Yesterday I was pregnant…
In memory 31st May & 1st June 2011 – A 2023 revisit to the work i created in 2011.
The original 2011 text and images at the bottom.
In memory 31st May & 1st June 2011
Yesterday I was pregnant…
I want to write. I need to write. I just can’t pick up a pen.
As soon as I even think about picking up that notebook to start writing, I just stop. It’s as though the actual act of writing by hand makes it all the more real. And I can not take that at the moment. To hold a pen in hand to write would mean knowing what the first word would have to be, and I honestly don’t know where to begin. What should the word be that is significant enough to be the first word in a diary of utter pain and horror and complete sadness. What page do I begin on? Do I leave blank pages for pictures? for hand scrawls later down the line? Do I just not write anything at all and hope that I remember everything? Of which I already know I do not. Where the fuck does one begin in these cases? Trying to come up with a beginning when all I need to do is articulate an end.
Days have gone by since the scan and I am still at a loss with quite how to cope with this. Ok, I know that I didn’t do anything wrong, I know that we will be able to try again in the future and I know that we can at least conceive. But I can not know why this happened to us. Why us, when we wanted this so much and this would have changed everything for the better. All we want is for something nice to happen, and this should have been it.
My stomach is aching like a bastard, I can feel the pulling and tightening of my muscles, just like in the first few weeks of being pregnant. Except now, every twinge is a reminder that I am no longer harbouring a growing entity, but instead, my body is returning back to ‘normal’ after putting me through a misery I can not explain.
No signs of miscarriage at all, and when waiting for 12 weeks to arrive, I thought we were home free. I thought, no bleeding, no pain, meant that everything was ok. And then to be told that your baby doesn’t have a heartbeat…it’s like a cruel joke. Someone has got to be fucking with us because this really can not be happening to me, to us, to my family.
I have been carrying a dead baby inside me for three weeks.
How could I have been carrying a corpse for almost a month there be no physical signs? How can I truly say that only a couple of weeks before, I said that I no longer ‘felt’ pregnant? But, it is what I said. Was I just being paranoid? Clearly not. I had no physical signs of miscarriage, and I had to have faith in my body, trust that my body was doing what it needed to do. How wrong I was. My boobs stopped hurting and I didn’t feel like I was getting any bigger, but I piled on the pounds quickly anyway, so hard to tell. I still felt nauseas in the mornings, but my appetite subsided. Too many things to recall, except that one of fear and dread, the fear that my baby was dead inside. And it was.
31st May was a Tuesday and when lying on the bed looking at the screen, I knew quickly that it didn’t look like it should. There was a big black blob and only a small squiggle inside it. I knew from this, that things didn’t seem right. I have seen scans at 12 weeks, my niece took up all that black blob space and her squiggly body was luminous inside. I knew in the very short time I was lying there that it wasn’t right. The time the sonographer was taking to zoom and look and zoom and look and the length of time she was quiet, I don’t know how long it was till she spoke, but her first words were a whisper. Almost nondecipherable, “im sorry, there’s no heartbeat” or “I’m sorry, your baby doesn’t have a heartbeat”. I can’t remember now which it was she said. I suppose it amounts to the same thing, Disbelief. I looked at Guy and it was as though he hadn’t heard her at first, he needed it repeating, I think it was more of surprise for him to hear than me. Even with all my worry and dreaded feelings before the scan, I honestly didn’t expect to hear that either. This day was the day to put my mind at rest, to dissolve all my irrational concerns, the day we got to see our baby. The day we would find out that we were having one or two babies. Not the day we find out I am carrying one dead baby.
My baby, in me. Dead. How the fuck does that happen without blood, illness, pain. Well it all came after.
I didn’t want to leave the hospital. I couldn’t bear the idea of the baby exiting once we’d got home. I needed the baby out, I needed it contained. I want my baby back. I knew that if it made its way out alone, it would end up down the toilet or in a mess of underwear destined for the dustbin. Instead, this controlled clinical way I can at least contain the mess and somehow keep a hold of my baby, stay in control of my body during this time when everything is spinning.
Once again my homelife is in turmoil. Everything we wanted has now been taken away. And there is nothing that can put this right. No matter how long we leave trying again, this time is now wasted. The past 3 months have been the longest three months of my life, and to what end? Another explosion of hormones to return to the uncontrollable way they were. Something else now to expose. Another thing to articulate. I can put this is my work. It is the first thing that I grasp to for some kind of stability. I have a picture of my dead baby. I have a picture of the pot the sucked out corpses is stored in. I will have my baby back in a tub and I will keep my baby so that these three months have not been a waste. So that this experience has not been for nothing, I can hold on to my corpse and I will use this experience to highlight the injustice that we have to encounter far too frequently.
It went from autobiographical hormonal anger and lack of understanding.
To knowing about gynaecology and the horrors we encounter.
Articulating the information in an honest way.
Making art relevant to other people, their experiences, showing them truths.
And once again I’ve returned to this horrible world of my own.
Something positive turned negative in a matter of minutes.
Very common, perhaps, but no fucking easier to know so.
Three months of being pregnant, only six months left till our baby would have been born. And now, nothing.
I want my baby back so I can make my next piece of work. I know what it will be.
I didn’t care about my work being seen, but now it needs to be. How does this affect Guy though. This is his baby too and to parade it around would be a constant reminder of what has happened to us. But we will never forget.
I’ve got to do what I feel is right. I know Guy agrees with me on that.
Our poor baby is gone and I feel lost in a world of irony and heartache.
YIWP May/June 2011