basis, or as we lay in bed at night wishing we had had time to do something better – so, to find the head space again to be back at work after this experience is extremely tough. To suddenly be able to undertake x-rays or top up Isofluorane again, while remembering “there’s no baby there any more” is agony.
I remember, shortly after my second miscarriage, a cat was brought into the practice one night as she was pregnant and bleeding – we had to perform an emergency caesarian and the kittens were dead; the familiarity of the sight of the birth sacks as I cleaned theatre made me slump to my knees in tears.
The joy of others
To encounter others in the workplace who are successfully pregnant, discussing going for a scan or sharing news with their family, is truly crippling at times. It is so hard to know how on earth to explain why you suddenly have to leave the prep area during one of these discussions without feeling bad for feeling bad.
The truth is, there are triggers everywhere, but others don’t know what we have been through. They do not know that we are in limbo…
Those of us who have lost a baby are a kind of hidden, invisible gang – we do not have the bump; pregnancy is no longer in progress – but we are trying and are even more delicate. It is the oddest, saddest, emptiest feeling to know you have been pregnant several times in a year and yet have no baby or imminent baby.
Giving and receiving support
Pregnancy and baby loss isn’t something that will necessarily be resolved or concluded – the memories will always be on or in your mind – but I have undertaken baby-loss specific counselling through the charity Making Miracles – it’s just one of the options out there, among helplines, podcasts, online forums and live events.
I have also taken to writing – for Tommys, Making Miracles, The Worst Girl Gang Ever (and have also been interviewed on one of their podcasts, which has so far reached more than 2,500 listeners) – but I often wonder whether I would be diagnosed with depression and/or PTSD if I were to explain the sadness I can feel some days to a GP.
Policy change
Many of the larger veterinary groups such as CVS and IVC have stepped up their maternity policies in recent years, which has been celebrated. But how about a policy for those female veterinary nurses and surgeons who experience a miscarriage? One in four women do, and that needs some acknowledgement.
If any of you want to talk about your experiences, please please do contact me (sallycurtis82@hotmail.com), listen to my podcast (The Worst Girl Gang Ever: Episode 4 – Sally Curtis – Early Miscarriage ) or try any of these brilliant organisations:
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