"‘Hospital information
wasn’t very helpful’" - Ian Every
There’s information and information. When my wife Michelle was admitted at 20 weeks to deliver our fifth baby, who had apparently died some weeks earlier, we were given information about our choices, but it wasn’t very helpful.
While going through labour, mostly alone, we were invited to make various decisions – cremation or burial, funeral arrangements, writing in a memorial book – and felt pressured to commit ourselves then and there.
We decided on cremation, with no particular service, and to recognise the death in our own way at home. Now I am not sure we made the right decision. Having learned how our children deal with sadness, a ceremony might be our preference now.
It wasn’t until we read The Miscarriage Association’s information that we realised it would have been okay to have gone home and made these crucial decisions later. This knowledge would have put us in a stronger position at the time.
I don’t think men know how to react after miscarriage and how much they might need to talk. Because I was open about our loss, several blokes took the opportunity to talk for the first time about their own experiences of miscarriage.
Being interviewed for The M.A.’s short film helped me consider not just my own feelings but what other men had gone through and I am now considering joining Michelle as a telephone volunteer for The M.A.
