-
Joe Cleary - Posts: 25
Sabbi, I think you capture something essential when you say of parents bereaved through miscarriage that “as soon as those two blue lines appeared on that pregnancy test, their lives had immediately changed forever..” Rainbow Girl, I think you touch upon the same fundamental issue in the experience of miscarriage when you say that while others – trying to be supportive – told you that miscarriage was common, it's not common for you. I think what connects both of your experiences, and all experiences of miscarriage, are the singularity of the individual child in question and the singularity of each parent's experience.
There are many pregnancies that couples find too difficult to deal with, but when a pregnancy is welcomed, whether or not it comes as a shock, it is the beginning of a massive emotional and psychological adjustment and movement towards the expected child. In psychoanalysis there is a concept of the second death – that while we have a physical death we are not dead in the second sense until the last person who thought of us passes away too because we are part of hat make up others' realities. Similarly, we have two births – the first, the birth of the thought of us in the minds of our ancestors' and immediate family, and the second, our physical birth. Just because a child may not reach physical birth does not mean they are any less real in the thoughts of their parents and those imagining who they may become.
Again, from a psychoanalytic perspective, our attachments to those we care about are like satellites orbiting a planet or a web of thread-like connections. We extend beyond ourselves through our connections to others. They make us who we are because it is in these connections that we create the meaning in our lives. Every relationship is a two-way communication on an infinite level between us and the other, in ways we are consciously aware of and unconsciously unaware of. When we are bereaved the person to whom we are attached may no longer be alive but our connection to them remains. Grief is the process by which we reincorporate some of what connected us to those others because they are no longer physically present to anchor our attachment to them. We can no longer get from them what we did before, but they remain with us in memory.
This connection is more difficult to reincorporate with an unborn child because, while physically present (especially for the expectant mother), they are more real for us in our thoughts than in a tangible, physical way because while they were alive they were not separated out from the mother's body. When they die the hope and expectation for them also ends, abruptly and brutally. While parents had been preparing themselves for the greatest responsibility anyone can undertake, miscarriage comes like a devastating tidal wave.
While Sabbi makes the great point of getting in contact with with The Miscarriage Association of Ireland and meeting other parents who have experienced the loss of miscarriage, I would also suggest that anyone affected by it might benefit from engaging in psychotherapy. While family and friends try and support us, often by emphasising the positives or quoting facts and figures to us, there is also much to be said for having somewhere away from our everyday lives where we can go on a regular basis and say everything that we bottle up otherwise. Sometimes the last thing you want is advice or guidance. Sometimes what you want is to speak to someone you don't have to put a brave face on with and know that you won't see them in your everyday life. Having the opportunity to work with someone in that way can free up energy to deal with the rest of your life.
