This is not my usual (if very infrequent) blog entry. But it's something I feel strongly about, and I think it needs saying. If you don't like intimate revelations, look away now.
Since I first discovered, maybe 50 years ago, that Brenda had had a miscarriage a few years after I was born, I've had a disturbing feeling of guilt. Completely illogical, but I believe her stomach muscles collapsed due to the pregnancy, and it became my understanding that that was why she couldn't carry a pregnancy to full term... and also accounted for her 'over-generous' shape (nothing to do with greed, as some less-than-kind trolls have commented). Hence - I felt I held some responsibility for this loss, in my fevered imagination.
In fact, after she died in 1994, my dad told me he believed she had had at least four miscarriages after me... so many, that he wasn't even sure of the number. It is no longer possible to discover whether it was my birth, or any one of those later miscarriages, that caused the muscle collapse. Maybe nowadays something would have been done to prevent further problems - but in the 50s - no.
Just reading tonight about Myleene Klass getting an MBE for her work with miscarriage charities - and I suddenly thought back to Brenda... at least 4 miscarriages? And within a few years of me being born in 1949 - which I know, as I dimly remember her being 'away' a few times when I was young, and I'd go to stay with my Gran and Grandad. I'd never really thought about it before. Who was helping her get through that ordeal then? There were no charities then to support and help her cope with the grief. And it was not discussed ‐ ever. As Klass says: "Anyone who has experienced baby loss will know how personal and difficult it is to vocalise this level of trauma." So much hurt and pain in families in those days was hidden away, unknown, forgotten or ignored by later generations - and in some cases, still is. Away with secrets... no guilt is involved here, only compassion and support for those suffering.
When it was discovered at my first school medical that I'd been born with a 'hole in the heart' (actually the aorta), I was lucky enough to be found a suitably qualified surgeon to do the job - very successfully, thank god, as almost 70 years have passed since. While I was in Tehidy Hospital, Brenda, it turns out, was in Treliske Hospital - having yet another miscarriage - and Father, coming to visit us both, came off his motorbike at Buryas Bridge and smashed up his ankle, ending up in West Cornwall Hospital. So - 6/7 years after my birth, she was still having miscarriages.
What is remarkable to me now, thinking about it, is how this 30 year old, overweight Cornish mum picked herself up after this series of devastating, secret, grief-stricken tragedies, and within 3 years, and while raising a child, threw herself into amateur dramatics, pantomimes, oil painting, running a b&b, managing a pottery business, and then into folk clubs and singing - eventually forging for herself a global musical career representing her country of Cornwall around the world. She could have just subsided into grief and mundane housewifery - but instead she took on life head-on, and with a passion.
I mean - I knew she was remarkable - but I hadn't even taken into account where she was coming from when she began that transformation. My mother was bold, brazen, brave, foolhardy, and bloody brilliant.
God bless her. She was a powerhouse, and I feel very proud and grateful to be her daughter.
"Last year the Department of Health and Social Care announced a package of new measures to "boost the health and wellbeing of women and girls", including a pilot scheme that will see medical intervention for women after every miscarriage."
Bring it on. I wish it had happened years ago.
31/12/2024
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