Mama Mia

by Mia Freedman

  It’s a plea to my baby from the depths of my despair. And hearing it breaks my heart a little bit more.

  My own anguish comforts me in a strange way. This is the way I should be reacting. This feels right.

  By the time Jason and Luca return, the grief has receded in what will become a familiar pattern. Like a tide. Without warning it will come from nowhere to crash over me, toss me around brutally and then slowly pull back, depositing me on the shore, shaken and gutted.

  For months and years afterwards, the piece of music I found that day would become the key to unlocking my grief because sometimes I’d want it to wash over me. Sometimes, I felt that was the only way I could truly connect with my lost baby.

  I get out of the bath and look at myself in the mirror. From the outside, I’m still pregnant. My baby is still here, still tucked away, floating inside me. But she’s not really. Really, she’s gone.

  The next day, there are details to sort out, none of which I’m capable of dealing with. Jason calls Pat, who gathers my staff together to tell them. Word begins to spread among our friends.

  I am adamant that no one find out that the baby died three weeks ago. I am ashamed that I didn’t know.

  The phone begins to ring with sympathy calls. ‘I don’t want anyone to send flowers,’ I growl at one point, but then someone does and they’re beautiful and welcome. So are the cards that a few people send. I treasure them as proof that our baby existed, that she’d meant something.

  Mostly, people don’t know how to react. I don’t blame them but I notice. Death is an awkward, unpleasant business. And death before birth? There’s no ritual for that in our culture.

  In the weeks that follow, as painful and uncomfortable as it often is to have a conversation about our baby’s death, it is infinitely preferable to silence. People who say nothing leave me feeling angry.

  My world has stopped turning; how can that possibly be glossed over without comment?

  The few days between learning our baby has died and going to the hospital are in some ways horrific and certainly surreal. I am carrying my dead baby inside me. But in many more ways, they are a gift. A chance to come to terms with what has happened. A chance to make the jarring transition from pregnant to bereaved. From excitement and anticipation to anguish and sorrow.

  Still, there are some unbearable moments.

  The day before I’m due to go to hospital, Jason and I seek some respite from the oppressive atmosphere at home and walk to a nearby café for lunch. Two tables away are some people we haven’t seen for a while and they come over to say hi. I’m dressed in very baggy clothes to try to disguise my stomach, but I’m still visibly pregnant. They say congratulations and want to know when the baby’s due. Jason looks at me, stricken, and I quickly plaster a frozen smile on my face. ‘May next year—still a while to go yet!’ I say and then we quickly make an excuse to leave.

  I struggle to re-draw my life in the short and long term, deleting this baby from my imagined plans. I remember an older relative who discovered her baby had died at a similar stage and had to carry it for several weeks until she went into labour. I’d always imagined it would be horrific and somehow repulsive to carry a dead baby inside you, but I’m surprised to find neither is the case.

  Devastating, absolutely. Excruciatingly upsetting at times, yes. But also strangely comforting. Your own body cannot disgust you and neither can something you created and carry inside it. I still feel protective of my baby. I still feel like I am her mother.

  HOSPITAL

  Answering machine message to White Lady Funerals from me:

  ‘Hello, I want to ask about a cremation for a baby. Well, a pre-term baby. Do you do that kind of thing? If someone could give me a call, that would be great. Thanks.’

  In a million years and the blink of an eye it was Friday. We dropped Luca at my mum’s on the way to the hospital, the same hospital in which Luca had been born.

  After doing the paperwork, we were shown to a room and a nurse came to ask me some questions. For a moment, I wondered if she thought I was having a late-term abortion. Imagine that. I wanted to scream how much I’d wanted this baby, how devastated I was by what had happened and what was about to happen.

  She glanced at my chart and I detected an immediate softening. She reached out to pat my hand and I began to feel wobbly again.

  Dr Peters came in to introduce himself and explain the procedure. He was surprisingly chirpy, which was disconcerting while at the same time welcome. The heaviness and misery of the situation were oppressive enough already.

  ‘We’re going to put some gel on your cervix to soften it up,’ he explained matter-of-factly. ‘You’ll have some mild contractions but nothing too bad and then we’ll take you down to theatre and put you to sleep. Then we’ll remove the foetus and you’ll wake up a bit crampy but able to go home in a few hours. How does that sound?’

  I wasn’t sure of the correct answer. Terrific? Shocking? Devastating?

  ‘Um, I wanted to ask you something,’ I ventured by way of response. ‘Would it be possible to…keep the remains of the baby?’

  He cocked his head to the side and thought for a moment.

  ‘Yes, I don’t see why not. We could organise something, although you understand that during the removal process, the foetus can be…well, it might not come out intact. And we’ll want to do some tissue tests to see if we can determine…factors—’

  I rushed to interrupt him. ‘Oh, I don’t mean we want to take it home with us today or anything. Just more that if we wanted to organise for a cremation or something later on…’

  ‘I see,’ he said, nodding his head vigorously in agreement, visibly relieved. ‘Yes of course! I see no problem with that at all.’ And he made a note on my chart.

  As soon as he left, I looked at Jason and burst out laughing. It was utterly macabre but the idea that he’d thought we wanted to take home a doggy bag with our baby’s remains in it was so completely horrifying that it struck me as funny.

  I hadn’t laughed in days and the sound was unfamiliar. It was over almost immediately and the heavy atmosphere returned. I felt faintly desperate about what was about to happen. I knew my baby was dead but I wasn’t ready to give her up.

  As Jason read the paper and I flicked through magazines, a nurse came to apply the gel to my cervix and the contractions began slowly, like period pains.

  Two hours later, I was wheeled down to be prepped for surgery. My hands were still protectively held over my stomach, not from pain but from love. I desperately wanted this to be over and I desperately didn’t.

  Usually, I don’t mind a general anaesthetic; I like the physical sensation of slipping so quickly into unconsciousness—but this time, when it was the final chapter in the long goodbye to my baby, I drifted off reluctantly.

  I woke in the recovery room, crampy and disoriented. Dr Bob was the first face I saw. I didn’t even know he’d been at the hospital, but he’d come to be in the operating room and to be there when I woke up. What a kind, wonderful man…I was lucky to have him see me through this.

  He was saying something to me about the procedure having gone well, but it was all foggy. Just seeing him made me start crying and then I couldn’t stop.

  It was over, really over. She was gone.

  The physical and emotional sensations of the next few days are difficult to describe. I felt gutted, quite literally. My womb was empty, my baby was gone.

  And then one morning, two days after the operation, I stood in the shower and watched milk leak from my breasts. Oh my God. My milk had come in. I sank to the floor and sobbed violently, barely able to breathe. Why had no one warned me about this? About any of it? I’d been sent home from the hospital with instructions about not driving and Panadeine for the cramping. But no one warned me about the milk.

  As I watched it swirl into the drain and disappear, I wanted to dive down after it into the darkness. It was just too painful, this disconnect between my body and my mind. N
ature was telling me I had a baby to take care of and my breasts were merrily making milk to feed her. My arms felt so shockingly empty without the weight of a newborn in them. They ached.

  Emotionally, I continued to pull away from everyone who loved me. From my family, my friends and even Jason. It wasn’t a choice, I was simply unreachable.

  Except when I listened to my music, to her song. Then I could allow myself to fully dwell on the horror of my baby lying in pieces in a hospital morgue, her tissue samples being taken for testing.

  Yet another strike in my heart of failure. Not only had I let her die inside me but now I’d abandoned her in a cold, impersonal hospital lab.

  Frantic with grief and guilt, I decided to call a funeral home to ask about cremation. I didn’t want anything formal like a funeral but I wanted some ashes for some kind of private ceremony. I wanted to reclaim her. Just for us.

  The lady I spoke to was lovely and said they could organise to collect the remains from the hospital, transport them to the crematorium and then I could collect the ashes afterwards.

  When I told him about it, I could instantly see Jason was uncomfortable with the idea. But he knew to tread carefully around me and wanted to facilitate whatever I felt I needed to do. He unquestioningly made all the necessary arrangements.

  Within a few days, I returned to work. It had been just over a week since I’d gaily walked out of my office for the ultrasound, promising to be right back. I wasn’t sure I was ready to return but I didn’t know what else to do. I had a hole in my heart and my life and I had to fill it with something. I wasn’t physically ill, so lying in bed all day was unthinkable. It was time to start putting one foot in front of the other even though the ground beneath them felt like quicksand.

  For the first time in a long time I didn’t care about my appearance, although in a way I did. Specifically, I wanted to look as dreadful as I felt. I wore drab clothes and no make-up. I didn’t blow-dry my hair. I wanted my grief and my loss to be written on my face. I felt so irrevocably, drastically and fundamentally altered, I wanted the proof of it to be visible to the world.

  Deep in grief, I found myself back at my desk, surrounded by a subdued and protective team of women who didn’t know what to say but were silently supportive. I was physically weak, mentally fragile and emotionally shattered but I was glad for the distraction of work.

  A week or so later, I received a call.

  ‘Mia, it’s Judy here from White Lady Funerals. I’m afraid with the cremation of your little one there wasn’t enough physical matter to leave any ashes.’

  ‘You mean the baby was too small?’

  ‘Yes, I’m so sorry. I know you wanted something.’

  ‘So…what happened…? Do you mean she just sort of evaporated into the atmosphere?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  Her voice was full of compassion, but it was yet another breathtaking punch. How many more times would I have to lose this baby?

  Jason was relieved—I could tell—although he tried to hide it and be sympathetic. By now though, I was looking for any reason to snap at him because being angry hurt less than being devastated. So I lashed out.

  I wanted to name the baby; he didn’t. I wanted to have some kind of ceremony; he didn’t. While he was trying to be supportive, he was also grieving in his own private way, untangling the complex knot of his own emotions. I should have respected that, but instead I exploded at him for not following my path, not reading my mind, not feeling the same way I did about everything.

  In the Disney version of this story—if Disney ever made a movie about neo-natal death—losing our baby would have brought Jason and me closer, forging an unbreakable bond between us in the immediate aftermath.

  But in real life, in our life, it did the opposite. The grieving process, which we undertook so differently and so separately, put us under incredible strain and pushed us further apart.

  TWO AHA! MOMENTS

  Voicemail to Jason from me (sobbing):

  ‘Hi, it’s me and…and…I’ve missed my flight and…and…and…I…have…to…wait…nine hours for…the…next one and…and…I’m freaking out. Where are you? You can’t even call…me…back ‘cause I’m…I’m calling from a public phone at LA airport…and I’m running out of credit and—[click]’

  There was a lot of wreckage to sift through in the aftermath of losing our baby. Physically, there were tests to be done on me and the baby to try and determine a cause of death.

  Was there something in my system that had caused her to die? It seemed not. Was she severely retarded or deformed? No. The chromosomal and structural tests and the ultrasounds we had before she died hadn’t waved any red flags and neither did the tests done on her remains.

  I was shocked by the fallibility of medicine. I’ve always been one of those people who like to think doctors and science have all the answers. When they don’t, I’m indignant.

  How could no one give me an explanation for why such a terrible thing had happened to me? Why couldn’t anyone tell me why my baby had died? They couldn’t, and I had to make some kind of peace with that. I had to let her go. I knew this intellectually, but my heart was smashed into pulp and intellect didn’t come into it.

  The hunger I had for a baby was visceral. Catching sight of pregnant women—who had suddenly fallen from the sky in a downpour by the thousands and were everywhere I turned—was like a kick to the stomach. My empty stomach.

  Emotionally, it was clearly too early for us to be trying again. I was a mess. But physically? The medical opinion was mixed. One school of thought was that you should wait at least three months after a miscarriage before conceiving again so your body could recover and give you a better chance of carrying the next pregnancy to term. Another theory was that as soon as you ovulated, nature was saying your body was ready. And this could be within weeks of miscarrying. I was torn.

  Part of me was way too fragile to contemplate another miscarriage and thought I should wait three months. But another part, the primal part that was screaming out for another baby every waking second, couldn’t bear to wait even another day. This is the part that had an iron grip around my heart and my head. The need to be pregnant again immediately was so overwhelming that I became quite batty.

  It was Luca who kept me anchored to daily life. I had to get out of bed each morning and take care of him and deal with his needs, so as much as I wanted to pull the covers over my head and disappear, I couldn’t.

  This distraction was a blessing. He was a blessing too, of course, but I wanted to slap people when they tried to console me with platitudes like, ‘Oh well, at least you have Luca.’ Yes, he was the light of my life but in no way did that lessen the grief I felt. In the same way that had our daughter been born, I wouldn’t have loved him any less. I walked through work like a zombie, detached and desolate.

  As the months passed and the growing pile of pregnancy tests cruelly refused to show two lines, I became deranged with disappointment. Every failed test felt like losing my baby again. My grief and anger and frustration intermingled with a bucket of other emotions I couldn’t even articulate.

  The date our baby was meant to be born was looming like a nightmare. On the actual day, bizarrely enough, I was in the Bahamas. It was Cosmo conference time again, and if the universe wasn’t already testing me enough, it decided to really mess with my head by forcing me to confront my fear of flying. I had to endure three flights there and three back, including a return trip on a very light plane from Miami to the Bahamas.

  By the time I had to fly to LA for the first leg of the trip, I was emaciated by grief and beyond fragile. The flying triggered panic attacks and by the time I arrived at my hotel, I was a shaking wreck.

  In LA for two days, I threw myself into shopping with the dedication of a lunatic. I went to Barneys and bought expensive jeans and beaded tops. I went to boutiques and bought leather jackets, dresses and shoes. So consumed was I by the urge to buy things and block my anxiety, I a
rrived late at LA airport on the day I was meant to fly to the conference and missed my flight.

  I was so brittle that when I discovered the next flight was nine hours away, I fell into a heap—almost literally. When I couldn’t get hold of Jason on his mobile, I did what any self-respecting adult would do in such a situation: I called my mum and dad and cried down the phone.

  I’m not sure why it never occurred to me to put my bags in a locker and go back to the centre of LA to shop more or just wander around. My fear of flying makes me nutty and I become easily institutionalised at airports. I get trapped and lose my mind. So instead of doing something fun or constructive, I spent the next nine hours wandering around LAX and sitting in Starbucks. I ate a lot of cardboard muffins. And each time I thought my anxiety levels couldn’t possibly get any higher, they surprised me and did.

  Eventually, I made it to the Bahamas and checked into the hotel, a massive structure on the beach with multiple giant pools and waterslides. I collected my conference pack from the Cosmo hospitality suite, hugged a few familiar Cosmo people and collapsed in my room.

  The following days were difficult. I was not coping well. Usually, I loved these conferences and adored seeing my sister editors. They were a sensational bunch of women and I’d made some fast friends over the years. But my anxiety overwhelmed me. I insisted on working out in the hotel gym every morning before conference sessions began, despite being weak and thin. I couldn’t control my fertility, but dammit I could control my exercise and my weight. And I craved the endorphins. They were the only thing able to alleviate my anxiety, however briefly.

  One afternoon, after a manicure in the spa—a gift to all the editors from Hearst—I became convinced I’d been infected with HIV because the therapist hadn’t sterilised the cuticle cutter. Or had she? This triggered more anxiety, to the point of panic attacks. My clothes hung off me. I couldn’t sleep. In the sanctuary of my room I cried and cried. I was falling apart and I knew it. Worst of all, the timing meant I was overseas when I ovulated. Another month lost. It was unbearable.