When life, in the days of our greatest happiness, slips away from under our feet, we find ourselves in a terrain that looks like a crossroads. The right one - with all the street we passed through and the one we're turning into. In the past, we leave smiles, joys, and hope. We carry with us tears, disbelief and again – hope.
Hope is what always lifted our interlocutor, Jelena Miletić from Podgorica, up from the bottom, so she says. But when she lost her baby eight months into her pregnancy in August 2014, everything stopped. She was only 26 years old and had her life ahead of her. But, she admits, her eyes were no longer looking ahead.
"My story is so similar to the stories of many mothers who have experienced such an event. And later, after everything that happened to me, I met women who had gone through the same thing as me and we were amazed at how much we were in the same situations, how much we had the same feelings, how much we thought about the same things. When I found out I was pregnant a little after Christmas in 2014, I was already a mom. To a boy who was two years old at the time. Today it's my six-year-old, he's starting school soon. I believed that my new pregnancy would be as calm as the first one - everything was orderly, school-like, controlled and without panic and nervousness. I was happy and completely calm. That's how it was until the sixth month, when the problems simply started, without cause and it seemed, insurmountable", says Jelena, who didn't even know there was a problem, because, she admits, she felt perfectly fine. However, the ultrasound showed the opposite.
"That control examination at the Health Center, which I thought was routine, started very badly. My blood pressure was quite high, and the baby was a little behind in growth. I have an appointment in two weeks, so if all goes well, there will be no need for hospitalization. I was scared. I was terrified. But I went home and listened to my baby's every movement. It was a difficult mission, full of tension. I didn't sleep, because of fear. Pregnant women should not do this. But I couldn't do it any other way," says Jelena. After two weeks, everything was as it should be, explained the doctor. The pressure was still high, but Jelena was sent home to rest and enjoy her pregnancy. At 33 weeks, she realizes that something is wrong.
"Until that 33rd week, I felt perfectly fine. But then I started to get more tired, I had fainting spells, I was lethargic. I endured all that for three days, and then I went to the doctor. I knew something was wrong. I no longer felt the real movements of my baby, only some movements that I still sometimes feel to this day. I guess they come out of memory, just to remind me. That's why the sentence that the doctor said as soon as she started the ultrasound examination was not a shock to me. At least that's how it seemed to me. 'I can't hear the baby's heart here'. How, how? I wondered in my head, and for everyone else I was mute, without a voice. She muttered that she would give me directions to the hospital, that she would see me tomorrow, that I should go home and pack. All some technical stuff, something that goes without saying. Not a trace of consolation, explanation, any lie, I don't know. The nurse instructed me and said to rest, that I would need strength. Oh, how right she was. Today, she is no longer among the living, and I often think of her," Jelena recalls her hell. The way to the hospital, going home, he says, is terribly foggy. She remembers calling her parents, saying that sentence that she still didn't believe herself.
"Everything that happened next, according to the doctors, went like clockwork. I went to the hospital, they examined me, confirmed that my child was no longer alive, gave me a sedative, put me in an apartment, away from other moms whose babies are still moving in their bellies. Oh, how grateful I was to them for that! I spent that night asleep, in some madness between sleep and waking, scared and excited, and completely numb. Everyone was so nice to me this morning. And even the most notorious gynecologist at the Clinical Center was so wonderful and patient. They told me that I will give birth naturally, because, God willing, I will have a third birth, so "let's not waste a caesarean section", I will need it. I was induced, it hurt, it lasted ten hours, and then I gave birth. Just like that, one voltage and done. I haven't seen my baby. I didn't even want to then. Today, I deeply regret it," says Jelena through tears. The doctor said that the baby is fine, that there are no deformities. That should have sounded like a comfort.
"That was indeed a consolation, but a weak one. I think that in our health care system, women who experience this are completely neglected. They fight alone. There is no support, no psychologist, no conversation. Everything is the same as in a normal birth, except for the 'Congratulations!' And that is unacceptable. Because these things are horrible, so stressful and painful that they mark you for life. Half an hour later, while I was shaking under a blanket on a moving table and my husband was trying to comfort me without saying a word, my sister approached us with a questionnaire. They asked us if we wanted them to bury the child and if we wanted an autopsy. Just half an hour from giving birth. I didn't know what I wanted," says Jelena. She has no advice for women going through the same thing, she admits.
Do not remain empty-hearted
"I don't have any advice, I have a request. A request that they overcome themselves in those few minutes and ask to see their baby. I know that doctors in our country do not advise it, maybe they don't allow it, I don't know, but that look, maybe even a touch and a kiss, later it will save their soul. I really believe that. I have talked to women who have had a similar or the same experience and they all think the same. This way, you are left with empty hands, an empty heart that does not heal. You feel that you owe something to your baby, that you denied her something she was entitled to. And that's a double whammy. And our health care system needs to do something for the women going through all this. To try to help them, not just stare blankly at the wall of the hospital room before and after childbirth", concludes our interlocutor, as she says, a mother who has never seen her baby.
"Never with the eyes. Only with the heart," adds Jelena.
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