Your Stories: Dan & Alex - Miscarriage through a Male Lens

This week - 22nd May 2020 - has been one of the absolute worst I have ever experienced

Having kept what seemed like the most exciting news incredibly private (our parents and siblings knew) for 9 weeks, our world fell apart when seemingly out of nowhere, with no worrying symptoms, bar some mild spotting, Alex was told at an early pregnancy scan, that our baby hadn’t made it beyond 6 weeks and she was going to miscarry at any moment, probably in the next few days.

What was already hard enough to deal with, was made even more challenging because the restrictions that Coronavirus has placed on us. I wasn’t allowed to go into the hospital to hold Alex’s hand during the scan, she had to fight back the tears as she found the strength to explain to me what the nurses had just told her was about to happen to us, and subsequently I wasn’t able to ask the nurses any questions of my own, or try and digest the information that Alex might have missed.

We’ve been through a range of emotions this week, the pain we shared on Monday night is like nothing either of us have ever experienced, on Tuesday we started to process the news, on Wednesday we started to accept what was happening and tell some of our nearest and dearest, and on Thursday the baby passed...

Today we’ve started what we know will be a long road to recovery and we’ve even found the strength to try and smile, make some dark jokes and I swear Alex might even be making most of the situation by insisting I run around doing things for her she *might* not actually need my help with.

So why did I want to share this so publicly on social media… social media is a place we post photos of happy times, photos of great food, interesting places we have visited, it is NOT a place for public mourning, but in the last few days I realised I knew absolutely nothing about miscarriages, I couldn’t think of any of my female friends I could turn too that might be able to support Alex, and significantly for me, I couldn’t think of one single male friend that had been through this and could advise me about how I stay strong for Alex whilst feeling devastated myself.

How to grieve for a baby I hadn’t met yet, a baby that wasn’t born, and unlike Alex, a baby I didn’t have a physical connection with yet. To put things even more bluntly as crazy as it sounds, I have even found myself envious of the physical pain Alex has experienced as the baby slowly passed through her body, because at least she could tangibly feel something.

I’ve both experienced and listened to the shame, embarrassment and awkwardness as Alex and I have shared the news with family members, friends and work colleagues who didn’t even know we were pregnant let alone trying, but probably needed to be aware that ‘we were going through something’, ‘that we’d had some sad news we had to deal with’ or in the other extreme fake it until we make it and pretend that everything is ok, when really it isn’t, and we DO need treating with a bit of care and sensitivity at the moment.

I’m not expecting this post to change anything, trying for babies and the challenges that arise with it, are topics that many people find incredibly private and personal and probably cringe that I've written this, but by the law of averages 1 in 3 of the people reading this, who either have their own children or are currently trying for children, will understand some of what I have said so far, and I wanted those people to read this and remember what it was like, maybe reach out to me if you have any words of wisdom, or maybe just maybe, during this already strange time of coronavirus, where many things we all assumed would never change are changing, we can press a reset button and find better ways to support each other through times like this.

Alex and I simply weren’t ready for what this week has been, and probably nothing could have prepared us for it, but if one person reading this gains any grain of comfort then it will have been worth sharing.

A year on - September 2021 - and why last Rosh Hashana meant so much to Dan & Alex: 

Like many couples my wife and I experienced a range of conflicting emotions and often dark or troubling thoughts whilst we attempted to process, to heal and make sense of the miscarriage Alex suffered in May 2020.  

As someone who has such strong faith in Hashem; a being who more powerful and more knowledgeable than us, that surely ensures that everything happens for a reason, the hardest question was why did this have to happen to us?   

We spent lots of time agonising, arguing and debating this very theme, which became ever harder in the months it took for Alex to fall pregnant, each month we didn’t conceive, felt not only like another stab in the stomach but also a cruel reminder of what we had lost.   

Last September I tried to focus on the idea that, the more we hurt, the more we had to have faith that Hashem MUST know what was best, and whilst I couldn’t see the answers right now, I had to accept that I didn’t need to know, or understand why it happened, just have the trust and belief that it would work out as it was meant to be in the end.  

As Rosh Hashana arrived, these issues felt more poignant than ever, and I asked Alex if we could consider finding a way to acknowledge Hashem in a meaningful way whenever our first child might be born, as a way of accepting that in a way everything happens for a reason. I can still remember how nervous I was saying the words out loud to Alex, What if she didn’t agree? And perhaps even worse, what if she did agree but we continued to have problems conceiving?  

Fortunately, I’m incredibly lucky to have a wife who shares a very similar philosophy to life as me, and she instantly agreed. We davened as hard as we could, doing our best not to focus on what we had lost, but focus on what we still hoped we might have in the future. This wasn’t easy or an instantaneous fix, but soon, with gratitude to Hashem, that future came in the shape of our beautiful baby girl, Natalia, or as we call her, Tali.  

In Hebrew נטל י-ה means G-d takes, or, loosely, "taken from G-d" which we believe symbolises the journey we experienced bringing her into this world, never easy, straight forward, or what we had in mind, but exactly what Hashem knew was best for our new family. 

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