The second time - Chronicles of a miscarriage

The second time, you are prepared.

When you realize you are pregnant, you feel no rejoicing in your soul, only anxiety.

In fact you feel terrified, because you know the odds are real: between 1 in 3 and 1 in 5 pregnancies end in miscarriages in the first term. It's no longer a theoretical figure, because you've been through this before. It's not theoretical - it's potentially real. 

So you detach yourself emotionally. You say, "OK, I'm pregnant. But this pregnancy may or may not stick". You do not use the term "baby" in your mind. Ever. You dare not speak to the little one or call it loving names. You dare not feel excited. You dare not discuss baby names or look at baby clothes. You subsequently feel guilty for not bonding with it like you did for the first one.

Still, when you see a bright red spot of blood, you downplay it. Sometimes a little bleeding during pregnancy is normal. And this stinging pain in your right side, well, this can happen too and it isn't necessarily bad. Nothing to worry about. Right? You book an appointment with the doctor anyway. Your hormone levels indicate you are pregnant, but you already knew that. Another test is scheduled in a week to see if they are rising as normal.

When you start bleeding again and the swollen-ness of your breasts suddenly decreases, you just know. Even though you were prepared for this, you cry your heart out. And when the second blood test shows levels are dropping, you are not surprised. You resign yourself to the fact that you had a second miscarriage.

This time, it hurts more physically. And you feel angry. "Why is my body doing this to me?" 

There is no answer.

You turn to God and you cry out, "The Lord is my Shepherd... even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me."

But by the grace of God go I.

Living with high-functioning autism: a vlog.

Vlog.

I made this video for a friend who is a 7th grade teacher in the US. She asked me to record a personal testimonial for her class. I figured I might as well share it with a wider audience.

This small great loss

I have long hesitated to write about this, because it is deeply personal and painful. But it is time.

In early November 2017, I noticed a change in my body that I had never experienced before. My breasts felt bigger and swollen. I have known my breasts since I was 16, and they had never felt like this. My mother had told me years before that she knew she was pregnant, not because of a missed period or morning sickness, but from the way her breasts felt.

My period wasn't due yet, so I had to wait about a week. I woke up very early that Saturday morning, and just couldn't wait anymore: I took a home pregnancy test. It came back positive. I remember climbing back into bed and whispering to my partner, "Are you awake?"

The following week, I booked an appointment with my doctor, and she confirmed I was 6 weeks pregnant. I was overjoyed.

We had been trying for a baby for a long time, so you can imagine how excited we both felt. It was difficult not to get carried away. My partner expressed that he felt joyful and serene about being a father. We chose a boy's name and a girl's name. I talked to my baby a lot. I called it Peanut. I told them we were so happy they were finally here. I told them about about my partner, about my friends, about my work, about my family. I loved them already.

The following week, I noticed some light spotting, so I called my gynecologist. He reassured me that it was very common, nothing to worry about. So I put that nagging little fear at the back of my mind.

On the Thursday evening, I went to the bathroom. There was a lot of blood in my underwear. I started muttering, "No, no, no, no, no, no" over and over. When I wiped myself, there was something on the paper that wasn't a blot clot. It was no bigger than a grain of rice.

I had seen enough embryo development photographs to know what I was looking at. I knew I had just lost my baby.

I booked an appointment with the gynecologist. He was again very reassuring, saying bleeding does not equal miscarriage, and dismissed what I had seen. "Women always think they see something". There was nothing on the ultrasound, and he still was reassuring - at such an early stage, it's hard to see anything. Better wait for the blood test results. I clung to his words, to hope, but deep down, I knew. And sure enough, my pregnancy hormone levels were dropping dramatically. My gynecologist downplayed it, using words such as "chemical pregnancy", "a small miscarriage", "too early to call it a real pregnancy anyway". Maybe he was trying to be comforting, but it hurt even more to hear my grief dismissed in such a way.

I cried for days. My partner was at loss, because he hadn't felt it all happen in his body. To him, it felt more like another failed attempt. But to me, it was devastating.

The first time a friend of mine referred to my miscarriage as "the loss of your child", I cried with relief. What I had seen that day, no bigger than a grain of rice - my child. I felt my grief was finally acknowledge for what it was.

Weeks passed, then months. I reached what would have been the 12-week mark, the moment when the miscarriage risk is supposed to decrease, the moment most people choose to make the happy announcement. And I cried and cried. I still cry now. I miss my pregnant body. Especially, I struggle with newborns and very small babies. Two of my colleagues recently gave birth and joyfully brought their child to work - I am happy for them, but I simply cannot look at, let alone hold, their baby. I do not know how much longer this will last.

What has amazed me even since is the amount of women who have told me these simple words: "It's happened to me too". My mother, my grandmother, friends, colleagues, refugee ladies. I had never realized it was so common. Between 1 in 3 and 1 in 5 in the first term - but this means nothing until it happens to you, and until you hear your sisters tell you how they suffered the same loss. And yet, not one really talks about it. Everyone tells you how how wonderful it is to carry another life inside you, how amazing it is to be a mother (and stories of how exhausting it is, and how it takes over your life!). But no one warns of you of this terrible grief you are actually quite likely to experience. No one tells you that you might suffer a loss that may be tiny in size, but leaves a huge hole in your heart.

This is why I am writing this. We should not hide it and pretend it never happened, pretend that the baby we started to love never existed at all. We should be able to talk about this and grieve together as sisters.

I put my baby in a small box, to bury in our garden.

Why I went to see Black Panther twice

*Beware:  spoilers*

I was really excited about seeing Black Panther, and when I did, last Monday, I loved it.

I loved the issues it addressed such as, "Should a wealthy country shut itself in to protect its way of life, or should it help others?" It touched my heart for very obvious reasons - after all, I work among refugees.

I felt encouraged to see so many positive, funny, smart, powerful (in the good sense of the term, not in the political sense) Black male AND female characters. I loved seeing those female warriors kicking ass!

I loved seeing what *could* have happened if African countries had been able to benefit from their own natural resources and build national wealth from it, rather than having it robbed from them by colonialists.

I felt moved by the villain's storyline and felt sympathetic to a lot of his grievances (even though I disagreed with his methods to try and put things to rights). He was a very human and relatable character, I thought. And when he said, "the world will be reborn, and this time, WE'll be on top", I felt deeply the pain of a people who have been oppressed, enslaved, exploited and discriminated against, not to mention having seen their resources plundered (including by my own country) - and yet I felt a pang as I thought, "As long as someone is on top, it means someone is at the bottom". And so what the villain wanted to create, no matter what his initial motivations were, was another injustice.

I loved how, when Jabari leader M'Baku is offered the chance to take the Black Panther's power by taking the Heart-Shaped Herb, he chooses to help T'Challa instead, when he could so easily grab power for himself.

And especially, I loved hearing the king of Wakanda's speech to the United Nations at the end:

Wakanda will no longer watch from the shadows. We can not. We must not. We will work to be an example of how we, as brothers and sisters on this earth, should treat each other. Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another, as if we were one single tribe.

So I decided to take African asylum seekers to see it as a treat.

And then the debate begun as one of my colleagues argued that only taking African people see it was unfair. Well, yes and no. We are organizing special activities on Women's Day, for example... and you could argue that's unfair. But the reason we do it it to do something nice for people who have been oppressed one way or another. I thought this movie was uplifting and positive for the African community. We ended up going with 14 African people of both sexes (from Guinea, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Angola, Senegal), one Iraqi guy and a young Albanian girl. They loved the film. They giggled when T'Challa freezes upon seeing his ex-girlfriend Nakia. They roared with laughter when Shuri points to T'Challa's sandals, asking, "What are those???" They loved it when Agent Ross tries some whitesplaining on M'Baku, the Jabari leader, who proceeds to silence him by barking at him, together with his guards. They even applauded when the movie ended.

On the way back, I was driving the van and I remained silent. I could have told them why I took them to see this film. I could have told them what I loved about it, what my favourite moments were. But I decided not to. Because it was their film, their moment. I wanted to give them ownership of it and not rob it from them by putting my white words and emotions on their experience.

So I listened to them chat excitedly about it, discussing which countries and tribes inspired the costumes. And then, one of the guys said, "That was good." His friend approved, "Yeah, that was good". And in that moment, I felt filled with joy, as when two other guys came up to me before going back to their rooms, saying, "Thank you for taking us. It was your idea, thank you."

#OneTribe