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‘It’s not your fault.’ The extraordinary pain of an ordinary miscarriage by Maggie O'Farrell


‘It’s not your fault.’ The extraordinary pain of an ordinary miscarriage.

By Maggie O'Farrell
(iStock)
iStock
“It was nothing you did,” the nurse says. “It’s not your fault.”
I am silent. I had not thought it might be. I look again at the image of the baby on the screen. There it is. Sitting up in its dark cave, as if waiting for something, as if on its best behavior.
If I sit straight, it seems to be saying, no one will notice.
I know how it should be, how it should look. This is my second pregnancy. I know the heartbeat should be there, flashing and flashing like a siren. So when the radiologist says that he’s sorry, the baby is dead, I already know. But I carry on staring at the monitor because there is some frail, furled part of me that is hoping there has been a mistake, that the heartbeat might suddenly appear, that the scanning machine might roll further and there it will be. I can’t look away, even when the radiologist starts talking again. I want to burn the image of that tiny, ghost-pale form into my retina. I want to remember it, to honor its existence, however short. Continue Reading

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