I wonder if people will ever realize that when you have a pregnancy loss, you lose a BABY. You don't just lose blood, tissue, and other "products of conception." But you lose a child. A child that you love, a child that you carried, a child that you had every hope and dream in the world for. Gone just like that. Nothing you did. Nothing you could do about it.
It's amazing how little time some people are willing to give you to "get over the loss." A few weeks (as in 2-3) or a couple of months at best is often all you'll get from friends, family, and a few well meaning people. And then magically you are expected to return to normal. Have the same carefree funny conversations. Gush and fawn over newborn babies. Smile at pregnant women. Talk about the future with the same type of energy and hope. Like you could just freaking bounce back to the person you once were before just like that because society expects you to and it makes them uncomfortable if you don't.
You can learn a lot about people and your relationships with them by how they choose to react and respond during your grief. Like who is really there for you always, who is there for you for just short period of time, who is there for you as long as it doesn't interfere with what they have going on, and who isn't there for you at all. Sometimes these are hard lessons to learn.
I wonder will people ever be able to realize that it hurts to have your child ignored, it hurts to have your grief go unacknowledged, it hurts like hell to have people act as if you went to the hospital to have your spleen removed instead of having every fragment of your baby and all that held you two together suctioned and scraped from what was once a sacred nurturing space.
I don't expect people who have not gone through this to get it. I really don't. But it's hard to grasp that people don't expect you to grieve.
I wonder what it would take for others to realize that losing a baby means you literally lose a part of yourself. The part that you loved the most. It means losing the most important part of your future.
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What it takes is the same thing happening to them. That is the only thing that will make most people understand. It sucks. The good thing about these blogs, though, is that the more we get out how wrong that is, the more people we have the opportunity to change. I hope you find some support.
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