Say Their Name

 She lay in silence, feeling the rise and fall of her emotions as they mingled and then separated. Loneliness, anger, disbelief, sadness, more feelings than she could even put a name to, yet at the same time an intense emptiness. She had the scar on her abdomen, but she didn't get the prize. Yesterday, she was full of love, full of excitement and anticipation, but today - today there was nothing. Yesterday she felt kicks and wriggles and hiccups. Today she felt nothing.

The stages of grief. Yes, she'd heard all about those. All her feelings were normal, that social worker had said. Right now she felt anger. Anger at the cruelty of having to listen to other women's babies cry, hearing their happy conversations when friends and family came to visit. Other women, sharing their stories and comparing how big their babies were and how many hours it took to give birth. The midwives were kind, finding her a single room away from most of the activity of the ward, but she could still hear it. All the joy and excitement that one would expect in a place where precious new life was brought into the world.

She wanted to join in. The little card was the same, it had all the details of her little girl's birth. The time, the weight, her date of birth. Her name. She had one. They had picked it out weeks earlier, after many cheerful arguments over a baby name app. But she couldn't bear to even look at the card. Her pain was too great.

The memories. They were always there. She didn't ask for them to come, but she couldn't escape them. She relived the events over and over in her mind, feeling the lingering agony that prevented her forgetting, even for a moment, the gut-wrenching, nauseating reality. The gnawing worry as they arrived and explained that the baby wasn't moving. Anxiety as they were rushed into a room. A flash of hope as they heard a heartbeat, that reassuring galloping sound on the monitor. The frowns of the doctor as she looked at the printout. The desperate fear as they were whisked to the operating theatre, where there were so many people, rushing around, all in the name of getting the baby out fast. The claustrophobia of the mask descending over her face - there was no time for that spinal she had been told about. Then the horror as she woke to her husband's tear-streaked face, when he had to give her the terrible news, and their world came crashing down.

She waited desperately for sleep to descend, as her mind flashed through it all again and again and again. She couldn't even cry. The first time you hold your baby is not meant to be the last. The ache, oh the constant ache, the heaviness nagged her every moment as she willed sleep to come. It was raw, it was primal. And it was hers.