We have a pet Axolotl. He is dying. Yesterday I thought he had finally gone up to that big Axolotl swamp in the sky, but no… he was just 
pretending to be dead, or perhaps he did die and came back to life. I don’t know. Either way he was lifeless but then magically started moving around.
Between the ‘oh crap he is dead’ and the ‘oh crap he is alive’ were a lot of tears.
From me. No one else, just me.
Yeap, the 31 year old was crying, while the 4, 7, 7 & 10 year olds were not crying.
Upon realising he was ‘dead’ I began to plan his Axolotl funeral in my head. Where would I bury him? What plant would I buy to put on top of him? I don’t have much luck with normal plants so maybe something non-planty would be better? Perhaps just a homemade wooden cross with his name on it? Perhaps one of those cute flowers on a stick that you can put in the garden? A little figurine? I imagined digging the hole, I imagined placing the Zaxolotl (his name is Zac, aka Zaxolotl) in the hole and saying a couple of silent words before covering him with dirt and a plant/or something else/etc.
But then I was crying for a whole different reason.
My four babies I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to. Two babies that were classified as ‘medical waste’ and two that were flushed down the toilet in amongst the mess that comes with a miscarriage. Jayden, Micah, Zhavier and Addison. The four babies that were with me for incredibly short amounts of time (10w4d, 5w4d, 8w0d & 6w1d respectively) but left a lifelong mark on my soul.
I have always felt I didn’t get closure from any of my losses because I didn’t have a proper chance to say goodbye. I didn’t have a chance to put any to rest in a meaningful way.
Micah and Addison were lost to early miscarriages… I think I saw both of them on the toilet paper but cannot really be sure. If you have had an early miscarriage you will understand why. I did silently say goodbye both times I thought I was looking at the under-developed baby on the toilet paper… but then I flushed the toilet paper down the toilet. Something that has always made me feel guilty.
Jayden was lost to abortion at 10w4d. Prior to my procedure the doctor asked if I would like the ‘products of conception’ to take home with me and I told them yes, yes I did. I was too weak to stand up for myself and bring my baby into the world, the least I could do was put him to rest. I had no idea how I would do it, but I would. After my procedure the doctor came to talk to me and when I asked where my baby was he looked a me unsympathetically and shrugged “Oh sorry,” he said “I forgot you wanted the POC to take home.”. Yes. I did want my baby to take home with me. The way the doctor shrugged it off broke my heart. He didn’t care. Then again, he also told me that after my abortion I would feel ‘a sense of relief’ and ‘life could go on as normal’. Oh, how wrong that man was.
Zhavier was lost at 8w0d, five days before Gabrielle’s first birthday, through an ectopic pregnancy. After what could only be called shoddy care by my LMC (in the way she didn’t even consider ectopic pregnancy, when everything pointed to that) I ended up at my GP for spotting. I was sent up to the hospital for an anti-D shot (I am rhesus negative), they did a blood test, I had to come back the next day for a scan and another blood test, then the next day for another blood test and possible ‘exploratory surgery’. I ended up having that exploratory surgery, the result of which was the removal of my right fallopian tube, and my baby. Again I had asked to be given the ‘POC’ as they so medically referred to my 
baby. Again they ‘forgot’.
And now here I am, close to seven years on from my last loss, still grieving for the babies I never had a chance to say goodbye to. I know that my grieving for four babies lost in the first trimester probably seems over the top, perhaps a bit stupid, but I cannot control how I am, I cannot control how my brain works. I am an emotional person by nature and no matter how hard I try to stop these feelings they never completely disappear. I would love to have a place to go to ‘be with’ my babies. A little plant to sit in front of. A cross to sit in front of. A tiny little corner of the garden where I could go to contemplate, to think, to reflect, to miss my babies.
Closure. I need closure, and I don’t know that I will ever get the complete closure I need. There will always be that tiny part of me that can’t get over the fact two of my babies were seen as mere ‘medical waste’ and were disposed of. It seems so wrong.
Emma Knits 