Mom…………......... the word that makes any woman in the world feel complete, confident and beautiful. It is one of the most beautiful roles that complete the whole journey of womanhood. Carrying beautiful souls inside her she prepares for the journey with all her soul and dedication, just to be called and loved as “Mom”. But for many moms like me, the desire to become a mother does not fulfill so easily! My journey to motherhood started off through two consecutive miscarriages followed by psychological pain and suffering of losing my two unseen babies whom I have loved since the instant I discovered I am pregnant. So, here’s sharing with all of you my silent (many woman’s) battles:
After almost 5 years of marriage with a long-distance relationship, we decided to start our own family and as an educated couple, we decided to visit a gynecologist in Nepal, for her medical counseling. The visit was just to be sure of our queries, but to our surprise, it did not happen as we assumed. In our visit, doctor, just asked one question, “How long have you been married?” and we said, “five years and now we wanted to plan our family”, without listening further, she just assumed we were suffering from infertility and right away gave us the next date for an ultrasound. Amidst the confusion, I chose for an ultrasound where she ruled out that I have PCOS and referred me the medications. With lots of confusions, I opted to have medicine and scheduled the next appointment, in my next visit, I somehow managed to tell her that currently my husband is out of the country so will this medicine help? And there she was, answering, if that is the case then there is no point of inducing ovulation for getting pregnant. I was just shattered and angry to myself, why didn’t she listen to me at first? And why just she simply judged me I had a fertility problem. The situation, the lifestyle, and readiness to be pregnant and many such cases do count. I was really pissed off. Even being a doctor, her diagnosis was so prejudiced and merely based on the same judgmental backdrop of our society.
After a year or so, I realized, I was having pain in my stomach with slight bleeding. I waited for a few days just to make sure it was late menstruation cramp, but the pain just didn’t go away and I went to visit the nearby gynecologist. There she did my pregnancy test and found out it was positive and ensured me that in some cases, people do suffer from cramp and slight bleeding, so I took it positively and kept on going with my daily work and home chores. After a week or so, I suffered severely with pain and the right way I rushed myself to the emergency. I was all alone facing the situation, as my husband was working out of the country and my parents, they have no idea what was going on. Many doctors came and repetitively worked to rule out what was wrong, whereas, I was constantly suffering until they gave me pain killer and later prescribed an ultrasound. After ultrasound doctor found that there was no sign of embryo implantation in my uterus and very confusingly, he said “since I have not reached 8 weeks pregnancy he could not see anything” and suggested to me to wait two weeks more. So I went with the advice and waited, constantly, suffering from the pain and pain killers, but one day the pain was so severe that I just decided to rush to the hospital. With severe pain, I traveled all alone to the hospital and got admitted to waiting for another ultrasound in the morning to rule out if it was an ectopic pregnancy. Ectopic pregnancy? What was it? I have never heard about such pregnancy and had no single clue about it. My heart was beating so fast as the time for diagnosis nearer, deep down inside, I was absorbed completely with trauma and fear, and confusions, after all, it was my first pregnancy, I waited for, but outside, to the world, I tried to be normal as far as possible. And suddenly, I was devastated to hear the news. It was an ectopic pregnancy, a rare medical case where embryo resides in the fallopian tube and not in the uterus and as a consequence, my right fallopian tube was damaged and I needed immediate surgery to remove it. The news totally devastated me and I just could not stop my tears and this time, I cried loud but all to find out how lonely I was. I wished so much for my husband to be there right at my side but he was not, and my family members around me were trying to console me not to let him know all about this or he will be disturbed. I was so amazed knowing this, why wouldn’t they not letting me talk to him, was it a mistake I did and am I the only one to face this suffering? They even took my phone leaving me without any communications! I was so not comfortable with this but I was not in the situation to argue with them or put my request. But on the other hand, I informed him all about my situation before rushing myself to the hospital and that was a great decision, I took and all thanks to my hubby he quickly boarded the flight to Nepal as I waited desperately for his arrival because I knew I will not be able to bear the pain of letting go of our first child, without him being my side . I was not that strong, or should I say, the suffering engulfed all my strength, sense and consciousness.
But I did not have any option, rather than accepting the fact and dealing with it positively, at least, I have hope to be pregnant again and this is not the end, despite there were some unanswered questions, why was not doctor able to rule out the diagnosis earlier in my first visit, maybe I could have saved my baby? Was ultrasound the only option? Wasn’t there any blood test or hormonal test involved in the diagnosis? From my side, I tried my best, visiting the hospital as early as possible, but due to medical backdrops, I could not save my baby and had to suffer for a lifetime. Till this date, I never heard of anything like ectopic pregnancy and even among my friends and relatives no one or very few have heard or known about this, while from that incident I kept on researching on it.
Losing your baby is the most devastating experience any woman would feel, no matter whether it’s your first, second or sixth. But in my case, I went through this experience twice, consecutively. Yes, after going through two years of physical and mental trauma along with those regular doctor visits, luckily, I found out I was pregnant the second time. But this time also, the doctor discovered there was no heartbeat and the fetus inside is not viable as it was the case of partial molar pregnancy. I was completely shocked, devastated and totally shattered. There was no way I could express myself. I was completely blank and dead inside. This is the second time my hope changed into despair, my happiness to sadness and at that very instant my confidence, trust, will power just slipped away. There were so many questions running inside me like why this happened to me?
But there was no answer. I became my own enemy now, living with full of doubts and losing confidence in everything, even in being a woman. There was no way I could share how I was feeling. I started perceiving doubts, hatred and strong sense of misogynistic feeling from all of my family members. I realized, how difficult it is to fight with your near ones. I tried to be less social as much as possible so that I could defend myself from the questions like when are you starting a family? I avoided using any social networking site in order to avoid the psychological depression that would add up. Literally this time, l left myself lonely, away from family, friends, my career and any social events. In a way, I was in the depression phase. Life gave me the choice to choose between my career and family and I chose my family, but there I was, losing my second child in a row. My hope was totally devastated and my confidence towards life was completely thrashed down. My desperation and frustrations continuously struggled with each other. Now I see no hope, I see no meaning for my life and I see no beauty in my life.
During all these traumatic situations the only person who gave hope to me and gave reason to believe was my hubby. I was a blessed woman to have such a loving husband who not only believed in me but also constantly gave me a reason to smile and appreciate the beauty of our togetherness. He made me complete in our incompleteness. He gave me confidence that our togetherness is what matters the most in life and as long as we are bonded with true love there is always hope and that Life is to live and not to complain. His support, love, and trust gave all the strength to me, to fight with my depressions and we both tried our best to live happily and enjoy life by thanking god. We created happiness for ourselves and enjoy our togetherness every second. During this time, I almost stopped visiting the doctor and just tried to trust my body, our destiny and myself. And one fine day, out of shock and surprise I found out I was pregnant, but this time I didn’t know how to react because my fear and my previous sufferings were so much heavy on me I could not express my happiness and throughout the pregnancy phase I was occupied more with fear and trauma of previous incidents. Every time I visited the doctor, I got frightened with fear, nervousness as my previous experiences continuously haunted me. People expected me to be happy and optimistic but every moment I was afraid, every second I was haunted and emotionally disturbed. The emotional pain was so much out of my control, I just could not let it go and with all the emotional trauma, the moment I waited with all my heart and soul, finally arrived and there I was with my little prince holding in my hands and wrapping him with all my love. I was just speechless!!!, when the nurse handed over the small baby wrapped in warm blankets, to me. I was completely out of this world. There I was holding my baby, for whom I waited for, for whom I struggled! Couldn’t believe my eyes, it was the moment that changed my life forever. The arrival of our miracle baby brought with him winds of happiness that swept away all our pains and stresses of the past!!!!!
Miscarriage is one of the medical phenomena, through which woman go through without her will or wishes but why it is a social offense or taboo to talk about the incidence? Among our friends or relatives, we normally don’t find women talking about their miscarriages even if we find hearing about the issue we find it through people talking as gossip or news. Probably it’s because of Misogynistic mentality that has been embedded, as our social norms. The woman who has already gone through lots of pain, do not want to suffer from more hatred and judgments towards her.So perhaps, it is because she wants to protect herself from more psychological pain of social taunts and hatred. Physical pain is something that will heal with time but the emotional trauma and psychological pain are there to live with you for years and years until you yourself gain that confidence to fight back and stand up. In my case, despite being the resident of well-educated family, my in-laws linked my first ectopic case to my past life fate/Karma, whereas, My parents were reluctant enough to let people know about it. There was a feeling of hesitant and continuous blame on me for the incident, which I did not create.
It’s a woman like us who have to raise our voice, to be comfortable talking about our issues and sharing our life’s situations. Losing your baby is not something any woman desires for, but to some, they have to suffer unwillingly. As a woman, we have to share our pains and let each other know, that they are not alone in their sufferings, and they are not to be blamed. We have to help ourselves, with our togetherness to uplift the woman from this psychological pain so that she regains her self-confidence and fight back with courage, and be more comfortable being part of the society. The biggest challenge is to appreciate yourself and regain your own self-confidence and continue living your life happily, even though the reminiscent of the pain will be there to live with you for years and years…….
Any woman, who has gone through the pain of Miscarriages, knows, how physically and emotionally devastating journey it is. It leaves you back with pain that is more than devastating and leaving you with emotional distress compounded with loneliness and misogynistic judgment of the people around you. More than this, in a country like Nepal, in many cases, women who go through miscarriages, are mostly associated with bad luck and society curse them and their body for being an infertile and bad omen. They have to suffer with their situation all-alone and constantly grieve alone, just for being women. In my case, I was blessed to be educated and aware of my cases. I had my husband who always stood by me and supported me more than myself. But, what about those women living in rural places, in the darkness of the education boom, living with myths and blind beliefs of the human-made story? Thinking of them, my heart cries and wrenches with more pain caused to them, who have to suffer all alone for the incident they did not do. Since I completed writing this, I struggled whether to share my personal life story, to the world around? Every time I decide to share, I moved backward thinking, how would people judge me if I chose to share my personal stories? Would I be called attention seeker, sympathy earner, betrayal, indiscreet, and all possible those words which would demean my honest motive. But after 3 years I am again regaining the confidence to share it, as I felt responsible to share my stories mostly to those women who are silently battling all by themselves, going through the painful journey of motherhood and struggling with the stereotypical conventional pre judgemental mindset of our society towards the woman. Hopefully, my story would help them relate themselves and gain hope and confidence, that they are not alone in their battle and support them coming out of the feeling of self-hatred!!!