Defining Depression

In between my two boys, I suffered a miscarriage. This sent me into the defining depressive episode of my life. Ten to twenty per cent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, yet no one talks about it. It’s taboo.

I was devastated. I believe whole heartedly that a mother’s job is to protect her children at all costs. I was unable to save that child. I wasn’t given the chance to fight for that child. That life was stripped away from me, leaving me and my mental health raw. I didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror. I literally didn’t know who she was or how she came to be. I was utterly alone. No one else in my circle had ever experienced what I was going through. I felt that I had failed more than any one else on the planet; ever. I was not worthy of existing; let alone ever being happy again. I was drowning in the guilt. I was suffocating, and had to remind myself to breathe.

My oldest son was just over a year old at the time. He saved my life. Providing for him, having to take care of him, made me get out of bed in the morning. There’s a song, by Ryan Cabrera. It’s called “On The Way Down”, that encapsulated how I was feeling.

“Sick and tired of this world/there’s no more air/tripping over myself/going nowhere

Waiting/suffocating/no direction/I took a dive

And on the way down/I saw you/and you saved me from myself/and I won’t forget the way you loved me/on the way down/I almost fell right through/but I held on to you”

I did get pregnant again, and had a happy healthy nine pound baby boy. I couldn’t give myself fully to him because I felt like I was betraying the child I had lost. Until, one day, I saw a medium on tv. A guest in the audience was in the same boat I had been. She had lost a child as well and was newly pregnant again. She was wondering if the pregnancy would go well. The medium told her something that sent chills down my spine. Yes, she said, and it’s the same child. You just weren’t ready to be together before. I still get goosebumps when I think of that.

You just weren’t ready to be together before. It’s the same child.

After that, I was fully able to love my second son. Guilt-free.