1 in 120. This statistic has been on my mind since I read it. 1 in every 120 births ends in stillbirth. It is extremely disturbing to say the least that this many women have to go through such a nightmare and have to find some way to cope with it. Over the past days since I read it, though, I have found it oddly comforting to think that if that many women go through it and find some way to walk through the pain and carry on with their lives, then I probably can too. It’s a strange sense of connection that I have to women I don’t even know, but it’s such a particular experience, such a particular kind of grief, I feel like I could talk to any of them like I know them. I think too of women in the past. Long ago, when infant mortality was something that was probably sort of expected and a healthy baby and child was not the usual. What those women had to endure….and now so many centuries later and there are still many parts of pregnancy and birth that remain just the same. Some mysteries of that process that still can’t be seen of fixed even with all the technology we have.
The other thing I think of is the silence that goes along with these reproductive problems…problems of all kinds. I can understand it, even though for some reason unknown even to me I have continued on the path of sharing my loss. If something like 20 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, and of those that don’t we get the unexpected statistic above, then a lot of women have to be sharing a lot of the same experiences. I am sure it is that as women, as mothers, we all deal with these things so differently and also, when does it come up in normal conversation? Probably not a lot. There are other reasons too, reasons that I don’t really like to think about. Reasons like guilt and fear. It seems so crazy. How could you feel guilty about something that you had absolutely no control over? I certainly didn’t think I felt guilty, but I have noticed that I inexplicably keep feeling the need to justify what happened …. justify it even to myself. I keep reminding myself that it was a cord accident. That my body didn’t fail me, that there was nothing wrong with me, that it was just simply a terrible accident. This is true, but I keep wondering why that is so important to me? There are many causes of stillbirth, and often, I think most of the time, the reason is unclear even after birth. So why is that distinction so important to me? Fear of being a failure. I know, I know. I am well aware that I am not and that no one thinks that. I mean, I have never heard about a pregnancy loss or someone’s infertility problem and thought anything remotely like that. But still, in the back of my mind, I know that is what I, at least, am afraid of. I am afraid of looking like a failure to other people. I guess there is something so basic about reproduction that we feel like if anything bad happens we are somehow responsible by default. The women who suffer with fertility problems, women who have random disorders that cause problems in pregnancy or women like me who have a baby that is born but never lived on this earth… aren’t they just all random, or bad luck, or part of God's plan in the end? So, of course, failure is a completely ridiculous feeling to have in such a situation. I have a feeling though that just as I know many women stand beside me with all kinds of losses related to reproduction, I have a sneaking suspicion that I may not be alone in my illogical fear of feeling like I failed.
