‘I am lucky to have two strong healthy adult children, but I always wonder about the one I never got to meet.’
‘I have two children yet I still think of myself as a mother of more. For the brief time I carried them… they were still mine.’
Standing behind the camera I listened as, one by one, mums and dads recounted their stories of losing their babies. Sometimes it was one, sometimes it was many. Sometimes it was in the early stages of pregnancy, sometimes it was many months in.
There was Melanie, who lost her baby in 1994. More than 26 years on from her loss, she told me: ‘I can go months and months without remembering, and then there’s the ache when I do. Sometimes though, there’s a gut wrenching overwhelming grief that brings me to my knees.’
Then there is Den, whose miscarriage 32 years ago was late in the pregnancy: ‘Already a mum to three healthy boys, the loss shocked me to my core… I have never had a day go by when I don’t think about Jethro, in spite of having five kids and four grandkids now.’
And what about the dads? Benjamin and his wife have suffered three miscarriages: ‘As the husband, I had to remain strong for my wife and so was almost forgotten as someone that is feeling the loss of a child.’
Talking to the participants and hearing their stories allowed me to realise that I hadn’t ever really told my story.
I met my wife Marta in 2004. At the time, I was working in a photography studio in Eton and she worked in the pub across the road.
One evening I asked her out, never imagining that she would say yes as she was (and still is) completely out of my league. Three years later, Marta became pregnant – unplanned but very much wanted.
Just 12 weeks in, we were at home when Marta called me to the bathroom. She had miscarried.
The loss hit Marta particularly hard and she blamed herself, so I had to be strong for her. As her parents were in Poland, I suggested that she fly home to spend time with them and that whilst she was there, she should look into venues for us to get married.
I wanted to give her a distraction, to put a positive spin on what would be a very emotional trip. She did exactly that – she rang me one day to tell me that not only had she found a place she loved, but that she had booked it for our wedding.
Whilst she was away, I pushed my grief to one side. Friends and family who knew what had happened asked how Marta was, and I simply assumed that this loss was about her rather than us as a couple. I focused all my energies on her and her wellbeing.
We started to try again for a baby pretty much straight after the wedding and were blessed to get pregnant quickly. The pregnancy was an anxious time, made worse by the fact that Marta had been born with a hole in her heart, but our daughter Grace was born in 2010.
We moved to Somerset that same year and Marta became pregnant again, but just before the beginning of the second trimester, she rang me from the hospital to tell me that we’d lost the baby.
I was in a car park at the time and felt completely helpless.
A few days later we sat in the hospital waiting room, broken, alongside happy couples waiting for their scan. Because our daughter was so excited about the baby we decided to put what had happened to one side and try again immediately, and were lucky enough to get pregnant quickly.
The anxiety started again.
While our daughter Hannah was being delivered, her heart stopped. The following 20 minutes until her birth were the longest of my life, and as she was whisked away I remember thinking that we had lost her too.
When we finally heard her cry, the world just lifted. In fact just writing this I am sitting with tears in my eyes.
The losses we had suffered took their toll on us in different ways – the second hitting me a few months after Hannah was born. I broke down sobbing and couldn’t catch my breath.
I hadn’t been able to process our second miscarriage – we were so focused on trying again, we never took a moment to grieve.
That was the day when I decided I wanted to do a project that encouraged people to talk about their losses, and that it’s OK to not be OK. That was also the day we decided that we couldn’t handle another potential miscarriage, and so our family was now complete.
Through these images I wanted to create something to show that we don’t forget or get over the loss in a way that people think. What I hadn’t anticipated was how creating them and working with other parents who have suffered the same loss would impact me emotionally.
‘You Were Our Baby’ has allowed me to not only come to terms with what had happened to us, but to acknowledge that these children we lost were important. They mattered.
They have had a profound impact on who I am as a person and I will be forever grateful to them for that.
Do you have story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing james.besanvalle@metro.co.uk.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/10/16/grieving-miscarriage-13426002/
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