After The Miscarriage by Therese

I look back at a time while in hospital recovering from my miscarriage and after they had operated on me and wonder why? The powers that be thought it a good idea to show me the neo natal ward!

I remember walking around the to the ward wondering why they had sent me here and what I was supposed to feel when I got there? I still don’t know the answer many years on. I do remember feeling more overwhelmed than I already did, sadder than I already did and for the rest confused. Here were these very much alive babies. Yes, some were very ill but many were not just premature but otherwise healthy. As I write this I now feeling a new emotion – anger! How could the staff have been so cruel in this way? Up to this stage I had felt the nurses were wonderful as was the doctor but now they were making me face what? My loss? I already was! I was devastated. I was in shock even though I had known for a while that I was to lose this precious being inside of me but I had always had hope. That hope was now gone and now these supposedly caring people wanted me to see babies that were alive, albeit some in distress.

Now I think about it, I feel this was a very cruel thing to do to a newly bereaved Mum. Yes, I was a Mum to two children but still a Mum to these lovely baby I had miscarried. Would the medical profession work this way now – I hope not and there are more supports for those who want and need it. There was no such support then – I had to “grin and bear it”.

I had nowhere to turn. I couldn’t talk to my husband except to share that the babies in the neonatal ward were indeed precious. But my baby had been precious too. Why didn’t anyone recognise this? Thank God for my one true friend at the time who knew what I was going through for she had been through this twice but she had least got to see her babies while I had not. If I hadn’t experienced it, I wouldn’t have believed it had happened to me. The staff in their wisdom told me I couldn’t see my baby by the time I was coherent enough to ask for it was too late; anyway your baby didn’t have a heart I was told. How could I have carried a baby for 16 weeks without a heart – I felt its heart; it had been beating. Were they lying to me? I will never know, another thing I had to live with while battling this raw thing called grief. Please God let no other mother have to go through this, no other father either. It is too devastating and still bring tears to my eyes when I hear another person has lost a baby. I have gone through it and so have some family members gone through still birth and miscarriage.

To those who read this and are looking for support and love, please talk as often as you want to about your loved lost baby, talk as often as you need to and to whom you need to. Find someone who will listen as SANDS will and peace and blessings to you all.

Therese Murphy 

If you require support after reading this blog please contact 

Sands on 13 000 72637

About Therese 

Therese has worked in the field of counselling and community development for over 20 years. She has worked predominantly in the health and welfare field. She has worked in the primary school sector counselling children through a range of loss and grief and traumatic experiences.

Therese has also delivered a number of conference papers on the theme of children’s loss and grief and articles on stress management too. She also worked as a Sessional teacher in the TAFE system and the Private Sector in the Community Services area, including Mental Health Welfare for over 20 years. She is also an experienced Supervisor.

Therese has as a small business conducting Reiki, Inner Child Therapy, Meditation and similar therapies. She is also works as a Group Facilitator and teaches stress management and relaxation techniques within the local community as well as running workshops in the areas of trauma and loss and grief and related areas.

Therese is a published poet and has three children and four delightful grandsons. She enjoys nothing more than a good cup of coffee and the occasional glass of wine or bubbly. She is passionate about climate change and the environment, wanting a clean world for her grandchildren to grow up in and one where any type of violence is not tolerated.