u/triangletalks

Sorry for the dark subject, TW: pregnancy/ child loss

I lost my son at full term, 38 weeks, some months ago. We have no real answers, and although my partner and I are surprisingly doing well despite the obvious grief, this question of why this happened to us continues to come up to me sometimes. Specifically the fear of will this happen again, should we know something? Many stillbirths have no medical answers and it’s relatively unknown why many of them happen. It seems we are in this category.

For years I used to consult the I Ching a few times a year to check in with myself, and I’ve enjoyed reading tarot for others. I have always found the I Ching to present clear answers to me. During the pregnancy I felt very strongly that I shouldn’t consult them and focus instead on the pregnancy. For the first time in a year I’ve been able to ask the I Ching a question: and it was “why did this happen?”. I got Hex 60 (limitations) unchanging.

I would love some ideas on what it could mean. I’m having lots of different interpretations and struggling to see a clear answer.

On one hand there is a literal interpretation of needing limits: was there something measurable and definable that was in excess here, physiologically?

Then I wondered is the I Ching telling me there are limits to our knowledge and the things we should know. Have I reached my limit of what I can physically understand of this situation. I have found more comfort in developing a psychological/ spiritual “coming to terms” with it and perhaps there is a limit on the comfort I can be provided with a logical answer. After all what would it change? Was this experience just an encounter with one of life’s many limits? The ones we are constantly faced with that define what it is to be human? That without these limits life would be boundless.

Or perhaps our son wanted to be boundless. That to enter this life means to accept a contract that has written into it at some point an inevitable death, the ultimate limit. Or perhaps there were unknown limitations of his body, something we may not ever see or know.

Line 2 speaks of hesitation and I cannot help but feel perhaps there was a hesistation in his joining us.

I know it must seem I am looking for something where maybe there is not much to be found. But regardless I am here so please do share if you have thoughts!

Edit: more thoughts
Reading how the Confucian commentary observes: "We see a cheerful attitude directing the course amidst peril." And I thought wow how accurate a description of how I feel my partner and I have handled this entire situation from the start.

TW: stillbirth

I am absolutely devastated, I had a still birth this week after going into hospital at 38 weeks for lack of movement. There is essentially no explanation at this point, everything seems that baby, cord and placenta was healthy. The doctors keep telling me there is nothing I could have done and my body did so well to create such a healthy boy.

My mum went sort of semi self imposed NC after spending Christmas (I was 3 months) bullying me and saying the meat I’d cooked was too rare and I was going to miscarry my child, that going up the stairs would make me miscarry my child. That she was going to phone my husband to tell him I was endangering our child’s life.

At 5 months, after my sister gave birth she walked out of the house one day when she was staying with us (we were there to look after my nephew). She then sent a long message about how I was lying to myself about being healthy and I was risking my child’s life eating too much sugar. Bear in mind I am a healthy 33 year old who has been signed off as healthy enough to have a homebirth, something that is incredibly regulated in my country and cannot be done unless you are absolutely spotless in terms of your health record.

I am having severe panic about her finding out. I’ve asked all my family members not to mention it to her but she has been blocked by them all since she has totally isolated all of them. She tried calling social services on my sister. My brother and her siblings have no contact with her. My husband had sent her 1-2 messages back during my pregnancy saying I was fine when she asked. The idea was always that he’d told her a later due date (which has ended up being 4 weeks after my birth last week) and would inform her that our son had been born cordially but that I would not be in contact with her. She has already texted him saying she sent something for us, even though she was not there for me in my last 4 months of pregnancy. I had to be induced for my stillbirth knowing my mother had abandoned me. I feel sick when I think of her, I have never hated her but I hate her now. I will never be safe near her, she will find a way to use this against me, one way or another. I feel like in a time that was meant to be about me having precious stress free time and making beautiful memories with my baby inside me she contributed to the ONLY stress and sadness I had in an otherwise beautiful life. It was the most incredible 9 months and i literally only had shit related to her.

I’m terrified of her posting about it and making it her loss. I’m terrified of her turning up to my house, even though she lives in a different country. I am panicking over her freaking out at my siblings for not telling her or for trying to get in contact with my parents in law, who have been incredible and come straight to support us. Or that she will get information out of my dad who is not very much in contact with her (they haven’t been together in 30 years) or something else.

We have 3 more weeks until she will start pressing my husband for details and she will worm herself into my life one way or another. I just know she will find some crack to get the information out as it eventually spreads. Could be through an uncle or something. I don’t know how to control the news or if I should get ahead of it.

TW: extensive birth description and just quite long in general

I cannot believe I am writing this. I am a 33 year old woman with no health risks: I had my last scan and blood tests checked on Saturday, had a very relaxing beautiful day swimming on the beach on Sunday, as we were expecting our first son Caio to arrive any moment in the following weeks and wanted to indulge as much as possible.

On Monday I realised I hadn’t felt movements in a while, whilst caught up with getting to work in the morning. I came into hospital later that day to do a check convinced it was fine. I had been planning a medically supervised homebirth which is followed closely in my country by doctors and qualified midwives. It required many more checks and on Saturday we were signed off as ready: strong heartbeat, very healthy baby, tests showing no infections to be worried about. I was even a bit dilated and my doctor was smiling and shaking our hands saying it’s unlikely we’d see each other again until after the birth.

The only peace I have is knowing that it would have happened so quickly that we couldn’t have noticed or done anything differently.

I want to share what happened after; as I was waiting in limbo I desperately was reading everyone’s brave stories on here and I felt like I owed it to share my own so that there’s more reference points for what may be coming medically and emotionally during the time in hospital. I will leave hospital tomorrow after a day of being monitored.

When we came in to A&E that afternoon they couldn’t find a heart beat on the basic monitor at the entrance. I had this sinking feeling as I saw the look on the nurses face but I was convinced she was incompetent and I was already thinking what a funny story it would make. Sadly I was taken in to the ultrasound alone and when they couldn’t find the heartbeat again I was in disbelief. I felt like a wild animal, I needed my husband and I needed them to check again and it all cascaded so quickly and then we got put in a private room.

After what felt like a lifetime a doctor came and I explained we wanted another ultrasound. We both watched as they looked at the heart again and there was no beat where we had seen one 48 hours prior. Just in complete shock. It felt like we were in a movie. That this sort of thing happens to other people.

I phoned my midwives who made their way to us and the doctor who had been monitoring me who was off call at this same hospital made his way over.

It kept feeling like this was all a big mistake and they had gotten something horribly wrong.

I was told that I should stay overnight. Then in the morning the doctors would look at all the options. Ultimately they decided that the best thing would be to have prostaglandin pills every 4 hours to encourage a close to natural delivery. I was informed I could have a c section if I felt this would be too traumatic but was highly recommended to do a vaginal birth as I would recover easier and it would make subsequent births easier. I felt immediately that, having planned a homebirth, I wanted to finish this journey with my son as close as I had envisioned it to be.

Monday evening my husband went home via taxi as he was recommended not to drive, took the dog out, and packed our bags. In the meantime I told my little sister and work my situation so I could go offline and she booked a flight out the next morning to come look after our animals.

Starting 8AM on Tuesday I took two pills every 4 hours to help ripen my cervix, until 8PM. That day me and my husband passed the day by cycling through talking, crying, watching crap TV (because you can’t grieve 24/7 and sometimes you just need to numb it), painting some watercolour views from our room which is something we did on our baby moon. We talked intermittently about, but tried not to do it all at once, the practicalities of what would come next:

- the tests we want them to run, where he would rest, whether we wanted our family who live abroad to come be with us or not, what we might do over the next months since we had booked in paternity/ maternity leave.

We also discussed the vision of our family we’d had. For my partner I think it took a while to come to terms with talking about it as if this was our baby who we were losing. By focusing on being concerned for my well being initially he was talking more about grieving a pregnancy. I am not upset at this, as slowly he began to open up more and accept the reality of us losing a child full term. As the non carrying partner I fully expected this to take a bit longer and I know we will need to be patient with each other about how we navigate grief in these coming times if we’re going to make it through this. Anything you can do in this time to honour the love you had for this child you created together is going to make the next days much easier.

We promised each other we would work through this, that we would accept each others versions of grief and we would be together forever. We held each other and cried and slept and lay in silence. We made inappropriate jokes about the hospital and laughed at the awful daytime TV. I wrote about what it felt like to carry him, my partner painted and wrote him some postcards. There is no right or wrong way to go about this. I contacted my family and friends sooner because I needed that. For him it took some more time.

We talked about still wanting a family in the future and doing the work and recovery needed to be able to come back to that. I know some people may need more time to be ready but i think the only way i will survive this is to keep moving towards our goal to have children as long as my body and mind are ready.

At midnight on Tuesday my waters broke with my mucus plug whilst I slept, and despite signing consent for an epidural (I was aware induction was going to be a lot more painful and I wanted options. No shame in needing help in this time) it escalated so quickly I couldn’t get one.

I tried my best to practice what I had been expecting for my homebirth. My mantras were “I can survive 60 seconds of pain” knowing I’d get rest between. Also “everything painful has brought me something beautiful, this is no different”.

As a first time mother I have no idea what the level of pain i experienced was in comparison to a naturally occurring labour. Because I dilated fully in 4 hours it was incredibly strong and painful. In our room I laboured for 3-4 hours in “early labour” just with my partner and I realised soon that because baby cannot work with you it was contributing to severe back labour. I’d read about this but didn’t realise how much it felt like I was been torn in half. My partner applied counter pressure and massaged me and it helped.

When contractions were a minute apart I was taken to a birthing suite. Here I was in active labour for just over an hour-two max. I had learnt and prepared for breathing my baby out, but my midwife with who I was doing this homebirth with, explained that baby cannot rotate naturally so it would require pushing hard, which is something that in all our prep went against.

Moving rooms definitely stopped labour for a bit. But mainly once I was in active labour the feeling of the contractions completely changed.

For the first hour I didn’t understand how to push. The doctor had to use his fingers to direct me on where to push against because I kept using my abs. When I finally got it, it was like there was this other limb i didn’t know existed that I had to use. I had to learn on the spot how to hold my breath whilst pushing, and take another breath without stopping the pushing. Originally I was put in stirrups on my back but this was excruciating and I felt like my hips were being ripped apart. The next bit may get difficult to read but I promise I made it through it and even if you have this experience you can too. It may be that this isn’t your experience especially if it’s not your first birth.

For the next hour or so my midwife kept advocating for me to try other positions and it was a battle between her and the doctor. I’d hang on the monkey bars using gravity and I’d start to crown, only for him to insist I get back on the bed and for everything to stop. Despite this he was amazing and I still appreciate he had a difficult job and needed eyes on baby to fully help me with everything to come after.

Such an intense ramp up combined with the mental anguish of the day of waiting meant I was exhausted. I kept asking for medical help and being told that we were beyond that. I was crying through my contractions because I thought it would never end and I didn’t feel strong. I had to keep reminding myself that I was still going to meet our baby after this. But it’s a difficult mental battle and at one point I couldn’t hold myself up and resigned myself to pushing on the floor in all 4s. My partner was very good at this point in just reminding me how well I was doing. At this point I climbed back onto my back but instead of using the stirrups classically I put my feet against them to push and I stayed asymmetrical. Every time I was told to straighten out it would be painful, so I had to keep this asymmetry. And it was here I figured out how to push. The benefits were that between each contraction there was actually no pain and I could flop back and catch myself for a bit. If you can rest as much as possible before your induction it is definitely useful because we’re running a very painful marathon at the speed of a sprint.

I found asking them where we were at down there was helpful in boosting morale. I was told to imagine I was pooping to try and get the muscles right. Knowing when we were close helped me find an inner reserve of strength I didn’t know I had.

Basically I just needed to figure out my groove and position and then it got better even if pushing was difficult. I didn’t rip despite when it felt like I was.

At 5:22 he was born. I felt how warm he was and it made me so happy to know he had had such a safe joyous and warm environment to be in. The moment he was out all the pain stopped and I was flooded with relief. As soon as you’re convinced it’s never ending is as soon as it can be over.

I was so excited to meet him but I was also terrified of what it would be like to see him. I thought maybe I’d find it too much, too morbid or too difficult. The moment we got to hold him I knew this was the right thing to do. We held him and we kissed him, something I hadn’t been able to picture doing. It just felt like he was asleep. I’m so grateful we got time with him and that pictures were taken (again something I thought I wouldn’t like). My midwife said if you never look at them it’s fine, but she didn’t want us to wish we had them and not be able to.

My partner went on to say that the time he felt most at peace with it all was when we got to just be with him.

Having to give birth to a full term sleeping baby is absolutely terrifying. Yet I found that the mother bear I found inside me during pregnancy came out in waves to fight to help bring Caio into this world. It is the most difficult thing I have ever done yet I felt so much peace and serenity once he was with us.

I don’t know where this journey goes next, I know there’s lots of healing. My friend has sent me this to read which has been helpful to prepare any last questions whilst we’re still in hospital.

https://www.sands.org.uk/sites/default/files/SGTYB%20LINKED-%20Sept%202014.pdf

If you’re going through this now know that there is an other side waiting for you and you will survive this.

TW: pregnancy/ mention of miscarriage and child abuse

I guess this is more of a follow-up post because many months ago I posted about how my mum, with whom I’ve managed to have a decent Greyrock relationship with for seven years had an absolute meltdown after my sister gave birth and at the time I was five months pregnant. It began the first time she saw me after I told her I was pregnant, for Christmas, where she would repeatedly bring up things that I was doing that would make me miscarry my child at three months pregnant: the lamb I cooked for Christmas, walking up stairs. When I told her that my meat was cooked fine, she threatened to call my husband to tell him that I was endangering the life of our unborn child. I told her that if she ever wanted contact with this kid she was gonna have to start speaking to me differently, and she outright said “that’s okay, I’ve heard threats like that before and no one ever goes through with them “. Basically referencing the fact that my big sister is very reliant on her, even though she constantly psychologically abuses her.

I kept telling her that the things she was saying were inappropriate. This was also because she decided that she needed to spend hours talking about the sexual abuse children in our family have faced and I told her that I was at a particularly sensitive point in my pregnancy where I really didn’t want to think about these things that had happened, and she kept insisting that it was “real life and I had to get over it “ even though I grew up hearing these stories and I’m very well acquainted with them. I just made my point that I really wanted to move forward and think about the world being beautiful for my new baby.

After we all came together to help my sister postpartum because she is a single mum, my mum kept talking about “where are my contratulations for helping” and then got up the day after she got back from hospital, packed her bags and just walked out with no warning. This is bearing in mind that she lives in another country so it was super confusing, she apparently just went and stayed in the airport on a bench for two days until her flight. She then only sent me a text for my birthday which she’s never done (always a phonecall) and then some weeks later sent a massive text in the group chat pointing out all the bad things about all of us. Saying that she would call social services on my sister (for God knows what, she insists that my sister needs treatment for postpartum depression that she had nine years ago “ in case it comes back “ even though my sister had a really positive birth experience this time and was flourishing this time round. It almost felt like she was trying to remind her of the last time and push her back there).

Saying in the text that I was putting my child’s health at risk because she thought I was overweight and couldn’t understand why I was panting when I was walking up steps and that I was kidding myself that I was healthy. Her way of keeping me trapped has always revolved around my body image even though it’s taking me years to come to terms with the fact that I’m a perfectly healthy weight. This was a “no go” topic that used to mean NC for a while so she had learnt not to go there.

When the message hit none of us in the group chat responded, we created a new group chat and since then from what I understand none of us have been in contact except maybe my brother. The only time she messaged me was to ask me my due date and it’s because she’d been messaging my husband to get information and he was slow in replying. Aside from that she hasn’t spoken to me from my 5th-8th months of pregnancy. I am good at dealing with it but days a wave of grief comes over me as I remember that my mum is essentially gone now. She will not hold my baby, she will not be there to see him grow up.

We had discussed that maybe my husband could be a minimal point of contact for her to get basic information like sending a text when the baby is born etc (but keeping the due date quiet). She’s now started to send messages to my big sister threatening to call her GP or social services if she doesn’t reply because she’s gone NC. It’s just insane how much the facade is unravelling with her not getting the responses that she wants.

In messages to my husband, she literally says to him, as if she’s going to convince him, that she knows I’m probably mad at her but she had to tell me these things because “it was for my own good “ and then goes on to say that she’s worried that I’m stressed out because I always have too many projects on. As if the idea of not having my Mum present in the most vulnerable and life changing moments would not be causing me more stress than me being someone who’s always doing stuff?!

Anyway, it’s incredible how pregnancy can make everything clear. I really thought for many years that we had “fixed “or managed to find a way to have a relationship. But clearly the moment she saw me as vulnerable and emotional she decided to swoop in and tried to re-establish control. But she’s completely misjudged it because my big sister, having her second son now and feeling very protective, will not have anything to do with her and is considering getting a restraining order out if she doesn’t stop messaging her. After her last threat she called the police over to discuss the situation and they said it was an option.

I have no intention of allowing my child anywhere near her. My husband who was empathetic before is now just shocked and more and more agreeing to no contact at all. The protective instinct is already so strong, I will not let this cycle continue and I will not let this small innocent being go through the kind of things we went through. Reading loads of books about high nurture care and the emotional needs of children and humans makes it so obvious how awful life is spent treading on eggshells around this kind of person.

I used to think we could make it work, pregnancy has shown me that it’s important not to. There are so many things that are glossed over in an attempt to create a relationship with her. I was looking back at messages and realised that she had tried to make me think that my big sister might literally poison me, in the sense that have texts where she’s talking about “what if my sister put something in my food because she’s angry I’m pregnant?”.

It’s amazing how there are things that I would allow myself to experience, because thanks to her my self-worth is so low it’s okay for me to have to suffer through them. It’s only once I start thinking about another small child experiencing them where I’m immediately like “no, absolutely no way”.

I just hate her so much for putting me through this in what is meant to be a serene beautiful moment in my life. I’m very grateful that in every other way it essentially is and I’ve been able to enjoy it thanks to my own hard work at setting up a happy life. It’s like i’ll never be able to forgive her for trying to hurt me like this at my most vulnerable.