Dear Lana,

I am very sorry about what happened to you. It’s a horrible loss, and on top of that, your husband couldn’t deal with it and left. It happens sometimes that marriages fall apart after tragedies like that.

I haven’t been through anything similar, but perhaps a book by David Kessler “Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief” can help. He’s talking about going beyond the usual 5 stages of grief and finding meaning and giving the tragedy a silver lining, I suppose (I haven’t read the book but I suppose one way of finding meaning could be to do volunteering work to perhaps help women and families in a similar situation). I know it’s easier said than done, but there might be something that resonates with you in that approach.

Also, are you seeing a therapist specialized in grief work? Perhaps that would need to come first, and then finding meaning as the next phase of the healing journey.

Dear Lana:

You wrote that by posting, you were hoping “to gain some insight from others”. I will try my best.

In the past five years, you gave birth to two stillborn babies and to a third premature baby who lived for only a few days. A year ago, your husband left without any real discussion or an attempt to work on the relationship.

You feel “angry, heartbroken, traumatised and hopeless.. mostly due to my trouble accepting the unfairness of it”. You asked: “How can I find the grace and courage to accept what has happened without crying ‘why me!’?”

My suggested insight: there are natural rules that govern life, but fairness has nothing to do with these rules. In nature, when a mountain lion (a predator) is hungry, it will kill and eat a weak baby deer that is left unguarded, or an injured or old deer (prey). The natural rules are that (1) predators feed on prey, and (2) to minimize risk of injury and to minimize energy loss, predators choose the young, weak, injured, or old,  because these animals are not likely to successfully run away or fight, and therefore, the mountain lion does not have to run after them, or risk injury in a fight of any kind.

These two rules are not fair to the individual prey animals that get killed and eaten.

In human society, there are efforts to move away from these natural realities toward a cooperative, peaceful human society. Laws came about to make life fair for humans, and for the animals and plants we interact with. Examples: (1) It is punishable by law to physically assault another person because it is not fair for a person to be assaulted. (2) People who feel that it is not fair for animals to be eaten become vegetarians. (3) People who feel it is not fair for animals to lose their natural habitats to human construction became activists for the right of animals, (4) People who strongly feel that it is not fair for children to be mistreated, become activists for the rights of children, (5) People who strongly feel that it is not fair to discriminate against disabled people become activists for the rights of people with disabilities.

Fairness is not part of nature, it is not a natural idea. It’s a human idea, a human endeavor, something we humans came up with. Every day and every night, all over the world, many people are trying to make life fair for themselves and for other people (and animals, even plants), and many people,  unfortunately, are making life unfair for themselves and for others. It takes good people trying their best to make life fair that makes a cooperative, peaceful society possible.

Back to your personal story: (1) Giving birth to three babies who died at birth or a few days later is a very painful experience for a mother, and you are a mother who lost three babies.

(2) I assume you weren’t aware of any significant physical/ medical problem that caused your first stillbirth, and that following the first stillbirth, you were examined thoroughly by a medical doctor, and no significant physical problem was found to explain the stillbirth. Therefore, you got pregnant again. After the second stillbirth, you were examined yet again, and no significant physical problem was found..

– before I continue, are my assumptions correct?

anita

Dear Lana,

you’re welcome, I hope the book will provide some suggestions and hopefully, some relief too.

So if I understood well, the condition that caused your babies to be stillborn is called cervix incompetency or cervix insufficiency? During your 3rd pregnancy, they did a procedure to prevent the cervix from opening prematurely (was it cervical cerclage?), but it didn’t help, and you still went into labor prematurely.  Am I guessing this right?

How are you, Lana?

anita