Nobody Told Me

NOBODY TOLD ME THE BUMP WHERE MY BABY JUST LAY,
WOULD LITERALLY JUST EVAPORATE.

NOBODY TOLD ME IT WOULD HAPPEN IN SUCH HASTE, THAT I’D QUESTION REALITY AND TELL MYSELF IT’S ALL A MISTAKE.

NOBODY TOLD ME TO THE NAKED EYE, NO TRACE WOULD BE, THAT I WAS JUST CARRYING MY BABY.

NOBODY TOLD ME THAT MY WATERS WOULD STILL BREAK,

NOBODY TOLD ME ABOUT LABOUR PAINS,

NOBODY TOLD ME JUST HOW MUCH MY BODY WILL CHANGE, AND HOW MANY NIGHTS I’LL CRY IN PAIN. 

NOBODY TOLD ME THAT NOT EVEN MY HAIR WILL REMAIN THE SAME,

AND EVERYTHING ABOUT MY BEING WILL RE-ARRANGE, THAT IN THIS LIFE I WON’T HEAR HIM EVER CALL ME BY THAT NAME. 
& THAT LITTLE MARK THAT WAS LEFT ON MY STOMACH, EVEN THAT DIDN’T STAY.

NOBODY TOLD ME THAT MY BODY WOULD STILL PRODUCE MILK,
& THAT BREAST MILK WOULD BE ONE OF MY BIGGEST TESTS. 

NOBODY TOLD ME, NOBODY WARNED ME, NOBODY SPOKE TO ME, NOBODY ASKED ME.
NOBODY TOLD ME AND NOBODY ATTEMPTED TO EVEN PREPARE ME,

AND IT JUST KEEPS RETURNING, SOMETIMES IN FORCE, SOMETIMES IN WAVES,
JUST LIKE LA LUNA WHEN SHE STATES HER PLAY. 
SOMETIMES IT CRASHES, SOMETIMES ITS ANXIOUS, SOMETIMES IT JUST STAYS AND BEFORE I KNOW IT, I’M LOSING DAYS AND I’M OFF THIS STAGE.

MOSTLY IT’S ALL STILL A BIT OF A DAZE AND I’M BATTLING MY WAY THROUGH A STATE OF MENTAL HAZE.

& AT THE END OF THE DAY, ALL I REALLY WANT IS SOMEONE TO PLEASE TELL ME,

TELL ME HOW THE HUMAN RACE, FORMED AN EQUATION TO CALCULATE THE WAVES ACROSS THE SEVEN SEAS, AND MEASURE THE VIBRATION OF THE GLOBAL OCEAN, BUT FOR THE BROKEN HEART OF A GRIEVING GIRL, THERE’S JUST SILENCE, EVEN MY OWN.

BECAUSE I TOO, HAD NOTHING TO SAY.

October, 2019.

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I sat some months later, once the experience started to sink in and all the physicality of giving birth had subsided. All I heard in my mind was ‘nobody told me, I can’t believe nobody told me’. I remember crying at how I wasn’t prepared for this much pain and I don’t know how I’ve made it through all these days. When my first period came, 7 weeks after, I cried for days. I almost forgot about periods, well I had, and of course – nobody told me. It felt like another reminder, it was a trigger and it knocked the life out of me.

The number of specialists I saw, the amount of people around me – how comes none of you tried to prepare me. I wondered how many women must have felt the same, or if it was just me because I’m insane. That’s what we say to ourselves, always harder on yourself but if it was another, no way! You validate that pain and you honour it. When you honour your pain, you let it through and I know it hurts, it hurts so much and your whole world is falling apart around you, but in all this pain, there’s so much to gain. All that love & light from the heavens above, you allow it to come flooding through and staying right there, inside your heart centre, I promise you, you open a door that welcomes experiences like no other.

People barely spoke to me, they just looked at me, but I never looked back. I couldn’t make eye contact with anyone – and I didn’t for months. They say the eyes are the window to the soul and I couldn’t let anyone see how lost mine was. 

I could feel their eyes on me, their thoughts, their emotions. I’m an empath and it’s hard for me to keep that boundary up so I don’t just feel the pain, I take on their pain too.  The word emotion derives from the latin word ‘emotere’ which is a literal translation of ‘energy in motion’. Emotion – it’s a sensation that runs through your whole physiological function. I felt that.

My family’s, my former in-laws, his – and I just couldn’t take it. They too, felt the loss of the little one and I was so aware of all of their hurt & emotion. I didn’t want to show them mine. I didn’t want them to hurt more and I didn’t want to see their hurt either.

When people were around me, coming to see me, calling from abroad even to speak to me; I couldn’t get my head around it, I’d literally just left the hospital. What are they coming and calling for, I’d cry to my former mother in law but still, I was expected to just take the calls, show up at the door. It just wouldn’t digest, are they paying their respects, is this absource… and there was supposed to be the two of us, just like you promised me in the days before. Sat and told me how much I am adored and how we need to stay strong & how together, we would get through this. Even told me how God would bless us with another; and you swore to me; you looked me in my eyes, and you swore to me that you would take care of me now. How our future would make up for this. I wanted him, I wanted my sons Dad, even if it was just to sit next to me and hold my hand. But he wasn’t home, and I was alone, like I was always alone in the marital home.

I kept my head down, hands clasped, and I’d mentally trace over my veins from my wrists through to my hands; remembering my Bibi and wondering if she would go to the gates of heaven to meet my baby. I didn’t really know where it was coming from and at some points, I ‘d come back to reality and that little voice would tell me how dumb my thoughts are. 

I didn’t like people looking at me and I didn’t want them to. Every morning I woke up and continued my duties as a wife and daughter in law. I had not even 1 day of rest. I held myself together for 6 days and on that day when I did break and I could no longer control my cry, a member of my former in-law family told me to go upstairs, that I shouldn’t cry like that in front of the men. She told me to go to my room, sort myself out and stay up there. 
People kept telling me it’s our ‘karam’ – your souls karma based on actions and deeds and they all kept telling me he would come back to me and ‘jo paramatma karda, chang hi karda’ – ‘What God does, he does for good’. I understood it was always from a place of love, the women around me – they all wanted to help me. But it didn’t help. I couldn’t understand what they were talking about with ‘karma’ how is it karma – wtf have I ever done, I’ve waited on my hands & knees for all of these, I lived my whole life catering and considering other’s needs. None of it made sense to me – until it did. 

I didn’t like that people would constantly tell me that my baby will come back to me. I would send my hearts prayer then and there and call out and say no; please don’t send him back here, I want him to stay there; in God’s garden and make that your home. I never want him to experience the pains of life in this World. At least there I know he’s safe, he’s too precious to be here, too precious for this World. 

I didn’t carry my baby to full term, I didn’t take him home or hear him cry and I never got to look him in the eye, so I felt like I had no right. No right to grieve. I didn’t even spend one night with my baby.  

I didn’t sleep for weeks; I would go online in the night-time and read other people’s stories. Firstly, to prepare me for what’s to come in giving birth to a baby who’s no longer breathing, and secondly, I’d be searching for a story, a comment – anything just to see if what I was going through, was ‘normal’. I was grieving and missing something that I never actually had or lived. & in an instant it just felt like there was no trace of him.  
I planned for everything, I had everything all figured out – I picked a pram set, I picked a wardrobe full of outfits and I felt like I’d waited a whole lifetime to get to this. To be married to him, to be pregnant, carry our child and start this new chapter of life. I loved that we were about to be a little family. I loved being pregnant, I loved watching my belly grow and I loved, I just loved, loved, loved. & all this Love I had nowhere to put, nowhere to give and nowhere to share. When he would ask me ‘why am I crying’ ‘what’s up’ all I could respond was ‘I needed him’. He said to me that’s all you say. At the time I didn’t understand what I even meant, but in that moment; how could you ask me such things; we lost our son; my little baby whose hands & feets looked just like Mummy’s.

It took me over a year to say the words ‘my baby’, before that he was ‘the baby’ or simply, ‘the little one’. I would feel awkward to even say ‘my baby’ for myself and for the people I was speaking to. 

I had a name for him in my heart, but we never decided for certain and at that time he said not to name him, so we didn’t. 

It took me longer to call myself a Mum, I didn’t feel like one and I didn’t get to fulfil them motherly duties to my son. I look back now and I think, maybe that was a duty to me and my souls’ journey, did you do that for Mummy… because you literally saved me. You saved me & filled my whole heart with a Love comparable to absolutely nothing but just about every single little living breathing thing.

‘God sent you an angel from the heavens above’ – lying in bed one night this message just kept coming down to me, so much so I heard it echoing over me. So, I googled the line and I came across a song that I’d never heard-

“God sent me an angel, from the heavens above. God sent me angel to heal my broken heart, from being in love, because all I do is cry, cry – God sent me an angel to wipe the tears from my eyes”– Amanda Perez. 

I took it as a personified message from the skies, and I accepted it. I didn’t know what to call it – a message from the heavens, a divine delivery. I had no idea what type of journey I was on.  It was all very new, a little weird and ‘coincidental’ to me. Either way it felt mystical, supernatural, & I was doing the most to get myself better so maybe it was and really is something that dropped from the skies to gift my souls mind. 

Thank you for Saving Me, Thank you for Choosing Me and Thank You for Loving me.

Your light birthed a whole new me and I Love You. I Love You. I Love You. I Love You. Mummy’s handsome & precious little son.