It was hard telling people on the first day. Neither Blake nor I could get the words out without breaking into tears. We talked about telling no one but that wasn’t acceptable either; so many friends and family were excited for us that they had to be told. We also didn’t want anyone to innocently ask us how the baby was, because we didn’t want to be confronted with repeating the story in the spot, nor did we want to put someone in a position where they felt awful for asking. But we weren’t ready to announce anything on FB; it felt weird to do that before I left hospital. At the time, we weren’t sure when we would make such a post anyway.

It got to the point where we just had to ask for help. There were some people we knew we wanted to know first. Blake, his sister, and I more or less told a few people via an assortment of messenger apps. We asked those that could to please spread the news to others in each of our friendship groups. It would spare us the pain of telling people while making sure our news was known. Blake bore the brunt of this job, because I was too scared to get on the phone again after speaking to my family.

I remember when I was apologizing to a friend for tasking them with such an awful thing. It was helpful to us, I told myself, but also painful for them, except that maybe they could feel useful. I knew that’d help me were I in their position. But I actually wondered if I could quickly organize a phone tree that got texted out to the larger groups, that way everyone only had to tell 2 people. Share the load, you know?

It hadn’t even hit lunchtime after the miscarriage and somehow that thought made my tired heart smile. In a crisis, I still think about organizing people. It felt weirdly in-character for me and it was kind of reassuring. (I didn’t actually do up a full phone tree because I was too tired, but I did start mapping out the first few layers in my head.)

There were some people we didn’t tell on the day, simply because for certain friendship groups, we couldn’t just message them and instead would have to call up and tell them specifically. And we were too tired past a certain point to do that.

By the time we got home, we decided we would post on FB within a few days, so we knew everyone else who knew would be told that way. We spent the next day composing our announcement, and if you’re here, you’ve seen it.

With all the care we took in sharing our bad news, I made the mistake of thinking that the hospital would take care of disseminating the news of the miscarriage to my primary healthcare provider (my GP). While I was in hospital, I even called my GP office to cancel my pre-arranged antenatal appointments and, while doing so, asked the receptionist to please inform my GP about the miscarriage. They agreed to do so.

So, I turned up at the GP exactly a week after the miscarriage to get a physical checkup. I was already struggling with the day and with returning to the GP clinic for the first time since my last appointment, which had been about how well my pregnancy seemed to be progressing. Thankfully, Blake was with me.

The GP had no idea I’d lost the baby. Neither the receptionist nor the hospital had notified her. There was no discharge summary from the hospital, no message from the administrative staff. And so I was suddenly caught completely off-guard, having to tell the whole story out loud for the first time.

I was a mess. I would’ve been worse if Blake hadn’t been there. He was upset that I was put in such a position and the GP was visibly distraught as well. I think she was both sad for my loss and sad that she had inadvertently asked me to go through everything again. It was the exact situation we’d been trying to prevent from happening, for our own sakes.

It took me the better part of the morning to calm back down. Once I’d managed it, the anger settled in. After all the painstaking efforts we went through to keep us from being put in such an awful spot, it was in fact the healthcare system that let us down. The handing over of care is part of their actual job (I know, because I work for a team that is very good at handover), and someone somewhere along the line fucked up.

I hadn’t yet given feedback to the hospital because it still felt too soon. What a pity, I say to myself sarcastically. Because now, in addition to the Trashbag Sonographer, you better believe I’m going to let them fucking have it.