October 15th is Infant and Pregnancy Loss Day in Gaza too.
On loving racialized men, understanding the connections between birth and trauma and striving for human rights.
Part 1: No Matter What Don’t React
During a routine pregnancy scan scheduled before a trip, I realize the resident in my last appointment has scheduled me for an abdominal ultrasound rather than an obstetric one. Now, not only have I prepared incorrectly, but the radiologist refuses to see me. But I lost too much blood in my last loss, and I do not want to fly without getting this scan done. We beg and plead, I guzzle liquids in preparation and I phone my clinic repeatedly to fix the mistake.
The clinic will not fax the new paperwork over. The radiologist is being belligerent, and I can see the muscles in my husband’s face tighten as he takes care not to increase the volume of his voice. Our success here is predicated on him not being perceived as a threat. We have a short window of time to sort this out before we are asked to leave.
We move rapidly. My husband speaks to the clinic, disappears, comes back, disappears again and returns, swallowing the ground in front of him with his long strides, a form visible in his hand. I don’t know how he has procured the necessary requisition, but I have no time to ask. At the doorway to the examining room, the radiologist glares at him and does not let him come in. In the room, the radiologist grumbles about “you people” under his breath and hurts me, expressing his frustration by applying more force on my body than is needed and glowering the whole time. In between all of this, he tells me gruffly that the baby is looking smaller than it should.
We get through it and we travel. We are away long enough that we have another scan done, and can see that our baby is growing well, and that his heartbeat is strong. The day after our return I end up in the emergency room for a pregnancy unrelated reason and while there, find out that the strong heartbeat we had heard only days previously has stopped. The radiologist who confirms this looks at my husband, looks at my medical history and declares unprompted that we should stop getting pregnant and instead focus on making the pregnancies stick. My husband’s face splits open, his grief raw and visible before disappearing behind his eyes. But we do not have the luxury of only being two people having an experience of loss; it feels like we are being scolded for trying in the first place.
I’ve been thinking about this moment a lot this week. Our miscarriage thereafter was traumatic - our experience with the medical system and doctors in the next few weeks beyond anything I have ever experienced before or since. Still, the experience was better because I didn’t do it alone.
Every news report I've seen this week mentions the number of people killed in Palestine and the number of children. But what is never said is the number of men who have been killed. To date, 3000 people in Gaza have been killed, including more than 1030 children, and 9600 more have been wounded. In that devastating figure are teenagers, young men and women and adults alike with dreams, families, siblings and parents. In that number are brothers and uncles and nephews and husbands and fathers and father-in-laws and cousins and grandparents.
Within that number are whole lineages of men, each life a whole world to the people who love them. As we all collectively strive to end the genocide in Gaza, the men deserve our care too.
Part Two: We don’t know what relentless loss and oppression feels like
I am in Cape Town, about to start a week-long course on Critical Islamic Studies, when I start to miscarry. Afterwards I am in no condition to be near anybody, and so I de-enroll, and spend the week alone for the most part.
I take a car with a stranger who drives me up the edge of a mountain so I can drink cups of tea, journal and have delicate pastries overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I sit for five hours in a hotel with a stunning garden chatting to a tea sommelier and getting bodywork done. I take a steam train alone that climbs up one of the steepest railway lines in South Africa before opening up to vistas of beautiful valleys. I travel for hours alone to a game park to be the stereotypical North American tourist and stare at elephants. I chat with friends and give full range to my feelings.
My previous miscarriages have been horrendous. But this time, because I am away from Canada, because I am on holiday because there are no other demands on my time, I can turn fully towards the loss, and it is not a traumatic experience. I come back to Canada mentally okay.
Both are losses, but they are nowhere near the same type of loss.
One of the books I read during those days in Cape Town was a book called “Once More We Saw Stars” written by a man grieving his two year old daughter who died instantly in a freak accident. His grief and anger is palpable. He is rage-filled and heartbroken. The natural order of things has been upturned and he has had to bury his child. At one point he goes with his wife to New Mexico and they participate in a grief retreat. It takes years of thinking through what has happened, of writing a book, of healing, of doing therapy, of giving focused attention to his grief for it to decrease in intensity.
All grief is sacred, but not everyone gets the same amount of time to grieve, or the same recognition that what they are going through is unspeakable.
I think about this as I watch videos on Instagram of journalists showing us ice cream trucks being used to hold children’s bodies in Gaza. I watch videos of Gazan fathers falling apart in hospitals holding their only children. I see a mother crying recording a video and calling on us for help, because with two newborn twin babies, and two small toddlers around her she cannot evacuate. I see a birthday photo of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six year old boy in Chicago who was stabbed 26 times by his landlord because he is Palestinian.
I see all of this and I think about how my own grief has given me no background on what that kind of grief can feel like. Being able to circle your arms around the thing you grieve, being able to walk away from the things that harm you, these are tremendous gifts that the people of Gaza do not possess. My privilege means I must fight for them harder.
Part Three: Trauma shapes birth
I’m taking a course right now about the holistic impact of interpersonal, community and systems level trauma on birthing people and the impacts of vicarious trauma on doulas. In our first class, our teachers Nkem Ndefo and Mikaela Lynn share with us that the short definition of trauma is that trauma is going through too much, too fast, or having too little for too long. They teach us that trauma affects the individual who experienced the traumatic events or circumstances, their loved ones and their communities immediately, over time, and over generations. It impacts the first responders and service providers who support them, and the adverse effects of trauma can be profound and long-lasting, resulting in diminished functioning and wellbeing, including mental, physical, social, emotional and/or spiritual wellbeing. The impact varies depending on an individual or group’s resources, and past histories.
In our next class, we trace the physical, emotional, mental, behavioural, relational, and spiritual ways trauma shows up in the general population and within the birthing experience. We learn that toxic stress is stress that exceeds one’s coping abilities, that results in a disturbance of thinking, emotions, behaviour. We learn that stress can be anticipatory or reactive, and that anticipatory stress can be worse than actual stress because it is unknown. For the body, it does not matter. We learn that whatever vulnerabilities exist within a person, they are magnified during pregnancy and the birthing process. Birth requires feeling safe.
I think about this class in the days to come as we learn more about what is happening in Gaza. As I watch videos from people like Bisan, a Gazan journalist relating that they feel like they are losing their minds. I think about trauma and this class when I think about Palestinian books such as “Salt Houses by Hala Alyan, “Evil Eye” by Etaf Rum or South African books like “An Imperfect Blessing” by Nadia Davids that sensitively show how trauma transmits across generations and within families.
This newsletter is about hope, and continuing to go forward in the hard times. We are in a pivotal moment right now, a moment where we will look back at ourselves in the decades to come and remember what we did in this moment to raise our voices for the rights of Palestinians for water, for food, for electricity, for life, and how we fought against otherization and dehumanization here at home. Here are some resources below to help.
Part 4: Resources
Deepa Iyer: Figuring out your role in the social change ecoystem
[Offer]: For the rest of October 2023, if you donate $50 or more CAD to Islamic Relief Canada's Palestine Appeal (I've picked this group because there are credible and take donations in Canadian currency) and send me proof, I will send you a year long subscription to this newsletter A Little Bit of Hope. My newsletter is $90 for an annual membership so this is a way to save $$.
Till next time,
Shagufta