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S2: E4: Purpose From Pain: Finding Sanctuary After Recurrent Loss
182 Plays1 day ago
In this candid episode, the host welcomes Jackie Maloney to share her journey through recurrent pregnancy loss and her fierce advocacy for the grief community in Western Australia.
Jackie recounts the devastation of her first loss which led to intense, unmanaged anger and isolation, where her coping mechanism was to return to work immediately and silence any conversation about her grief. Two years later, a second loss was terrifying. Jackie explains that her losses disrupted her personal narrative and identity, leaving her currently childless not by choice and struggling daily with triggering questions like, "How many children do you have?"
The second loss was a turning point, which prompted her to "do things differently." She shared openly and discovered a widespread hidden community of women who thanked her for finding the words they couldn't. This experience taught her to articulate her needs by asking friends to switch from, "How are you?" to "What can I do?" and to simply acknowledge the difficult due dates.
Jackie has channelled her pain into purpose by becoming the Chair of the King Edward Memorial Hospital Rose Garden committee in Western Australia. This beautiful, hidden sanctuary holds the ashes of an estimated 45,000 lost babies. Jackie highlights the garden's power as a safe, physical space for grieving mothers to connect and reflect, creating the vital ritual so often missed after early loss.
The episode concludes with a powerful call to action: The "gap" after leaving the hospital—where women are given no follow-up and no information for emotional support—must be filled. Jackie argues that the alarmingly different levels of care are unacceptable and only exacerbate the disenfranchised grief felt by those searching for validation.
EARLY PREGNANCY LOSS SUPPORT
If you or someone you know has experienced miscarriage or early pregnancy loss, please know you are not alone.
- For crisis support, please call Lifeline - 13 11 14.
- Access all our support
- Connect through Live Chat with Peer Support
- Join Online Communities
- Call out Pregnancy Loss helpline delivered by PANDA
- Join the Circle of support
- Follow @pinkelephantssupport on Instagram.
STACEY JUNE LEWIS
You can follow our host Stacey on her personal Instagram account where she shares some of her lived experience.
Pink Elephants thanks the Australian Government for their support in funding this podcast series under the Miscarriage Support grant.
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Transcript
Introduction to Miscarriage Rebellion Podcast
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the miscarriage rebellion. I am Stacey June Lewis, lead of the Pink Elephant Support Network group counseling program, Grief and Grace, and along with Pink Elephant's co-founder and CEO, Sam Payne, through this podcast, we will share the stories of many Australians who have lost their babies to early pregnancy loss.
00:00:21
Speaker
With evidence and empathy, we unpack the shame, blame and stigma and lack of support that they may face. This is a loss that has been silenced for far too long and we deserve better. We are here to normalise the conversation and to make lasting change.
Jacqui's Personal Journey with Pregnancy Loss
00:00:36
Speaker
In this Candid episode, we welcome Jacqui Maloney, who shares her journey through recurrent pregnancy loss and her dedicated advocacy in Western Australia. Jackie recounts the devastation of her first loss, which led her to silence her grief by immediately returning to work.
00:00:52
Speaker
She explains how her losses disrupted her personal identity, leaving her currently childless, not by choice. Jackie details the turning point that pushed her to share openly and advocate for change as the chair of King Edward Memorial Hospital Rose Garden Committee.
00:01:07
Speaker
This powerful episode explores the importance of safe grieving rituals and the urgent need to close the unacceptable care gap after women leave the hospital. To today's listeners, we have the pleasure of meeting Jackie Maloney, who I have known through Pink Elephant's work for a number of years.
00:01:25
Speaker
Jackie has her own lived experience, which I'll allow her to share with you today. um But Jackie has taken that experience and is also driving advocacy and support change, particularly within the WA community.
00:01:38
Speaker
um And I'd love Jackie to share more of that with us today. But without further ado, I'll bring Jackie on. And if Jackie, if you could start by just introducing yourself to our listeners and perhaps telling them where you come to this experience of pregnancy loss from.
00:01:50
Speaker
Sure, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me first and foremost. And okay, a little bit about me My whole 20s, being a mother was just so far removed from my reality. It was not in my interest whatsoever, but the joy of milestone birthdays elicits a certain kind of response from women about where they're at in their life.
00:02:13
Speaker
And for me, that was my 30th birthday. And from then, it was almost as if everything was garnered towards becoming a mother. And when I got pregnant the first time, I just thought,
00:02:27
Speaker
it's a sign it was meant to happen. I'd made the decision and now everything was aligning to make it so. And then to have experienced a loss quite soon after hearing that news and and going through the doctor and all of that kind of stuff, it was just, it was weird that the time was so short, but the planning that I'd made for the future was insurmountable.
00:02:51
Speaker
And I feel for women, Others who haven't experienced what we've been through don't get that element of it. They understand that you were pregnant and then you weren't, and it could be a very in quick succession that you hear that news, but I'd already planned 18th birthdays.
00:03:09
Speaker
You know, I had gone, I'd already started thinking about, you know, how did I want to be a mother? How did I want to raise a child? You know, we were in Perth at the time, which is where I'm from. So I had grandparent support. So it all just felt like it was supposed to happen. And the the future had been mapped out.
00:03:25
Speaker
So it is the hope of that future and the excitement of that future that also is lost when you lose a baby in you know, during pregnancy. So there are so many layers to it that you only really understand once you've been through what we've been through.
00:03:44
Speaker
And it was just such a battle to get back on track. My, hormones did not regulate properly. i was in and out of getting to ah to getting acupuncture at the time with someone and she was just brilliant.
00:03:56
Speaker
But it was just like every month we kept trying and it just, I was a couple of days late for my period. You'd get all excited. You'd take a test. It would come back negative. And then like literally that afternoon or the next day, e would get your period.
00:04:09
Speaker
And my mental health suffered big time. And it was just something I couldn't talk to anybody about. There was anger. There was frustration. i blamed everybody else. I was, yeah I think I went back to work two days after I got out of hospital.
00:04:28
Speaker
It was just a coping mechanism that I did not understand how to regulate, but I did get there
Societal Pressures and Identity Struggles
00:04:35
Speaker
eventually. And then two years later in the same month, I fell pregnant again for the second time.
00:04:41
Speaker
And I was much further along this pregnancy. And so I thought, okay, great. My rainbow baby, my angel, my everything is coming. I can't believe this. This is so exciting. Still always that unnerving fear that something bad was going to happen. And I think as women who have experienced loss before,
00:04:59
Speaker
it is inevitable that you're going to feel, but I don't want to get too excited yet. I need to wait. I need to wait to that 12 weeks, which I just hope that we can get rid of sooner rather than later, because I think it's just, it's not helpful to have this idea that we announce at 12 weeks. I think there's so much happens in those first 12 weeks that we need our army around us to help support us in those moments.
00:05:23
Speaker
But then I remember just having my ultrasound and the previous scan had a heartbeat and this one, I just could not see anything moving on the screen. And I just, I knew it.
00:05:35
Speaker
And I ah could not believe that this was happening again. And it's just been one of those, being part of a club that no one wants to be a part of is one of the hardest things I've ever experienced in my life.
00:05:50
Speaker
But I think we'll get to it very, very soon. What I've committed to, because of my experiences, i will, I'll never regret having been through what I've been through because of what I'm creating on the other side of it, so. Thank you for sharing so openly.
00:06:08
Speaker
Stacey's got a question I can tell. I do because I think we are going to jump and really focus on the work that you have so amazingly done from your experience and I'm so sorry for your losses.
00:06:20
Speaker
um But before we do that, I do want to hone in a little bit ah about some of the language that you used when you were explaining your story and and if you can give us, I suppose, some um context and colour about what that experience was like for you I think as ah as an actor as well, this is probably something that comes out quite innately where we begin to tell story and our narrative begins to really start to influence elements of our grief and can sometimes even put on further onset to the extreme or the extremities of the grief.
00:06:56
Speaker
When you say things like it's meant to be or, you know, particularly when you start to create a story about, okay, this is my rainbow baby, this one's coming, and we then start to now create further stories even in our loss, which is is continued shock and surprise,
00:07:12
Speaker
How did you navigate that grief? You know, obviously we've got the grief of um your experience and the baby, but then I feel like there's also a grief that a lot of people experience around this breakup of story and this belief in what you understand your story to be.
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I laugh at the fact one side of my family are Irish Australian and the other side of Greek. So we laugh at the fact that we were born breeders and where my loss has disrupted my personal story is this idea of I'm, I should be able to, i meant to, I should be giving my mom grandchildren. Cause I, when I was first pregnant, im I'm the eldest of three kids. So I was in line to do that first for her.
00:07:57
Speaker
And Yeah, I think everyone around me was having kids. So there was this pressure around me that things were happening so easily for so many other people, but I was struggling big time to do the thing I'm supposed to do as a woman.
00:08:13
Speaker
And so that was also really, really frustrating as well. And then i think for me personally, i I still am childless and not by choice.
00:08:25
Speaker
And so now it is wearing this identity and struggling with how society might slip up every once in a while. And I'll be playing with someone's children that I've never met before. And they're just like, so how many do you have? It's not even like how many kids, like, do you have children? It's actually how many do you have?
00:08:44
Speaker
And I have to sort of stop them and say, oh, I don't, but I just love kids. And so these identity shifts almost happen daily. It's like, do I want risk going again?
00:08:55
Speaker
And I've had these discussions with my partner at the moment. And I think I have maybe one more in me. And if it just doesn't work out, then I'm tapping out. And that's been a really hard decision to make because I, I, and even hearing through pink elephants and the documentaries that have come out where women are willing to go to have a child is just the pain and the loss and everything that they've been through far outweighs what I've been through. So the determination is there, but for me personally, i have one more and if it doesn't happen, I'm calling it.
00:09:29
Speaker
And so, But that choice has been weighed on heavily with people's expectations or what they want for me. They want me to be a mother probably more than I want to be at the moment because they do see that warmth and that maternal instinct that I just have quite naturally. So the identity shifts are real and they happen more frequently than I would i had hoped, but it's all part and parcel of this journey that we're all on.
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, they definitely will relate heavily in terms of the way that they feel about themselves so that you don't know what you're going to get each day, right? You're putting yourself out into the
Coping Strategies and Support Systems
00:10:05
Speaker
world. You don't know who you're going to meet, what they're going to say to you and how you're potentially going to be triggered.
00:10:10
Speaker
One of the things that I say as well with our community is, yes, you're going to know how to handle that. You've to have some kind of. sayings up your sleeve that can help you if someone does ask those questions, but they can change as well, depending on how your heart's feeling in that day. Because some days you feel brave enough to lean in and say, actually, I'm really struggling right now And that's not an appropriate question. And other days you might just say, no, I don't have kids yet.
00:10:31
Speaker
Like it's completely okay. But one of the, you mentioned courage there and you mentioned what women are willing to do. And again, that's something that I've noticed over the nearly decade of being in this space now. It's just how brave women and their partners are when they're willing to put their heart on the line to roll that dice again, not knowing the outcome of whether this, they'll either fall pregnant, whether then they'll fall pregnant and be able to keep that baby, whether they'll meet that baby and hold that baby in their arms.
00:10:57
Speaker
And to live with that every day is incredibly, incredibly difficult. I want acknowledge that you kind of made a choice in where you're at. And I think it's beautiful that you can acknowledge and say that, but for everyone that might change, they might not know where they're at yet, but you're definitely putting words around something that is an experience that many, many will relate to.
00:11:16
Speaker
want to shift a little bit now from your own experience. And I want to look at what you're doing in this space. I want to kind of if you can move over to talking to what you're doing with the King Egwood Memorial Hospital and the kind of Memorial Garden and talk to that and bring some hope and some light, that would be lovely. like Absolutely.
00:11:34
Speaker
I dealt with my losses very, very differently. Like I said, my first one, I was angry. i didn't talk to anybody. There was an email that I sent to team at work, just saying, letting you know that this is what's happened. And I would prefer if we don't speak about it, please.
00:11:53
Speaker
And what I did was actually create the most uncomfortable environment for everyone involved because everyone was walking on eggshells around me at work. So I had, it was, it was worse than if I had just spoken about it or acknowledged what had happened. It was willing to have conversations if they came up, but it also prevented anyone from coming to me, just going, are you okay?
00:12:16
Speaker
Like what, how can we be supporting you through this? And so I just did it in all the wrong ways. So when I was going through my second and thinking to myself, I can't believe that this is happening again, it was an opportunity for me to do things differently.
00:12:33
Speaker
And i have just shared a podcast actually recently when I sat down with someone and this whole idea of asking for help. I think as women in general, we don't do it well. And I think as women who have been through loss, we really don't do it well.
00:12:46
Speaker
And I committed to doing things differently for my second one. And so I told everybody, I started sharing things on social media, not crazy amounts, just enough.
00:12:59
Speaker
And to hear from other women saying to me, oh, I've been through that as well. Thank you for being so brave and sharing. I can't do what you do. or i don't have the words yet to say, to share what it is that I've been going through.
00:13:12
Speaker
And then you sort of start to feel, oh my goodness, I can't believe how many people in my world have been through this experience. And I have no idea. So I haven't been able to show up and help them either. And this is what happens when we do not talk about what we're going through.
00:13:27
Speaker
And we also can't find the words to articulate our needs. so now in terms of dialogue, my friends don't ask, how are you?
00:13:39
Speaker
They say, what can I do? So how are you forces me to go? I'm feeling like this, or I'm crying, or I'm doing this or whatever. If they ask, what can I do? Or I'm just going to leave some food on the front doorstep for You you don't have to answer it, but just know that it's there.
00:13:54
Speaker
My close friends have my due dates saved in their phones in their calendars. Because both of my due dates are in December and one of my due dates is but is boxing day. So really, really hard day for me, very much family orientated and love Christmas, but boxing day is an absolute shocker of a day for me. So My closest circle of friends have that date saved in their diaries. And I will get a text that morning saying, I know that this day is going to be hard for you. I'm thinking of you and I'm here if you need me.
00:14:21
Speaker
Not how are you? Let's go do something today. They leave the ball in my court to decide what it is that I need. but they know that they've done what I've asked of them and enough for me to go, I'm supported. i feel seen. I feel heard.
00:14:36
Speaker
i can get through this because I've got my army around me now who know exactly what it is they need to do to support me best. So chalk and cheese between one and the other.
00:14:47
Speaker
And unfortunately, one of my closest friends went through a loss last year and I had helped her through that. And she sent me a message one day and she said, I can't believe that you've done this twice and I can't believe how badly I supported you through eat both of them.
00:15:05
Speaker
She said, I would never have gotten through this if you hadn't been through this and been with me every single day doing everything that you asked of me and I just didn't, I didn't get it So we're so much closer now because of that experience. But it was it was almost heartbreaking to think how many other women are in the same situation that I have been in where they haven't had the support from those closest to them.
Role and Impact of the Rose Garden Committee
00:15:30
Speaker
But maybe they haven't been able to articulate how they need that support the most because unfortunately we can't read each other's minds and no woman would understand what we've been through unless they've done it themselves so that's been such a beautiful gift i guess if you can call it that from this my whole ends experience but through telling people i kind of got involved into sam you just mentioned the king edward memorial hospital in wa behind that hospital is a beautiful rose garden And it was established in 1989 from the then chaplain, the beautiful Robert Anderson. And he knew he needed to do better by the families of Western Australia and what happened to the ashes of the babies that we lost during pregnancy.
00:16:14
Speaker
And so we estimate that this garden now holds around 45,000 ashes of babies from families of Western Australia.
00:16:25
Speaker
I have been part of the committee now for three years. I took over as the chair of the committee last year and the goals that we have to make sure this garden remains in perpetuity to, to honor the legacy of our loved ones that we've lost.
00:16:41
Speaker
And it continues for generations to come has become the purpose from my pain. And so it's just, it gets me out of bed every day. I think I've probably got about three meetings this afternoon, all to do with the Rose garden and,
00:16:53
Speaker
what we're hoping to achieve in the next two or three years, but eight it has helped me significantly with processing my grief. I will never get over my grief, but I will learn how to deal with it differently or better as I figure out the tools and the things that I need to do to to get to a really beautiful place where I'm not being triggered every five seconds or a bumbling mess.
00:17:19
Speaker
So yeah, it's the biggest gift I could have received. Jackie, are you um in contact with any of the other families and women that have been able to benefit from this rose garden? What what kind of stories and experiences are you hearing from them creating ritual in different ways for themselves?
00:17:42
Speaker
Yeah. The garden is so, is it's such a tricky thing, Stacey, because unfortunately not a lot of people know that this garden exists.
00:17:53
Speaker
kind of been this hidden little thing. It's been there in plain sight for you know decades now, but unfortunately it just hasn't been given the love and attention that it deserves. And so coming on as in the committee and as the chair, the first thing I did was start a Facebook page.
00:18:11
Speaker
And because of confidentiality, I cannot go through the hospital to get the names and the contact details of those that you know have been affected by lost But I thought, okay, great. If I can make something in public platform, hopefully they will find me.
00:18:27
Speaker
And that way I can communicate with them as best I can. So each year in the garden, we have at least one service for pregnancy and infant loss ah day in October 15th.
00:18:38
Speaker
And then the hospital will run a monthly service for those that have lost in the calendar month prior. But my goal is to have more events, more opportunities for families to get together. I think one of the most beautiful stories is we did something for Bereaved Mother's Day in May of this year and watching two women come together who have never met each other but are now linked to each other for life from different experiences.
00:19:06
Speaker
sit in the garden and talk to each other about their lived experience. I just, I burst into tears. I sort of have to run around the corner and and hide it because that was not my moment. But that's when the difficulties just become bearable because of what we're making possible for other women.
00:19:25
Speaker
And it's just making sure that we are doing everything in our power because unfortunately we can't change that this is going to continue to happen, unfortunately. yeah,
00:19:36
Speaker
knowing that to be true what can i do to just make sure that i'm delivering in a way that supports these women as much or as little as they need it it's such a gift thank you yeah it is an incredible incredible gift and Yeah, I do. I see this a lot. There are a lot of gardens across Australia that have a similar purpose. I've got one local to me in eastern suburbs of Sydney.
00:20:00
Speaker
know there's another one in Melbourne and that Melissa King from MISS does a lot of work around. And there's a bit of an issue because, like you said, people don't know they exist. So I know that with my first loss, my local hospital did not tell me that the remains of my baby would be cremated and put in this garden.
00:20:18
Speaker
It was my second loss. I was doing the start of the work of Pink Elephants and I found out and it made a difference because it's almost like I know where my baby is. Right. And it's somewhere. And then when I had my third loss, obviously, i was much further along with the Pink Elephants journey. And I've been invited to already speak at these events that they have there as well. And the difference it made for me, I had a place to go to when everything was just too much and i felt like i was the only one grieving the loss of my baby and i couldn't have the words to talk about it with some other people but that was my quiet space that i could go to and i could quietly reflect on how i was feeling that day why i was feeling this what had been brought up for me
00:20:59
Speaker
And it felt right because I felt a strong connection to my baby that I'd lost that I knew that she was there. um So I guess if we kind of take that theme a little bit more, like and the whole marking the loss, it's been shrouded in silence with early pregnancy loss for far too long. We see that with those that have later term losses, stillbirths, they're given the option of burials and services for our community. You're not even told what they do with the remains of your baby so many times.
00:21:25
Speaker
What do you think marking a loss does for our community? I think you've sort of hit the nail on the head. That space is the greatest gift that any mother could be given because we have a beautiful family. They had their loss in Perth, but they now live in Carreth.
00:21:46
Speaker
Every time they come down to Perth, the garden is one of the first stops that they come in at. Her mum will come and visit the garden and drop off things at the hospital because she makes these beautiful little, um,
00:21:58
Speaker
ah beaded angels and she gives them out. She's working with Red Nose as well, but she makes these beaded angels and we hand them out at Pregnancy and Footloss Day as just little gifts to families and whoever who wants to take one and just have that semblance of something that has come from the hands of another mother and she just donates all of them. And it's just beautiful, but she doesn't have space or place where she's at, where she lives now.
00:22:25
Speaker
Like i' i I live in the central, or sorry, I live on the Sunshine Coast now. And every time I go to Perth, the garden is almost the first stop for me. And so it is so important to have that because when everything else feels like it's just chaos and you don't have, you know, you can't make sense of anything to go and sit in a garden and it be taken care of and just have that beautiful sense of,
00:22:51
Speaker
recognition I think that's what we're all searching for sometimes. And when we don't have that, a garden that has been created specifically for us just makes me go, they're here, they're safe.
00:23:04
Speaker
And I know I can always come here and talk to them and spend time and I can cry and that'd be safe for me to do as well. So it becomes this little cocoon where we get to grieve and be.
00:23:15
Speaker
And then it's almost just like that little that little umph that we need and we can manage the rest of our day-to-day thereafter. It's important to add as well, it's so powerful what you're doing. And I think on top of what you're saying as well, therapeutically, we know ritual is um is created to establish healing, right? that's That's proven.
00:23:37
Speaker
But what happens that I've found anecdotally in our support groups and our a bereavement support groups and in my private practice is that at the time, even if you are a ritualistic person, you're a person that understands ceremony or you're a person that really doesn't associate with that type of um experience or event,
00:23:57
Speaker
You either have absolutely no energy to really focus on creating something for yourself because you are in the depths of your grief or you have really never touched on any form of ritualistic type of experience before.
00:24:12
Speaker
So I think it is so underestimated the power of someone creating that space for the woman and her family going through this Because when I say say it's a gift, it literally is something that can be given because there's so much that you're kind of self-regulating and trying to overcome internally on your own not only does it take you to a physical place, but it also allows something to be given to you when you've had something taken away.
00:24:43
Speaker
And so I think it's really important that if you are a person listening to this and you think about, well, I'm not sure what that person needs in my life or I wouldn't know where to start, just the sheer nature of having something that the woman doesn't actually have to create herself is is it is just so powerful.
00:25:00
Speaker
It really, really, truly is and um it's such a such a, you know, lovely thing to hear that so many people have benefited from it yeah the garden is something that
00:25:16
Speaker
it just creates a sense of calm I can walk in off the street and it's you know it's in a beautiful area of Perth don't get me wrong but I walk in and there's just a sense of mum everything's going to be okay and I didn't place the ashes myself when I had the opportunity to do so after my second loss. It was, I, my head loss happened during COVID.
00:25:39
Speaker
I was sat in the hospital waiting for everything to happen and pastoral care came up and God bless him. I still know and see Tom quite a bit. Um, but it, all information went in in one ear and out the other. I was not ready to receive this. It was just such a heightened environment. My emotions were all over the place And I didn't have my partner there with me because he just wasn't allowed to be in the hospital because of COVID restrictions.
00:26:03
Speaker
And then I just wasn't given the opportunity to be followed up by anyone in the hospital once I left either. And I think that's probably one of the biggest things if I could go and take the garden and do more is change the way things happen when the women leave the hospital.
00:26:22
Speaker
Because that gap is the That is the worst place I've ever been in my entire life, leaving the hospital and not knowing what to do next. And then sitting at my laptop in front of Google going, what the hell do I need to search for?
00:26:39
Speaker
And there is this moment, I you know i didn't know the garden exists. i I found it through the website and had to call somebody. And then I finally got down there and it was stinking hot day in Perth. And if anyone's been in Perth for summer, you'll know what I'm talking about. But I just felt like the garden needed some extra love So I was like, how can I give you some money? That's what I can that's what i can do.
00:26:59
Speaker
And that's kind of how I found my way. But i just there's just so much more that needs to be done. Like this garden is just ah such a small piece of what I'm hoping to create and build on in WA especially.
Inconsistencies in Post-Loss Care
00:27:13
Speaker
absolutely, absolutely acknowledge all the work that's going into this. But I agree so much with what you're saying there that, We often hear that when you leave hospital with a baby in your arms, you are given access to a mother's group. You have a maternal health care nurse checking on you. You have a six week postpartum checkup with your GP that is about you, your hormones and how you're feeling as a new mother.
00:27:34
Speaker
Yet our community, we leave the very same doors triggered by all the women walking in with their bumps and their babies. And we've talked about this on the podcast before. But we leave with no one to check in on us, no one to tell us where to turn to for support, no six week checkup with a GP to see how we're going.
00:27:53
Speaker
And to your point, we are left in complete isolation, darkness, And we actually had some recent data come through to Pink Elephants, and i can't talk to specifics of it yet, but we found that miscarriage is actually something that people are searching far more online for and on social media than any other women's health issue.
00:28:11
Speaker
And I think that starts with this, right? It starts because we're leaving hospital and no one's telling us where to turn to for help. And they might give us some medical management in that instance, but there is nowhere to turn to for emotional support, validation of the grief that you may feel, of the loss, the magnitude, the trauma, all of those things.
00:28:32
Speaker
There's just deafening silence until you come across a group like Pink Elephants and you find your connection in. But you shouldn't have to find that yourself. No. And I think there's the also the discrepancy of the care that's given in certain hospitals, depending on the facilities that they have available to them.
00:28:48
Speaker
I mean, I've walked away from both of my losses and I've got given like a little plush toy or a little hand-knitted butterfly, which was beautiful. But then I hear of other women going home with a full-on memory box that's being given to them by the hospital. So the discrepancy there of the support or the acknowledgement of that loss is alarmingly different.
00:29:08
Speaker
So i feel like that also needs to have, we need to be doing better with that, with women as well. It's just like, cool. Sure. I mean, the I've moved all around Australia since my losses and those plush toys have come with me everywhere. I will not let them go, but I'm also very much when we were talking about rituals and bits and pieces before Stacey, because I'm moving so much. I mean, I've just had them inked on me so that I can never lose them and they can never go anywhere.
00:29:33
Speaker
But that is my symbolism. And it's like, anytime someone sees that, they ask, Oh, that's so beautiful. And it's just this beautiful way to open up the conversation to say, Oh, these are my girls. And I mean, I never knew that they were girls, but I knew that they were girls and we can have a conversation about that. That's just, that's really heartwarming rather than, Oh, that's a cool tat. It's actually not.
00:29:55
Speaker
It's, it's, it may not be, but not cool in the sense. So yeah, We all have our different ways of doing things, but I just think that across the board, the way that we support women when they go home from hospital needs to be changed completely because it's not fair that one woman gets everything and then then another woman gets whatever is left in the office that happens to be available because supplies are not there or they haven't had the delivery yet. It's just not good enough.
00:30:23
Speaker
And I think we speak a lot about disenfranchised grief, um you know, the term coined where it's not specifically, loss is not specifically acknowledged publicly or otherwise.
00:30:35
Speaker
But even just, you know, you sharing that discrepancy around your care with both of your losses, um I had many, many losses and it wasn't until my sixth or seventh that I got anything.
00:30:48
Speaker
And I remember at that late of the game, after experiencing so many and then having it kind of come at the end, it just really starts to continue to just extenuate that disenfranchised feeling about your own feelings.
00:31:05
Speaker
It's not just necessarily about this lack of consistency across the board of different hospitals and different women, it actually then can really start to contribute around the disenfranchised grief you have within your experience as a whole, because now you're getting inconsistencies as one person.
00:31:25
Speaker
And it can it's just very confusing and and very unsettling to then think that one particular baby was acknowledged and so many weren't and and you feel very kind of ah disoriented with the whole the whole process. So I think we need to remember that, um yeah, there are also so many discrepancies that happen in a woman's experience going from not even loss to loss but just even in the medical field.
00:31:51
Speaker
You can have one GP say one thing and, you know, it's just so inconsistent. Yep. um And I think, yes, we cannot control consistency across everybody's bodies and those things, but there are certain things we can manage consistently.
00:32:05
Speaker
which is what happens when someone, as you've both experienced, leaves the hospital without the baby they wanted. it's just it's it's it's pretty It's pretty clear that there is a consistency available to us that that we we aren't engaging in that could be really a big ah big make a big difference for people.
00:32:26
Speaker
Yeah, I couldn't agree more with you, Susie. Couldn't agree with you more. So how do we do that? How do we make that happen? like I guess that's the next step along the chain because You get to chat to people inside the hospital as part of the committee. I'm very connected to King Eddie's and the staff have been wonderful in what their hopes and dreams and what they would love to be able to provide in terms of that support and ah memory box or what that aftercare process might look like, but they're just so they're overworked. There's no funding available to them for these sorts of things. They are so reliant on the generosity of charities and foundations or, you know, individuals. And it's not, we're all fighting for the same thing, but it just feels like we haven't planted the the roots of this consistency and, and, and what needs to happen to make real change.
00:33:19
Speaker
And then from hospital to hospital, does it change from state to state? Does it change? It's just, there's so many variables there that we have to try and get on top of. And yeah, I just, I feel for the women who never make it to hospital because that's a whole nother layer of non-support.
00:33:37
Speaker
When I walked out of my first scan, the women had no idea what to do. i was in tears and they had to get, I had still had to get follow-up to confirm that I had, there was no heartbeat.
00:33:51
Speaker
So they were just, they didn't know what to do. So their level of training and their skill in this area was so severely lacking that I just put my sunglasses on and they just, all they said to me was, don't worry, you don't need to go back to the front desk. You can just go to your car.
00:34:05
Speaker
And so I thought to myself, well, what happens when I get to my car? what What do I do now? Like, what are my instructions? I'm an actor. Give me instructions. Let me, and I'll do it. But you gave me nothing.
00:34:17
Speaker
You gave me nothing. And so that's where we feel so helpless and trying to just scramble to figure out what do I do next? And you shouldn't, there is no You shouldn't have to.
00:34:28
Speaker
Yeah, no, I completely, completely agree. And we hear this time and time again. so like you find out by a sonographer, then you need to go to a GP. The GP needs to give you referral to a hospital. Then the hospital can't fit you in. You have to wait till you turn because they can only take so many because they're under-resourced.
00:34:43
Speaker
I do you want to add a little element of hope. There is work being done in this space. So we are at Pink Elephants working with the federal government and the Department of Health, and they are currently... and They have funded an external audit um on e-pass clinics, early pregnancy assessment services. And part of that, what thing that keeps coming up in all the consultations that Pink Elephants has been part of is this referral pathway. The fact that there is nothing given to women when they leave that hospital without their baby and they need to be pointed to for further support. So i do have hope that this is changing.
00:35:15
Speaker
But for me, it isn't changing quick enough because there's still 285, 300 women today who will leave hospitals across Australia without giving that support. And it's just not good enough.
00:35:29
Speaker
I guess one of the things that we love to do here is to try and think of the future, to try and give some hope. Part of the Miscarriage Rebellion is that. So I'd love to come back to you now and kind of full circle close this out with, if you had a magic wand and there was something that you could change for our community, what would that be for you?
Future Plans for Support Expansion
00:35:48
Speaker
What would you look to change?
00:35:49
Speaker
Okay, well, my magic wand is actually i halfway in mid-flight at the moment. So I think with the expansion of the garden, and this is something that I'm very, very excited to share with you on the podcast, but at the beginning of this year, I sat down with one of our local members in Western and Australia, and she has been such an advocate and an ally for our garden for many, many years, having lived through something herself and her experience. And we sat together in the garden I basically just laid it all out and and I said, this is the dream, this is the vision, this is what I want to create.
00:36:22
Speaker
So the garden has been gifted by the state government of WA $320,000, which we should be receiving within the calendar month. So I'm so excited. Fantastic.
00:36:34
Speaker
We have just updated and put a beautiful new mural on the water tank there that the families, I mean, Stacey, kind of going back to what you said about the stories of families that I get to he from and experience.
00:36:46
Speaker
There was a woman who jumped on the Facebook page. She's like, I haven't been back to the garden for 26 years. It's been 26 years since her loss. And she said, it's just so beautiful. Thank you.
00:36:59
Speaker
And I'm just like, okay, great. Well, then that makes all the difference in the world. But I'm going to take that and I'm going to keep running with it. so there is and ah a bit of a gardener's quarters that's behind the garden. It's ah pretty run down, but I have been speaking to the health minister's office. I've been speaking to the like to the um public servants inside the hospital.
00:37:21
Speaker
I'm getting that building with if it's the last thing that i do And we are going to raise money to turn that into a purpose-built trauma-informed center for women who experience loss of a baby.
00:37:35
Speaker
And what we're hoping to achieve with that garden is we're actually going to take the ashes collections out of the hospital because every single time I walk through King Eddie's, ah it's just, ah it's just reinforcing trauma again for me.
00:37:48
Speaker
So to think that pi people, like you've just shared, Sam, women are leaving hospital without babies in their hands and then they're having to go back through that space to go and collect the ashes of those babies.
00:37:59
Speaker
Abso-frickin-lutely not. I'm moving it down into this building so that when parents come to collect their ashes, they will see our garden just there through the windows and go, that is where your baby can live however for forever. Mm-hmm.
00:38:14
Speaker
So they can kind of just take from these from the building and then be in the garden. We're putting more shade in there. I'm going to have, you know, and days that people can come together. We're going to have morning teas in this facility. And it is about taking the space that we have and expanding it for more opportunities for families and women to come together to actually talk about lived experience with people who get their lived experience.
00:38:40
Speaker
because God bless our friends and family, but if they've never experienced, they've got no idea. And so it really is us talking today. It's what ah what you guys are doing with Pink Elephants and the advocacy work and the podcasts and the events.
00:38:54
Speaker
We just need more of that. Mm-hmm. It's just that acknowledgement that your loss matters. And so my magic wand is happening and I'm really, really excited. And look, there's probably going to be lots of ebbs and flows in this. So watch this space, but it is coming and I just can't wait to give that to families of WA.
00:39:13
Speaker
That warms my heart so much. i just am so excited about the future of this space. And what I'd love to see from the pink elephant side of things is this replicated across Australia so that every woman has somewhere that she can go to physically if she needs to, somewhere where she can access that space. And that's not something that pink elephants will deliver.
00:39:33
Speaker
But I love the fact that one of the things that's happened with through my time at Pink Elephants is connecting with other women like yourself and Stacey as well. You know, for years, we've talked about these different things that need to happen. And then to start to see them happening now, there is so much hope
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:39:47
Speaker
in this space. And if you're listening and today isn't the day for you, you've had an incredibly difficult day and your loss is really at the forefront of your mind, know that there's people out there that are fighting the fight for you. There's people out there that have walked this path to Jackie's point. who get this intrinsically because we've lived it and walked our own journeys and we're here trying to make a difference and like we do it because your baby matters your loss matters and you deserve so so much more I can't thank you enough Jackie for the generosity of your work and for others what you're doing to make a difference on their journeys is it's profound thank you
00:40:25
Speaker
And likewise, ladies, I feel like I'm doing an absolute pinch compared to what the both of you are doing. But look, we've got to do it in our own little ways. And if my little way is the garden and the building and how we can get into the hospital and help there, then great. That's going to be my little way. And I can commit to that. So it's together, right? The more of us that do different parts of this, not one person, not one organization can fix this.
00:40:48
Speaker
So many people need to come together to make different parts of the journey better for people who go through this. And that's what I love the fact that we get to spot like this on the podcast as well. Awesome. Today's episode may have brought up some feelings that you need some extra support around, and that's totally okay.
00:41:04
Speaker
Head to pinkalifans.org.au to access our circle of support, your space where you can be met with empathy and support through all of your experiences of early pregnancy loss.
00:41:15
Speaker
We're here for you. You're not alone.