The Club That No One Asks To Be Part Of.

This past May, I was supposed to be celebrating the upcoming Mother’s Day as an

almost mom of two, but life had other plans. On May 4th , I quietly recognized Bereaved Mother’s Day instead.

This was not the way that things were meant to go.

Five pregnancies in five years is a lot for one body to take. It’s a lot for a psyche, a

marriage, and a young family to take. Five first trimesters, three second trimesters, one beautiful daughter and enough heartbreak to fill a lifetime.

The last 14 months nearly broke us. At times I was convinced I would be consumed by the grief, resentment, sorrow and emptiness. Unlike many other couples, getting

pregnant has never been our problem. It is the staying pregnant we have trouble with. I used to joke with my partner about my ‘haunted womb’ - he didn’t find it as funny as I did, but on some days, dark humour was the only way to survive. And, despite experiencing two first trimester miscarriages in 2020, and the birth of a beautiful preemie baby girl in 2021, I was not prepared for what would come when we started to try again.

Our Jude (19 weeks, April 2024)

I was not prepared for the phone call at 12 weeks about abnormal genetic testing

results.

I was not prepared…

… for the confusion and overwhelm in researching a genetic condition I’d never heard

of.

…to wait until 16 weeks to get an amnio, the whole while bargaining with the universe to make it go our way.

…to feel a flutter in my belly at 17 weeks, making it all the more real.

…to be paralyzed by indecision when the amnio confirmed our worst fears.

…to make a choice that did not feel like a choice at all. This had to be a bad dream.

…to be asked to decide between a surgical termination, or induced labour and delivery.

…to be asked if we wanted an autopsy and to decide what to do with our baby’s

remains.

…for leaving the hospital with nothing more than a sonogram photo and a set of

footprints that I couldn’t bring myself to open.

…to feel betrayed by my body when I could only fit into maternity clothes, but I was no longer pregnant.

…to quietly rationalize the choice that wasn’t a choice for months to come.

…for us to be the 1%.

I was not prepared to say goodbye.

And so, I did my best to forget. I went back to work, I focused on my daughter, and I

tucked the experience away in the far recesses of my brain, packed neatly in a box

labeled ‘anomaly’. A random, by-chance tragedy that I would not let define me, or my family’s future.

The decision to start trying again was fraught with more guilt than I anticipated. If we started trying to soon, would this dishonor the memory of the baby that we just let go? If we waited too long, would it decrease our chances given that I was already 38? What is the right amount of time to mourn a baby who never joined you earth side?

Our Benny (22 weeks, January 2025)

This time, I thought that we were prepared. That the worst had already happened, so things would be different, they had to be different. Each milestone felt like a hurdle we had to clear on our way to redemption. Dating ultrasound – passed! Blood work – passed! Twenty-week scan – I went numb.

I was not prepared for the ultrasound tech to say something was wrong with the baby’s heart.

I was not prepared…

…for the hot burning sensation of panic that formed at the pit of my stomach as I lay, belly exposed, on the table.

… to wait a week for more answers and information all the while trying not to completely lose it.

…for the doctors to show us a diagram of the multiple defects affecting every part of the baby’s heart.

…to consider a tiny life that would have to fight through delayed growth and speech,

intellectual disabilities, immunosuppression and numerous open-heart surgeries before the age of 10 – if he made it at all.

…for this to happen again. To have to make the choice that did not feel like a choice,

again.

…to sit once more in the same waiting rooms, operating rooms, recovery rooms and

parking lots.

…to consent this time to an autopsy on this tiny being, in an effort to get as many

answers as we could.

…to leave the hospital a second time with a different sonogram photo and a second set of footprints - all that I had left of my baby to cling to.

… to come home and explain to a 3-year-old soon-to-be big sister why her baby brother couldn’t come home to live with us.

…to have to face the closet that just two weeks earlier I had filled with onesies, baby

books and a new diaper bag.

I was not prepared to say goodbye again.

If something happens once you chalk it up to bad luck, but twice? How were we the 1% twice? Is it me, us? Have we been bad people? Made mistakes in a past life and now being punished? It wasn’t fair, and we still had no satisfying explanation. It was a cruel cosmic joke.

My grief the second time was different. I couldn’t push it away, or rationalized it as a

random tragedy, because it had happened again. I couldn’t hide from it anymore, and I didn’t want to. I felt compelled to ride the waves of my grief. To let them crash over me time and time again, until gradually they subsided, and I began to soften around the edges. I found solace and safe spaces within TFMR and bereaved parent communities online and through social media. I felt a deep and primal need to connect and to be with my babies – to recognize them, know them, honour them. I opened up the sealed envelopes stuffed in the back of the closet, outlined their tiny footprints with my fingers, gave them names. These babies were a part of me and what happened was now a part of me too. It had embedded itself in my DNA, imprinted itself on my soul, and I had to face it and make space for it. Logically, a heart that gets cracked wide open only has one job left to do: to heal. I hoped desperately that this was true.

But still, some will not understand this choice that was not a choice.

I naively thought that being pro-choice meant I somehow didn’t have a right or a reason to grieve something that never was. I was wrong. To feel another being growing and moving inside you and then to have to say goodbye - it’s a pain I’ll carry in my bones and in the core of my being forever. It was a sacrifice – a trade – of the agony we feel in our hearts now, to spare our babies any amount of pain and suffering later. It was a choice that wasn’t a choice but it was the best decision for our babies and for our family.

Still, some will not understand this choice that was not a choice.

Today, I’m still here and so is our family - and that makes me proud. We stuck together, found strength we never knew we had, and are trying to look ahead. We find ways to heal as we learn that grief and joy can exist together. We find small comforts in knowing that we are not alone in being members of a club that no one asks to be a part of.