Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 6: The importance of Peer Support with Maggi McDonald
522 Plays1 year ago
On today’s episode we’re joined by the incredible Maggi McDonald, who is a beautiful artist but is also a Pink Elephant’s Peer Support Companion. Maggi shares with Sam and Stacey her journey of pregnancy loss, and the lack of validation and disenfranchised grief she faced, leading to exacerbated mental health outcomes. Maggi also is very generous in sharing with us her decision not to have another baby. Society assumes this is the solution after pregnancy loss, and we’re very grateful Maggi has chosen to share her story around her decision to move forward after such heartbreaking loss.
✨Connect with Maggi
✨Find Maggi’s beautiful artwork here
Check out the growing around grief diagram by Dr. Lois Tonkin https://whatsyourgrief.com/growing-around-grief/
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 with Peer Support
- Join Online Communities
- Emotional Support Resources
- Follow @pinkelephantssupport
STACEY JUNE LEWIS
If you’d like to reach out to Stacey for counselling she is currently taking new clients. Find out more via her Website or Instagram.
You can also follow her personal Instagram account where she shares some of her lived experience.
JOIN THE MISCARRIAGE REBELLION
Pink Elephants believe everyone deserves support following the loss of their baby.
We have been providing support to many ten's of thousands of people for nearly 8 years, raising funds through generous donors. We now need ongoing Government support to empower our circle of support.
We are calling on the Government to provide us with $1.6million over 4 years to help bridge the gap. Sign our petition.
Early pregnancy loss is not just a private grief, but a national issue that requires collective empathy, awareness, and action. By recognising and addressing this, we can make meaningful change in the lives of 100,000+ women who experience early pregnancy loss every year.
SUBSCRIBE
Please make sure you subscribe and leave a 5 star review to help us connect with more people.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Topic
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to the Miss Coach Rebellion. I'm Sam Payne, CEO and co-founder of the Pink Elephant Support Network. And I'm Stacey June Lewis, counsellor, psychotherapist and broadcaster. This podcast is where we share stories of many Australians who have lost their babies to early pregnancy loss.
Addressing Shame and Silence in Pregnancy Loss
00:00:21
Speaker
With evidence and empathy, we unpack the shame, blame, and stigma and the lack of support that many face. This is a loss that has been silenced for too long. We deserve better. We are here to normalize the conversation. And we're here to make lasting change.
Maggie McDonald's Story: Impact of Pregnancy Loss
00:00:37
Speaker
On today's episode, we bring you Maggie. Maggie McDonald. A friend, an artist, a Pink Elephant's peer support companion. This story really got me.
00:00:49
Speaker
There's a lot in here about the lack of validation and the disenfranchised grief and how that can lead
Challenging Societal Assumptions about 'Rainbow Babies'
00:00:54
Speaker
to exacerbated mental health outcomes.
00:00:58
Speaker
Again, these stories need to be shared. These experiences need to be highlighted so that we can change, so that we can meet women with the empathy and understanding they deserve. I really love how Maggie shares her decision not to try and have another baby, to fix the outcome because that's what society normally assumes. There isn't a rainbow baby at the end of this story, but I still believe this story leaves you with a feeling of hope, a feeling of a way to move forward.
00:01:25
Speaker
Maggie exemplifies giving. She continues to give back to our community in many ways and be there for women like her who have gone through experiences of loss. It's a great story to share and I'm really grateful that you're here to listen today. If you could just share a
Experiencing Miscarriages: Emotional and Physical Toll
00:01:40
Speaker
little bit with the listeners about what your experience is, that would be great.
00:01:43
Speaker
Yes, thank you for having me. It's lovely to be here and to be able to share a little bit of my pregnancy loss journey, I guess. It's still a journey, still today. So I am 10 years
00:02:00
Speaker
past loss. I had two miscarriage years at one at nine weeks and one at 12 weeks. I have a son who was five at the time. He's now 14. I can't believe that, but yeah. And so my experience was I had a missed miscarriage at nine weeks, which was found with I guess the pregnancy not progressing as it should have.
00:02:28
Speaker
And I ended up having a natural miscarriage at home, so I passed the baby, or as they like to call it, the products of conception at home, which was traumatic and very hard to deal with. I felt at the time that I was very unprepared for having to be at home and
00:02:53
Speaker
bleed at home and not really knowing what was expected of me in that time. I
Hospital Challenges and Emotional Trauma
00:03:00
Speaker
did end up, we decided to try again because at the time I felt like that would be the thing that would make it better and that would help me.
00:03:09
Speaker
and we tried again and I'm really lucky I have always fallen pregnant straight away and fell pregnant again three months after the first miscarriage and was cautiously optimistic but with pregnancy after any loss it was very very very stressful and lots of anxiety that came with that.
00:03:33
Speaker
And everything was going really well, had a little bit of bleeding at eight weeks, did a scan, had seen the heartbeat, everything was okay. And then at our 12-week scan, I went into the ultrasound and was told that there was no heartbeat and that our baby had passed away a couple of days before.
00:03:57
Speaker
And yeah, it was probably one of the most confronting and shocking things I've ever been through. I don't know, those words don't really, I was like I said, all these words, but they don't really explain how you feel. I felt like the floor was like opening up underneath me. I remember my husband being there and I remember them going, oh go and, you know, empty your bladder, come back, we're gonna have another look.
00:04:21
Speaker
Then the ultrasound technician had kind of said, I'll be back. I'm going to go get someone to come and talk to you. And you kind of just lie in the bed and you know something's wrong. And yeah, I remember just feeling
00:04:37
Speaker
So shocked that it happened a second time and I was just thinking to myself there's no way that the universe could be so cruel that it would do this to me you know twice and I know like I say this about my own losses but I know you know so many women like have gone through this you know multiple times you know tens of times.
00:04:58
Speaker
And you kind of think to yourself, it can't be real, like you cannot possibly be doing this to me again.
Emergency D&C and Physical Recovery
00:05:06
Speaker
And I remember us having planned to tell my son that day that I was pregnant and that he was getting a brother or sister and we ended up just driving to like a park and sitting there, my husband and I, just going, we were just in shock.
00:05:20
Speaker
And then so, you know, I ended up then having to go back, having just been told that my baby had passed away, go back to my obstetrician's office and sit in the waiting room to see him with all these heavily pregnant women around me. And I remember sitting there and I'd been crying and I just was like, I'm getting goosebumps. Just thinking about it. So they're sitting there going like this is just a crawl.
00:05:49
Speaker
It's a cruel joke, right? It's just, it was just so awful, you know, and ended up seeing him. He was amazing, so beautiful, and booked me in for a DNC. And that was on the Friday. DNC was booked in on the Tuesday. So I had, you know, this whole weekend ahead of me having to be at home waiting for this DNC and this baby.
00:06:13
Speaker
inside me, you know, it was just, you know, it's just shock really, you don't really know how to deal with all of that. Lots and lots of tears. And on the Monday night, I was booked in to go on the Tuesday morning, I actually started going into labour at home.
00:06:28
Speaker
And just, yeah, started going into labour and ended up having my baby in the toilet and actually getting up and looking and like there was actually, you know, my baby was in the toilet. So it was just so traumatic. And I remember at the time just thinking, okay, we've got to do something and like, you know, putting the baby in.
00:06:54
Speaker
container and making sure I've got that with me and like thinking like I've got to take us to the hospital what do I do and we were very lucky we have an amazing private hospital next to close to us and because I'd been booked in with them the next morning at the maternity ward I actually rung them and said what do I do and they basically said come in straight away and
00:07:15
Speaker
I'd lost a lot of blood by that stage and had started to hemorrhage. And so they admitted me straight away and did an emergency DNC. So everything just happened within like two hours of me going into labour. So it was very fast, very traumatic. My poor husband was just trying to figure out what he's supposed to be doing. And then kind of
00:07:37
Speaker
waking up in that hospital the next day and you're in the maternity ward and you've just had a miscarriage and you've just had a D&C and I've lost all this blood. They're thinking, do we do a transfusion? What do we do? And you're lying there and you're just kind of going, I just, it's shock. It's just shock. And then your body has also gone through this trauma and you're just kind of there trying to get through, you know, the next couple of hours, I guess.
00:08:03
Speaker
And then I remember having to leave the hospital with my husband and then walking through the maternity ward out of the house because it's a very popular hospital for delivery and there's just pregnant women coming in to have their babies and I'm walking out and I've just lost my baby.
Complicated Grief and Seeking Therapy
00:08:20
Speaker
It was literally like, like I said, I'm still now getting goosebumps talking about it. And what followed after that was just,
00:08:30
Speaker
shock. I remember just being so shocked. I was so unwell because they had to give me emergency anesthetic. So I felt like I'd been in a car crash. I was in bed for about a week trying to recover from the DNC. And I think the thing that we forget about miscarriage or pregnancy loss is that it's not just, you know, like the mental trauma, it's the physical trauma. Very often our bodies have actually gone through this
00:08:55
Speaker
Like a lot of the times is a lot of blood loss is all of this stuff that happens when you lose a baby and you know you've got your body having to try and to recover and at the same time you've got this mental trauma and anguish that you're going through so it was really tough and I had amazing support I had you know in laws my husband people were sending flowers and
00:09:19
Speaker
It was really lovely, but it was really at the same time just like a feeling of like I had no idea how I was supposed to deal with this grief. It's just been, you know, kind of, it's like it's lumped on you.
00:09:36
Speaker
And what ended up happening was then you get through that initial physical trauma and you heal to a point and you then go through the feelings of the grief and you're crying a lot. I remember crying a lot, watching a lot of really bad trashy TV and just crying and trying to then, because my son was five, he was about to start kindling.
00:10:01
Speaker
having to get up and having to kind of look after him and make sure that you're just getting up and getting dressed and doing all those things. And people were beautiful, they were checking in and all of those beautiful things. But as the weeks went on and the weeks went on, the grief stayed because there was nowhere for it to go.
00:10:22
Speaker
and the how are you going stopped and it's got a little bit less and for me the biggest thing was like I felt like I wasn't allowed to grieve these babies because it was obviously the two by that stage because they were only 12 weeks so how do you grieve a baby that was only 12 weeks right so I never had the validation.
00:10:45
Speaker
I felt so lost in the fact that I was so traumatised and so sad, and I felt like I wasn't allowed to be. And that was just this big thing, you know. And then it was a hard, so we're not moving into the mental health impact of this, is the fact that that validation would have made a massive difference, but because there's no validation, you're feeling like you're not allowed to be grieving this baby.
00:11:11
Speaker
Okay, so I wanted to do things like, you know, kind of maybe you're thinking, oh, maybe I'll get a tattoo, you know, maybe I'll do all these things, you know, you Google and you go what people have done. And then you're like, no, but I can't because like, it's not that serious. Like it was only 12 weeks and people expect you to move on and move forward because it was only 12 weeks. It wasn't really a baby.
00:11:35
Speaker
you have a child, all of those things. And you tell yourself all of those things because that is what we like to tell ourselves just so that we can actually justify things for ourselves. So that was kind of my story with loss and the mental health impact was severe.
00:11:56
Speaker
I ended up with complicated grief six months down the line. I had actually, I've suffered with anxiety and depression my whole life. And I was very closely monitored before I had my son because they had, there was a big concern that I would get postnatal depression, which I did. But I was monitored. I had a social worker that came and checked on me. I had all these people in hospital checking that I was okay.
00:12:22
Speaker
I had a very, very complicated traumatic birth, but there was support afterwards, okay? With this, no support for me, right? So it was like, you're just needing to kind of get on with it and kind of do things. So ended up with complicated grief six months down the line. I know now that's what it's called, but it was basically me physically and mentally not being able to function.
00:12:45
Speaker
And when you say you know now what it was called, the terrain, we were there in conversations because you had been struggling with anxiety and depression prior. Did you have a support base in terms of a therapist or somebody you were working with then? And were you aware of those terms in those moments? Or is this something that you've become aware of after work, anything else at all later?
00:13:09
Speaker
It's an interesting thing. So I knew something wasn't right and that it had been triggered because of, I guess, you know, the trauma and also the trauma from maybe from when my son was born, all these things, you know, on top of each other. But at the time I was just thinking, it's just me with my depression. I've had it since I was 19. I'm just not able to cope.
00:13:32
Speaker
And this is something that's, yes, it is because I lost a baby. I knew in my gut that that is why I was not functioning properly and why I was so sad. But because I wasn't validated, and I didn't believe that I should be still six months after the loss, be feeling like this, I thought I was having a really major depressive episode. And so I
Deciding Against Another Pregnancy
00:13:55
Speaker
have had an amazing GP all the way through, and I actually went and said, I am not coping.
00:14:01
Speaker
So what kind of went back on antidepressants and did all of those things and at the time even then still didn't really get much validation of the fact that this is post-traumatic stress disorder. It is grief compounded with all of these things. Throw in mental health challenges and all these things that you live with.
00:14:27
Speaker
Um, so I basically, um, you know, started back on my antidepressants, um, and started, you know, kind of doing the usual, like started with a therapist, which was amazing. Like always have had an amazing psychologist, um, and just kind of try to put one foot in front of the other. And, um, for me, that was like, also like I have, I ended up having this like
00:14:52
Speaker
It almost was like a midlife crisis. It was like, okay, I've hit rock bottom. I felt like I nearly died. I could have lost all this blood. I reevaluated so many things in my life. And for me, at the time, the decision was like, are we going to have another baby? Are we going to keep trying? Because the obvious thing that everyone says to you is, oh, just try. Just keep trying. Have another one. Just have another one and you'll be fine.
00:15:18
Speaker
And for me, I was so unwell mentally that I was too scared to do that. And in my gut, I knew that I had made my decision, but everyone else around me was trying to still, I guess, support me into maybe trying for another baby so that, which I understand. I mean, that's society's, you know, let's fix this.
00:15:43
Speaker
We're going to fix it. OK, like we're going to fix this. And the way that we fix this is by having another baby. And for me, that just just wasn't my husband was like, we are not having another baby because he saw me at the worst, at the darkest time. And he's just like, I cannot go through this again because I might lose you.
00:16:04
Speaker
and so I knew that you know and I also was really worried that if I had to go through a miscarriage again and there's no guarantee that I would have miscarried again but the fear was there that I would maybe not come out the other side if I had another miscarriage and mentally I couldn't deal with it.
00:16:23
Speaker
So I made the decision. I'm saying me because ultimately it did come down to me making the decision with my husband's support that we will not keep trying and that we will not have another child. And it was probably the hardest decision I've ever made in
Healing through Creativity and Art
00:16:40
Speaker
my life. I still now, I'll tell you this, I now still once a week I dream that I'm pregnant.
00:16:46
Speaker
full detail, everything. And at the time it was really tough because my son was six and he was starting kindy and everybody had a brother and a sister and he kept asking, you know, brother and a sister. And he's 14 now and he now, we have discussions about this because he knows everything that happened and he's just like, it's, you know,
00:17:06
Speaker
This is our unit and we're happy and it would have been fine if it was another one, but we're good. I get it, which is amazing. That's the other thing. I had this beautiful child and I was like, if I am not functioning,
00:17:24
Speaker
If I'm literally lying in bed and I cannot get up, I can't do basic things and look after him, then what's the point of keeping trying and putting myself through this again? And it was a hard one. So I ended up deciding to study because I was trying to distract myself from having to make a decision about having another baby. And I was just like,
00:17:48
Speaker
You know, this is what you do, right? So you're like, OK, I'm going to go and spend thousands of dollars, yeah, to go and do something. But it was a good thing because it was actually a catalyst for me to decide I wanted to do something creative. I've always wanted to do that. And it was so healing because it was so much part of the journey. But it wasn't until so with, you know, like talking about that, you know, knowing what to call these feelings.
00:18:12
Speaker
wasn't until I connected with Pink Elephants and I did the peer support training that I learned that that complicated grief is the grief that it wasn't dealt with at the time. I was never told to feel your feeling.
00:18:31
Speaker
No, this is everything I know about the mental health impact of pregnancy loss I've learned through being a peer support companion and the training that I've done to do that. Got a
Role in Peer Support and Validation
00:18:45
Speaker
question around what happened with your mental health when you made that decision.
00:18:51
Speaker
So had your mental health started to somewhat regulate for you to make the decision or was the decision a thing that helped with that? When I say regulate, I mean an equal list.
00:19:05
Speaker
That's a really interesting question. I think it's both, but it definitely leans more towards the fact that I had made the decision and pregnancy loss is such a out of control situation, right? So we all want to be in control. And that's the one thing I found like this and you couldn't, I could not control any of this.
00:19:23
Speaker
And I couldn't control if I got pregnant, whether I was going to have a baby, if it was going to be another miscarriage. So I felt like I'd taken back a little bit of control. And my decision was a decision made based on my experience of my own mental health and what I guess I had to look at my life
00:19:43
Speaker
in the future and with my child and my husband and us as a family unit you know what is going to serve us the best because you know like I had visions of me in a mental hospital like not being able to cope and we don't want to be there like nobody wants to.
00:20:02
Speaker
you know, be there. And I'm very open about the fact that I struggle with depression and it runs in my family and it's something that I deal with every day. And I don't think that, you know, putting yourself in a situation just because that's what you think you should be doing or society is telling you what to do.
00:20:21
Speaker
is the right way to go if you know that you have these challenges. I feel like that's the thing, and so I controlled that kind of decision for myself. I can understand that control element. I know that there's a lot of false narratives out there around, obviously, pregnancy loss, lack of validation, how that petriety is disenfranchised grief, and then you're feeling like you want some control, but because no one's validating the experience, it almost exacerbates it and makes it worse and worse.
00:20:51
Speaker
I think what would be really interesting to kind of unpack now is that you took your experience, did the most beautiful thing and chose to give back to others as a piece of our companion being elephants and to provide women with that validation that you never got.
00:21:07
Speaker
So it'd be really interesting to hear more about how you feel that makes a difference in women's journeys and what kind of things you're still hearing today when you're providing peer support about that lack of validation. That's absolutely it. It's like every single week when I speak to women, at the moment I'm doing live chat and every single week when I speak to women on live chat, it is the validation.
00:21:32
Speaker
It's about they reaching out, they're going, I just need someone to tell me that what I'm going through is normal. All we're doing is saying it's okay for you to be feeling like this. It's really interesting. No, that's okay. You talked earlier about that.
00:21:49
Speaker
And that having already a predisposition to potentially present oppression or other depressive episodes because of your background or your health, when I'm looking for history.
00:22:04
Speaker
It's interesting that instead of kind of really adding extra support, it almost worked against the extra support. It was like, well, this is because of the past as opposed to what is actually being experienced now. And that validation is generally not given a lot for a lot of miscarriage cases or when people lose their babies.
00:22:27
Speaker
But in this instance, it even kind of doubled up because it was now only like, well, we're not giving you validation, but we're going to tell you that it was because you already felt bad. And so I can really
00:22:41
Speaker
feel how valination is important for people, but I can really feel extra why it must feel important to you. Absolutely. She's already not. Myself, I was like, like I said before, this is me, I've got depression and I struggle with things sometimes, so this must just be because I am already
00:23:05
Speaker
you know, not 100% and I struggle with things. So that's why I am still crying six months down the line. So that that whole thing of like, I'm kind of, you know, diminishing my grief and diminishing my experience, because that is what I, you know, I kind of have been told to believe about myself, you know,
00:23:25
Speaker
And that's a really, really hard thing. So what I'm hearing from women reaching out to us is that they are number one in shock.
Normalizing Grief and Validating Feelings
00:23:35
Speaker
So often we'll have someone jump on live chat when they've literally just had a miscarriage. And it's the day after, or they're going through a miscarriage while you're talking to them. And it's that shock of this is happening, number one. And then the thing of not knowing
00:23:53
Speaker
how they are supposed to be feeling and what they are allowed to be feeling. So nobody should be telling anyone else what they're allowed to feel when it comes to these things, but we do tend to be very, I guess, hard on ourselves and, you know, like, oh, I'm not supposed to be feeling, it's only five weeks, it's only nine weeks, it's like a loss is a loss is a loss. We say that all the time.
00:24:17
Speaker
So true. I just want to interject there with research that really does depend on what you just said. Tom is in the UK doing a lot around the mental health impact of early-cagmentary larceny and motor advocacy. That's great. I think it's really important the listeners hear this. There is absolutely no correlation or relationship between your previous experience of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress.
00:24:39
Speaker
So yes, it can compound, but there's no direct correlation. It is not your fault, you're feeling this way. And I think that's part of this problem. The silence around pregnancy loss, miscarriage and a lack of validation that we internalize all of these feelings and we blame ourselves when isn't something we've done. And there's a real danger in that because then women don't get the help that they need and they deserve. And that's certainly
00:25:02
Speaker
exemplified in your story right the way that you share that that six months later you were still blaming yourself and actually what you needed was someone to say this is not your fault it is okay to feel this way and this is how i'm going to be here for you just because you felt sad before it doesn't mean that it's a continued sadness this is it
00:25:22
Speaker
Absolutely. I believe firmly that if I had someone tell me when I went through those two miscarriages that I am okay to be feeling the way that I was feeling and explain to me that these feelings of grief and loss are normal.
00:25:40
Speaker
that I would not have ended up six months down the line still trying to figure out why I was feeling like I was feeling and trying to explain to my husband and everyone around me why I haven't moved on or I was still crying about a baby that was 12 weeks old, you know, six months.
00:26:00
Speaker
before. That is my belief and I think that's one of the reasons why I started doing peer support because I just felt like we needed to be those people who, you know, I wanted to be that person that would tell someone going through this that it's okay for you to be feeling what you're
Community Support through Pink Elephants
00:26:19
Speaker
feeling.
00:26:19
Speaker
And that is all we're doing. We're there to support. We are just speaking to women, telling them that whatever it is that they are feeling is okay. Very often I feel like I'm going crazy. You're not crazy.
00:26:37
Speaker
you're not, you're grieving the loss of your baby, you know, and like naming the fact that you've lost a baby because the language around all of these things as well from family members and from partners and, you know, God love them. They don't know how to deal with this. I don't like, it's 10 years down the line and people are still not comfortable with grief and society. We just don't like talking about these things.
00:27:00
Speaker
So, you know, like it's unfortunately, you know, in-laws and parents, the people with the best intentions, they don't use the right language. And I want to name the fact that you've lost a baby. Sometimes people like a woman, like just saying to them, I'm sorry that you have lost a baby in those words. That's all they need to hear. Like that's honestly, I get the feedback and it's like, thank you so much for just saying those words.
00:27:27
Speaker
And that's really, you know, and that's where I'm like saying if somebody had done that for me, I think, you know, the trajectory of my journey would have been so much, you know, so different.
00:27:39
Speaker
wouldn't have been amazing because, you know, there's grief and everything that's going, but just validating. We're not removing grief. No. Remove grief. No. But we always talk about three things. I think health assistance, validation, empathy and connection. If you can remember those three things, I like the loss of a baby, empathise with the person who's going through it and connect them to someone who cannot for support.
00:28:01
Speaker
then you're going to make a huge difference into how that person is able to carry on and be able to go through this experience feeling supported, feeling like people are with them on the journey and they're not on their own, and they select you, which we know. So Maggie, obviously, if this is a long game, you know, it's a forever game, but in those moments of
00:28:25
Speaker
Really the big struggle. What were some of the tools or some of the things that you felt when you eventually got to them, supported you?
Personal Coping Tools and Self-Care
00:28:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's an interesting thing. I think if you look at pregnancy loss and the grief that you feel and the experience, it doesn't go away. It does change you. It sits with you for the rest of your life, I believe.
00:28:50
Speaker
and I'm looking 10 years after my losses now, and it's like it's faded. It's almost like it's a photograph. It's not as bright, the pain, it kind of fades. And I still have times and days that very unexpectedly will just trigger feelings and things like that. And doing peer support as well, we often do have moments where you will get triggered, because you do kind of like put yourself back into those
00:29:20
Speaker
situations, and then in those instances I tend to be very kind to myself. And I know we throw this around all the time, be kind to yourself, be kind to yourself. What does that look like? For me, that looks like having a really nice bath.
00:29:36
Speaker
and watching really trash TV sometimes, right? So this is me, like you go be kind to yourself. You know, everybody has a different way of dealing with it. You know, so that's one side of it. I love spending time at the beach. For me, that's a reset. I do cold water swimming.
00:29:54
Speaker
And that's something that's helped me, not just with, you know, kind of, I guess, the grief from pregnancy loss, but also just with mental health in itself. And the other thing is I try to, I guess, reconnect with
00:30:10
Speaker
I guess why I'm doing what I'm doing with pink elephants, very often that's something that will really put things into perspective for me as well. So I have a bit of a toolbox of stuff that helps me. I like to create, so that's what I do, and I find that making things with my hands,
00:30:33
Speaker
and painting, things like that actually really helps me. The other thing that, these are little, you know, kind of things that we discuss very often with peer support as well. It's, you know, as much a mental health thing as it is, you know, marking the loss as well. It's, you know, writing a letter to your baby. It's journaling really helped me as well.
00:30:55
Speaker
And just basically writing down everything that I was feeling and thinking that I couldn't really say to many other people around me because a lot of the stuff that we do discuss and that we talk about and that we walk around with is not something that you just discuss with anyone, you know, kind of over a coffee really isn't. So journaling was really good for that because it kind of got all those thoughts and feelings out onto a piece of paper.
00:31:20
Speaker
So it's, you know, it's whatever works for you. I know some people go boxing to get that anger out. I remember doing a boxing class and crying pretty much through the whole boxing class. And my partner knew what was happening. She just let me go out and have a cry, come back in and keep boxing, you know, like, and it was just that thing of, you know, doing the things that you know, help you. And even though
00:31:43
Speaker
at the time you might struggle to do them. It's just kind of trying to keep putting one foot in front of the other and use those tools that you've got in your toolbox.
Imagining a Better Support System
00:31:55
Speaker
So we have a thread question if you like that we ask all of our guests. And it is that idealistic world that if you could wave a magic wand for bereaved parents, if you could change one thing that you know would make a huge difference, what would that be?
00:32:12
Speaker
So I had a bit of a think about this. And I remember having the social worker come and check on me when I had had my son. And I feel like if we had a similar service or support service for bereaved parents, imagine having, you know, having gone through, you know, pregnancy loss and then straight away being connected with
00:32:36
Speaker
a support person that could literally just say to you, it's okay, this is what to expect, I feel physically, and this is what to expect mentally, and whatever you're gonna be feeling in the next couple of weeks, months, you know, years even sometimes, it's normal and you're validated.
00:32:54
Speaker
You know, that would be, I mean, it would just be amazing because I feel like the mental health impact and the impact of, you know, pregnancy loss, it just would be, it would be such an amazing tool, you know, to, you know, minimise. It's not going to not be there, but just to have that support there. You know, like, I mean, can you imagine that would be so, you know, kind of being referred by your GP or whatever it might be and just the validation.
00:33:23
Speaker
Loopstand. Also kind of starting that journey of grief in a
00:33:35
Speaker
It's just the honoring. Yeah. In a space that's, you know, this is a nurture space for your grief and for, you know, this is, it would be just, because we do have that focus. We have all these amazing support services for, you know, like parents, you know, like postnatal depression, all of these amazing things in Pink Elephants. We're doing amazing work, but you know, can you imagine, you know, having that support
00:34:01
Speaker
at the same level as the support that you have when you're actually having a baby. They're not the same things, but at the same time, it would be, yeah. I've heard it described as, you leave hospital with a baby in your arms and you're given this wealth of support from physical pamphlets and packs to people constantly checking in on you. And yet, we all leave hospital without our babies in our arms. Through the maternity doors were big bumps and babies.
00:34:31
Speaker
And if that's not true enough, you're then left completely alone. So you get noticeable. And it's that, it's let's reverse that. Let's provide that early validation and that it's a check-in. Absolutely. Yeah. And not sliding for it to bit to point to the check-in. No. Don't get there. Yeah.
00:34:48
Speaker
And then have, you know, like this is the thing, you know, have then women looking for support and having to go and look for support, which is what we're finding. You've got women having to go on Instagram or go on Facebook and find a support group for pregnancy loss because there is no one checking in on them.
Call to Action for Supporting Pink Elephants
00:35:06
Speaker
And that's where all our peer support calls and support comes from because we haven't reached out to those women or those couples to support them. They've actually had to go and find us and they've reached out to us to ask for help. So imagine if we could flip that the other way around. Imagine the validation of a health professional.
00:35:27
Speaker
saying, hey, we know this can be an incredibly traumatic experience. Here's where you go to for support. That difference that makes, it's permission to grieve at the very beginning. It's permission to feel what you feel rather than what society tells you, which is, oh, you had a miscarriage. Oh, well, at least you know you can get pregnant. At least you can try again. But I think this is what we really need to highlight. It's not just society. The system is not supporting. So the system is telling us that.
00:35:55
Speaker
That is the society, the healthcare system. Absolutely. And it's, again, going back to our beneficiaries with the women that we talk to every week, it is still the same. We would like to think that we, and we have done some amazing work in moving forward with this, and there are some amazing healthcare providers who are on board and are worth their weight in gold.
00:36:22
Speaker
The reality is that most, you know, women are not getting that support at their hospital, at their GP, at wherever it is that they are going. So that's, you know, it's still happening. And so once we, you know, until we can fix that. Until we don't have women waiting in emergency departments that have passed their baby in plastic Ziploc bags in 2023. Yeah. And that made the media because that woman chose to share her story. But I know who Pink Elephant is.
00:36:52
Speaker
we can probably find two to three women a week with a very similar story. Until that stops, until everything else in terms of the fact that we've been walking without support, being left alone, we're nowhere near done. We've shifted the dial a little bit, but there is still so, so much work to be done in this space to meet women and partners where they need to be met. And how dare you ask a woman to be the person to advocate for herself in that moment? How dare you wait for someone to be brave enough to stand in front of the press?
00:37:21
Speaker
It's not good enough. People don't talk about it, but it's happening. Behind closed doors, hidden behind smiling faces. There are so many people suffering in silence right now.
00:37:42
Speaker
unable to access the support that they need and deserve, simply because they don't even know that there is support available. The Pink Elephants community is made up of people from all over Australia. Some come from the big smoke, others from the bush. Some of us have heaps of friends and family around, others have none.
00:38:09
Speaker
Some have lost babies at five weeks. Some had ectopic pregnancies. Some had multiple ultrasounds. Others only ever saw the two red lines on a positive pregnancy test.
00:38:25
Speaker
But we all have something in common.
Reflection on Story and Encouragement for Support
00:38:28
Speaker
We have all lost a baby. We are all bereaved parents. There are estimated to be over 100,000 of us across Australia every single year. Please help us connect with these people to give them the support that they deserve. No one should have to lose a baby and be left on their own to navigate their grief.
00:38:55
Speaker
Help Pink Elephant support more brave parents. Visit pinkelephants.org.au. I found this really hard to hear, I think, possibly because I'm close to Maggie and I know Maggie personally, and also because a lot of her story of losses relates so closely to my own.
00:39:20
Speaker
But what I really want to talk about here are two things. The first is the complete lack of validation and empathy that led to this perpetuation of disenfranchised grief, this isolation, the not reaching out for support, and then that double thing of
00:39:36
Speaker
blaming herself because she's mentally not okay. It's her fault that she's not coping because she has a history of anxiety and depression rather than being given the acknowledgement that no, this is hard and difficult and no matter what your history is, you're entitled to grieve your baby and it's okay if you need support. Because she didn't have that, she ended up with this incredibly difficult mental health challenge. I'd love on that.
00:40:02
Speaker
I think it's really important to start with just identifying that mental health doesn't create infertility and fertility often creates mental health issues. That's not to say Maggie's case, she had certainly experienced mental health issues prior to trying to conceive. I think there is a real complex conversation here.
00:40:24
Speaker
Because she may have presented with anxiety or different types of mental health concerns prior, there's almost this assumption that that was what kind of led into some of the complex situations around her infertility, around her losses, and then also the way that she dealt with them. But I really want to be clear here, infertility does exacerbate or create mental health issues.
00:40:49
Speaker
Uh, you know, there are plenty of people that walk the world and, you know, I don't know many of them personally, but live, you know, no, with no anxiety and a fairly carefree life. And then they move into this realm. They move into these, um, these infertility issues or start to have losses. They have one loss even.
00:41:12
Speaker
And there are repercussions, there are symptoms that come from that medical issue, which it is a medical issue. It's not a personality issue. So I just want to really reiterate that whatever you're experiencing as a symptom of your pregnancy loss or your infertility is a symptom.
00:41:35
Speaker
You know, and I think we really need to get better at identifying these as medical issues, whether it's mental or physical, and understanding that they aren't you as an identity, they aren't you as a person, that they may not have been there before this, and that they now may be there because of this.
00:41:55
Speaker
and acknowledging that in itself can often be one of the very first steps at being able to start to accept and grieve this new life that you found yourself in. And I just wanted to really say that to anybody listening that has heard Maggie's story and
00:42:14
Speaker
has started to feel a bit confused as to when this started when my mental health started to deteriorate it doesn't matter but it is also really important to acknowledge that infertility or pregnancy loss does you know the research is there and i see it in my own practice affects your mental health.
00:42:35
Speaker
How can it not? No, absolutely. I remember asking myself those questions as well, trying to join the dots and work out when I'm starting feeling anxiety and get to the losses because I'd be told that a miscarriage is something you just get over. Almost like question myself and I feel like that's really common.
00:42:53
Speaker
Another part that's really strong with Maggie's story that needs a spotlight shining on it is those women that choose not to try and conceive again, that choose not to put their heart online again and risk having another loss and knowing that they might not want to go through everything they've been through.
00:43:10
Speaker
That's an incredibly difficult choice to make, and I want that acknowledged. But what I really love about being able to share this story now with Maggie is years later from making that choice, how her life has built meaning around that, and she's come to a place of peace with that. I mean, she still talks about things like having dreams, about being pregnant, that's still now a reality for that.
00:43:34
Speaker
But I feel like we often talk so much about the rainbow baby and that so many women will go on and have another baby as if that's the magic fix and the magic heal, and we know that that's not the magic fix and the magic heal, but we put a lot of focus on that. I feel like what we don't shine enough of spotlight on is those women that choose not to try again and don't have a rainbow baby. Yeah, I love your thoughts around that. I think we are having a conversation about grief, except sometimes that grief doesn't have a symbol.
00:44:03
Speaker
You know it doesn't have this particular picture doesn't have this particular figure doesn't have this physicality and so when you stop it's almost like we assume that the grief stops or because you're not grieving potentially even.
00:44:19
Speaker
A seven-week loss, a 20-week loss or the loss of a failed fertility round. Those things, even though they feel so invisible, they still are a conversation point, a figure that we can place to some of the grief.
00:44:35
Speaker
as difficult as they can be because they're also not necessarily this kind of human person in front of us. However, then there's this other layer of grief that happens around the time where there isn't necessarily a figure. You're left with a decision and you're left with a nothingness.
00:44:51
Speaker
And that grief really does fall to these ideas, these dreams, these stories. We are told to be mothers from the time that we are two or three. We play with dolls, we create stories about our future, we create stories and these dreams about what it would look like.
00:45:08
Speaker
It doesn't matter if you had one child or two children and you still find that there's grief after you choose to stop after that because it wasn't your choice. I think grief stays. This conversation of when that decision is to stop, it stays. It stays with you just as it would if you were to lose a loved one that you met.
00:45:27
Speaker
because we now have had something taken away from us that we felt very connected to and very much ours. That was our dream, our journey, our purpose, our identity, our vision, our hope. Yeah. I love the diagram and we'll link to it again in the show notes, but the grief ball and how we grow around grief. The ball's still there, the grief's still there. We just grow with coping strategies on how we move forward. I think that's really powerful for a conversation like this as well.
00:45:58
Speaker
I love the fact that we've done that. We've intentionally acknowledged that not everyone goes on and has a rainbow baby and those stories deserve to be shared as well. So anyone as always, if you need support, there are communities for you. That's why Pink Elephant exists. Everything is linked in the show notes. You are not alone on these journeys and experiences. We're here to provide that validation and empathy for you and connection.
00:46:24
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for listening. Today's episode may have brought up some feelings for you that you need some support around. That's totally okay. Head to pinkelephants.org.au to find access to our circle of support, your safe space where you can be met with empathy and understanding throughout all of your experiences of early pregnancy loss. We're here for you. You are not alone.
00:46:48
Speaker
If you enjoyed listening to The Miscarriage Rebellion, please help us by leaving a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. The Miscarriage Rebellion is a Pink Elephants podcast, produced by our friends at 3P Studio.