What does a due date mean?
Another Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day.
Six babies are stillborn each day in Australia. Indigenous women are 50% more likely to have a stillborn baby than non-Indigenous women.
I think about this statistic all the time. I’m sharing it with you today because October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness month. It aims to raise awareness of pregnancy loss and infant death, which includes miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS, and the death of a newborn. The need to raise awareness of something so common (one in four women, one in four) speaks to the cultural taboo around this reality.
Pregnancy and infant loss is sadly a common experience that has historically been complicated by broadly applied social and cultural taboos to stay silent, a condition that the World Health Organization advocates reversing in favour of open expression. (Wikipedia)
Open expression is how I’ve done it since my daughters died three years ago. I talk and write about what I’ve lost, I say their names, I tell people Gia has angel sisters when they ask if I have ‘just the one kid’. Not out of obligation or force but because it is the only way I know how to survive hell. Talking about it is what has kept me alive.
But boy, it’s disgusting work. Every time I open my mouth I feel like I am breaking the law. To speak casually about something that was once (recently) unspeakable, a taboo for most of history, feels like risking death. Dealing with the weight of cultural silence and stigma is almost as wretched as living with the loss itself. It’s a difficult thing for me to stomach. I hate it.
Another thing I am wrestling with as I create art about my lived experience is this: the book-writing process is not going to last forever — it is a creative project with a beginning and an end. But the requirement of my body, my mind, and my heart to live with this grief will last my lifetime. My to relationship to my ghost children will continue after the book is done. It’s a difficult thing to to discern. What belongs to me and what belongs to the book? What parts of my story do I share and what bits are just for me? How will I feel close to Caroline and Frida when the book is over?
Today, October 15, is a significant day for many bereaved parents around the world. For the past 22 years, this date has been marked to celebrate what is called ‘The Wave of Light’: at 7pm local time, parents and loved ones of babies who have died are invited to light candles to honour their little angels.
The strange, sad, fucked-up coincidence for me is that October 15 was also the due date for my twins, Caroline and Frida, who were stillborn in August 2021. It is a date I couldn’t forget if I tried.
A due date is significant for any expecting parent. It is a map of the future. It provides some certainty amongst the unknown, some structure on a rocky path.
Our 40-week due date was actually the 31st October, which would have made the girls Scorpios. But carrying high-risk identical twins we decided I would be induced a couple of weeks early, hence the 15 Oct due date on my phone calendar.
Circling that date bred excitement (they’ll be Libras!) and anticipation (we’ll need summer baby clothes). Due dates are about waiting, longing, speculating, preparing. A due date promises the future.
The due date made it all real. It still does.
Notes:
You are welcome to light a candle or two tonight, to honour all the babes gone too soon.
If you know someone who would benefit from reading my words, please forward them this piece.
Thank you for not looking away.
🪨