The Worst Girl Gang Ever:
A Survival Guide for Navigating Miscarriage and Pregnancy Loss
by Bex Gunn and Laura Beckingham, HQ (2022)
Bex Gunn and nurse Laura Buckingham are two women sharing their experiences of baby loss with the aim of bringing about change and wider recognition of the subject. They started The Worst Girl Gang Ever podcast in 2020, knowing how little recognition and support there was out there for others who find themselves in this heartbreaking situation. Bex and Laura also run Pathway to Recovery courses along with six experts in various fields, with the aim of supporting, nurturing, and empowering women after baby loss.
Excerpt from chapter 3:
Misconceptions
“It does count and it is real.”
Miscarriage Is Not the Same for Everyone
Many of you will be all too familiar with the misconceptions that surround miscarriage. Often the experience of one person is assumed to be the same for another, but this is simply not the case. While some women experience a lot of physical pain, others may struggle more with the emotional toll. Some may find the trauma lies in the effect on their relationship. Some women already have children at home, while others may have been through cycles of fertility treatment. Each experience is entirely unique and will bring its own set of challenges and difficulties.
We are all individuals and, as such, every single experience we go through in life is felt and dealt with differently. These differences can be brought about by our upbringing, culture, philosophies, mental health, support systems, coping strategies … without even mentioning that we are all distinctive personalities with our own unique pathways and footprints.
Louise Taylor’s story encapsulates this perfectly. We had a good giggle chatting to her for our podcast—it was like talking to an old friend even though we hadn’t met her before. She was very open about her mental health and very honest about how the misconceptions and misjudgements around what happened to her—her own and other people’s—made her feel. Not only was her story emotive, but her totally brilliant and upbeat attitude was thoroughly inspiring.
Louise’s Story
“The worst thing was when people said to me, ‘Congratulations!’ That would make me feel really angry because I’d think, ‘Why are they congratulating me when one of my babies has died and one is fighting for her life?!’”
We found out at the 12-week scan that we were having twins, and from that point on there were constant problems. It was a complete roller coaster, and we were scanned every week from 12 weeks. At one point we thought we were out of the woods when we were taken off “specialist care,” but then at the first scan after that we found out that there was only one heartbeat. I was just coming up to 28 weeks and at that point I had to try to carry the other baby, my daughter Eva, for as long as I could, which was only another 10 more days. One day before I was 29 weeks she had to come out because things were starting to go wrong, and I needed to have an emergency C-section.
Eva spent nine weeks in NICU [newborn intensive care unit] and it was an incredibly lonely and upsetting time. It seemed like such a messed-up form of grief and loss because you have such mixed emotions … I had lost one baby and the other one was fighting for her life in NICU so I couldn’t be normal and just happy that I’d had a baby. The worst thing was when people said to me, “Congratulations!” That would make me feel really angry because I’d think, “Why are they congratulating me when one of my babies has died and one is fighting for their life?” I know they probably meant well, but it was such a hollow word to say.
The other biggest misconception a lot of people have about having a premature baby is that they assume it’s just a little cute baby being kept all snuggly in a little incubator and all they need to do is grow and then they will come home. But it’s literally life or death in NICU. Looking after a premature baby is really traumatic and intense, and you are constantly back at the hospital for checks. You are the odd one out in all the newborn baby groups because you have a tiny premature baby plus all the questions of why she is so small. I was convinced every other mum I saw pushing a pram had a smooth ride and had a bouncy, healthy full-term baby. I would hear them all swapping birth stories and moaning about swollen ankles in week 40. I would just be thinking, “That sounds great to me!”
Then I had to explain that Eva was this age but she’s not actually this age because she was three months early so if you correct it she’s actually this age, and then of course I was asked why she was so premature. I wouldn’t always tell the whole story; it was exhausting and emotional. If I told the whole story or not would depend on my mood on any given day. The loss itself is strange because it doesn’t make sense. When you are told you are having two babies, you are having two babies, and the fact that you came home with one doesn’t make sense in your head.
The biggest demon for me, still, is that twins exist in the world. I find that hard and that makes me feel so lonely. I just wished they didn’t exist. If they didn’t exist I wouldn’t be reminded of it all the time. I can’t get away from that, however hard I try. I have even convinced myself that other people who have had a baby haven’t had it as bad, which I know is completely untrue, but it’s an ugly feeling I sometimes get. My husband is much better at this. He can appreciate that no grief is better or worse, but for me, having a loss and the fact that Eva exists means that my grief is intertwined, and I can’t close the door on it fully.
—Louise Taylor
It’s very easy to write things off when it’s uncomfortable to confront or even think about them. As humans, we are basically ill-equipped to navigate the pain of others, and never more so than where death is concerned. We find heartbreak desperately uncomfortable to witness, so we search our emotional filing cabinets for resources to “make things better,” but under the tab “baby loss” there’s nothing.
This results in a one-size-fits-all approach to women suffering with baby loss, which is not only inappropriate, it’s damaging. It doesn’t give us the space or platform to experience and come to terms with our emotions in our own unique way. We try to alleviate the pain of others with a kind of verbal emotional toolbox. We use it to try to patch someone up, but our approach to this can be clumsy, often resulting in the opposite effect to the one we intended, and we can end up smothering the person who’s grieving with our words.
Instead, we need to try letting someone sit with their grief and saying to them, “You know what? This is shit, I am so sorry. I will sit with you. You don’t have to say anything, but if you do, I am here.” Just knowing that a person is really present and won’t try to talk us out of what we are feeling or make light of those feelings because they make them uncomfortable makes a huge difference. It is the best thing we can do to help someone begin to navigate pregnancy loss.
Often, due to our discomfort, we will try to fill a silence or say something for the sake of it. A huge problem in modern life is that we strive to be happy all the time, but sometimes that’s just not appropriate. Grieving is healthy. And mourning your baby and the life you were expecting to lead is a natural part of the healing and recovery process.
Trying to put an emotional bandage on someone who is suffering is invalidating. It is perhaps something that many people don’t realize and won’t fully understand unless they, too, have suffered. It doesn’t need to be this way. We may not always have the right words to comfort a friend, family member, or colleague who has suffered loss, but what we CAN do is be generous. Generous with our time, generous with our love, and generous with our patience.