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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Is a Woman An Island?

2 replies

AuntieMeC · 20/10/2019 19:35

I may be shamed out of here for this but I wanted a space to go. This week my daughter would have been 21 years old. Unfortunately, in 1998 I had something not so well known at the time called a missed miscarriage. The hardest part is that the father was my ex fiance and we'd broken up in November but as things go, we were "together" one night after the break up, after he'd barely started seeing someone new. I didn't know I was pregnant and went on a three month escape with some friends to the Mexican Caribbean to spend time with friends living there.

While in Mexico my ex and I spoke several times a week via pay phone. He was unhappy with the new girl and missed me. I kept getting sick, then sicker until I flew back home early. He was beyond excited I was returning early and said he wanted to spend time together. I got home and my mum took me to the doctor and I found out I'd been in the middle of a miscarriage and the problem was my body wasn't doing the right thing and going through the miscarriage normally. They made me wait. I couldn't reach my ex on the phone, stopped taking calls. I didn't understand. A month and a half later, oddly on Mother's Day 1998 he took a phone call from me to tell me once he told his new girlfriend I was coming home, she told him she was pregnant but still having periods. I lost my mind. I'd just spent a month going through miscarriage hell, my mom and grandma were my only support and he was crying, I was crying and I still loved him so I never said a word about my miscarriage, how could I ruin his upcoming other new baby?

12 years later, we bumped into each other on Facebook. We have a very delicate friendship because his wife, yep, that new girl friend, hates me, STILL. One day during endometriosis month a friend tagged me in a post to say how much she loved her fellow miscarriage/ endo-sisters. She called me out specifically because it was my ten year date since my miscarriage. My ex saw it and had his thoughts but wasn't sure. We FB emailed it in some discussion but he only apologized, he's a kind and gentle man but that's all I got. Imagine if my baby survived and he'd had two children two months apart? No thoughts from him?

My husband now is nice, a GP, well liked by most of his patients but never wanted kids. He doesn't understand why my loss and infertility are so painful even two decades later.

Do men just NOT understand the pain of this kind of loss? Am I to live on an island in my marriage? My husband, a doctor, has no idea the pain I live in? The Mother's Days (I am American living in the Uk so I have two a year o n the calendar), the remembrance of the miscarriage every May and the due date every October. Am I doomed to be left to be alone through these days?

Am I being far too precious about all of it?

Sorry for the loooooooooooooong post :(

OP posts:
Venger · 20/10/2019 19:53

Have you ever had any counselling to help you process through your feelings about the miscarriage? I had a missed miscarriage at 17wks and it's an awful experience, having someone impartial to talk to about it really helped me to work through my feelings as I was able to offload everything going on in my head onto someone who had no personal stake in my life and who I didn't need to worry about upsetting.

I think there are some things about being a woman that men can't understand in the way other women can purely because they'll never experience it. DH was devastated after each of our losses but 'only' emotionally whereas I had the emotional effects and the physical ones then when my period restarted a few weeks after (another physical effect) it reignited the worst of the emotional effects as it was the final confirmation that the pregnancy really was well and truly finished. I can describe it to DH and he can nod and say he can imagine how it is but he doesnt actually know just as I don't actually know what it's like to grow a beard or get an erection.

Hesafriendfromwork · 20/10/2019 20:08

He cant know what it's like. Because he will never experience it. Hasnt experienced it and he isnt you.

I am sure my experience of missed miscarriage is slightly different to yours.

I found counselling and speaking to other women more helpful. Because they were going to be the closest to what I experienced.

Just like I dont know what it was like for exh to experience it. It only being emotional and not physical for him.

I think sometimes we expect our partners to be able to understand everything. And they just simply cant.

Thata why no woman or man should be an island. We need, ideally, several people or groups of people for different reasons.

A friend of mine recently commit suicide by overdose. Dp couldnt quote understand. He looked after me, listened to me, held me, ran me baths. But I felt best round people who knew her as well as I did. We could laugh and cry and talk about her.

But when I went home I needed dp to hold me. Dp couldnt provide me with everything i needed.

I am sorry for your loss and sorry it's still so raw for you. Flowers

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