Pain Loss and Hope

The first days after a major loss are painful. But you do move on, Melissa Sach told Lee Dunstan.

Melissa Sach was supposed to be 14 weeks pregnant, but an ultrasound revealed that her baby had died some four weeks earlier.

“It’s something you can never prepare for,” says Melissa. “I never thought I’d enter the world of child loss. The pain and fear are overwhelming.

“You go through a range of emotions and immediately begin an endless round of questioning: How could this happen to me? You want to know. And there’s denial: They’re wrong . . . not my baby!” Painful thoughts tumble out endlessly.

In Melissa’s case, her loss was compounded by an inadequate health-care system and she waited a further day-and-a-half for a hospital bed in order to have a curette. Despite wonderful nursing staff, Melissa describes the admission process as “a nightmare,” for there were no beds available.

“This wasn’t considered as ‘an emergency,’” she says. “And I wasn’t in ‘enough pain’ to have any priority. But I had pain, all right—a deep, aching pain in my heart.”

Her husband, Peter, was a “tower of strength.” He went into battle with hospital administration for more than a day to have her admitted, but couldn’t persuade them. It wasn’t until, as Melissa says, she “got angry and put my foot down” that she eventually made it into a ward.

With the procedure imminent, she began to ride an emotional roller-coaster. “On the one hand, I wanted to keep the baby within me because it felt safe, to the other—‘Get this dead thing out of me now!’ That sounds terrible, but unless you’ve experienced this, you’ll never understand the pain and anguish involved, of not being able to keep your baby safe. I felt like a failure.

“I’d been told what to expect [for the future]. But you don’t expect your baby to die; you don’t expect your child to end up an infant mortality statistic. What you must expect is that people will not understand.”

Rather than saying something stupid, Melissa suggests it’s better that people say nothing.
“What you need is for friends just to ‘be there’—a listening ear and warm embrace. After all, death is so hard to understand and accept. Ashley—we gave our child a name—was part of our lives.”

Comforting words fail to mitigate the pain, she says. And although she believes in a resurrection when she will be reunited with Ashley, there is still a huge loss and emptiness now.

“I know I will see my baby again, but that doesn’t stop the pain. I’ll never hold my baby in my arms. I will never dry Ashley’s tears. I will never see those first steps,” she says. “I need to grieve now.”

It’s been some three years since Peter and Melissa lost Ashley. Since then they’ve been through plenty of hard times. They’ve also had two more children, Aleisha and Heath, making four with their older children Stephanie and Cameron.

“God has blessed me,” she says. “It was hard to imagine at the time how I was going to make it through each day. Support from Peter, both our families, our friends and trust in God is what got me through.”
Melissa says the experience strengthened her and she’s been able to help others who’ve experienced such a loss. Helping others, she says, has helped her. “It makes my pain seem worth something.”

Some might wonder how it is possible to love a child who’s been inside you for just 14 weeks, Melissa says. “The answer is yes. It’s a part of you, your life. It will go on being a part of you for the rest of your life—a person who’s suffered such a loss needs to accept and embrace that.

“Each year we remember Ashley by taking balloons down to the park and releasing them. I think that helps, too. And on occasions, I wonder what he or she would’ve been like and looked like. But I know I will find out in heaven.

“Even though I got angry with God and screamed at Him at times, I never doubted His love for me. I think these trials are sent to test us and I’m glad that this has made me stronger. I know whatever may come, God will guide me through. God is my strength and my hope.
“God knows I loved [Ashley],” she says, “and God will dry my tears.”

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