Today I needed to feed Amaya, I was at a small shopping centre that I don’t think has a parent room. Anyway, it only has one lot of toilets and a bench was closer than the toilets, so I sat myself down on the bench, made Amaya’s bottle and we commenced her feed. As I fed Amaya, I watched the people coming and going. Majority of women that passed us smiled when they saw Amaya. It got me thinking about what they thought of when they saw a baby. Was it a genuinely happy smile that made them think of their own children, was it a nervous smile covering a tonne of bad memories because they are traumatised from having a baby and many sleepless nights (for years after I was a baby my Mum would freeze when she heard a baby cry, I was THAT bad), was it a smile covering the pain of the many failed IVF attempts or the fact that they simply cannot have children…or was it a smile, covering the sharp pain of a pregnancy loss.

One in four pregnancies, in Australia, result in miscarriage (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2012). The joy of finding out that there is life growing inside of you can be shattered by the terrible news that your little one, didn’t make it. Miscarriage can happen at any stage of pregnancy, and as my Doctor told me – “There is nothing you can do to cause a miscarriage, besides sticking a coat hanger up there. If it is going to happen, it is going to happen, it is not your fault”.

Two beautiful friends of mine, lost their precious baby to a miscarriage this week. When I learnt of the news, I burst into to tears. Sobbed actually. How is this fair? Why does this happen? I did struggle to find the words to comfort my friend, instead I just called her and cried. I couldn’t help it. My heart was broken. I was crying to let her know that I am here for her, that I am feeling the tiniest glimpse of her pain (I can only imagine how SHE feels) right beside her and that I will see her through this. Being one of the truly most magnificent people I know, she still told me that she loved seeing the photos of Amaya and that her husband always shoves his phone in her face to show her any new photos that I have put up on Instagram of Amaya. Now, I don’t know how I would be in this situation, but I imagine I wouldn’t be strong enough to discuss how much I love seeing photos of a baby when I am feeling such pain. Seriously, this woman is one of the strongest people I know. So is her husband. When I got off the phone to her, I cried some more. Miscarriage is a pretty fucking shitty thing. There will be another little babe, I know it. And that baby will be something pretty special. With these two, brilliant, beautiful souls as his or her parents, this babe is going to do big things.

I truly believe that God saves the soul of that little, precious baby and the soul lives on in your next child, the soul is just waiting for a stronger body. But holding on to the thought of your next child, does not make the pain of losing this baby go away. As soon as you conceive a baby, you are a mother or a father. You love and worry about a little person that you are yet to meet and the thought of never getting to meet them, well, the thought used to make me just tear up. As soon as I found out that I was pregnant with Amaya, I imagined what the baby would look like, what their little personality would be like and how our journey would be. The dream of one day being a mother, seems so unattainable for some and can cause great pain. Having a miscarriage can make women feel like they have failed, like there is something wrong with them.

We need to talk about miscarriage more, bring awareness to this painful experience, that happens oh too often. We, as women, need to come together and support, embrace and love one another to help us power on through the pain, to help us muster up the strength to push on and try again, while always remembering our babies that gained their angel wings before we met them.

Fly high little one.