http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wium/local-wium-971957.mp3
Galesburg, IL – I want to be superhero.
Not just any superhero. I don't want to fly or become invisible or walk through walls. And I don't want to help the entire world or even my hometown. But I do want to protect, to rescue, and to offer comfort and hope. And I want to do this for a very specific group of people the mothers of stillborn children.
I haven't always wanted to be a superhero. But one year ago, at barely six months pregnant, I gave birth to my stillborn daughter.
It is difficult to describe this event in my life. To say it was sad, painful, heartbreaking, horrible, life-changing cannot fully capture the experience. It was and is all of these things, but more, indescribably more. The emotional and physical trauma I felt at her birth and have felt every day since is too much to bear at times.
Thanks to a wonderful family, friends, and a good therapist, I have managed to move forward in my life. Some days are like treading through quick sand, clawing my way up through the memories, self-destructive thoughts, and dashed hopes that follow me everywhere I go.
Other days are better I can laugh, hold conversations, be a loving wife, a patient mother, a productive employee. But the line between the good and bad is tenuous. A few words, a photograph, the sight of another baby can send me spiraling back down into grief.
And I know I'm not alone.
Each year in the United States, 30,000 women experience stillbirths, or the loss of their unborn child between 20 weeks and full term. That means 80 women each day must give birth to a baby that is not alive. They must greet their child with tears of sorrow instead of joy, and say goodbye to their hopes and dreams for this child instead of hello.
The superhero in me doesn't want to stop this nightmare from happening it would be hubris to think I could ever prevent the death of a child but I do want to make the aftermath of this most terrible of life's happenings a little easier, a little safer, and a lot more comforting for all involved.
Each time I hear about a stillbirth, I want to don my superhero disguise and fly to the mother's side. I want to guard her front door, answer her phone, manage her Facebook account, intercept her text messages, anything that can shield her from the well-meaning, yet often thoughtless behavior of people.
I want to tell her this sucks. That no matter how many people tell you that "nature takes its course" or that "God has a purpose" or that "everything happens for a reason," that what happened isn't part of any higher plan or purpose. It just happened, and it's awful. And that there are other women out there who know what it's like, who can offer the support physical and emotional that you need, who can show you that you can and will survive.
Essentially, I want to offer her the protection that I didn't have.
I don't think you can prepare for a stillbirth to prepare would be to give up hope, to imagine the worst. But now, looking back, I do wish that we as a society talked about it more.
Maybe my desire to help these women is because birth has become so medical, has left the hands of midwives and women who would pass this knowledge onto other midwives and women. Stillbirths are not rare, but we don't talk about them.
I have told friends that I feel like the freak show I'm the person whose baby didn't live. "I am that thing worse than a cautionary tale: I am a horror story," wrote Elizabeth McCracken in her memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, in which she recounts the stillbirth of her first son. And she got it exactly right.
Yes, we've experienced and lived through a mother's worst nightmare, but we lived. And we hurt. And we want people to understand what we've been through, to sympathize with us, not look down on us in horror or pity.
My heart breaks for the mothers of stillborn children. My heart breaks for anyone who has lost a pregnancy. My heart breaks for my daughter. My heart is broken. But it will heal. And maybe this desire to help others, to swoop into their rescue, is a sign that it is healing, that I will survive and help others to survive as well.
If that's what I need to do if, in the spirit of all superheroes, that's my great responsibility then so be it.
Megan Scott lives in Galesburg with her husband, daughter, and two cats. She works in communications at Knox College.