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One of the great tragedies of tragedy is not knowing how to name your pain.
When I suffered my first ectopic pregnancy, every detail was explained to me by medical professionals. With my husband's hands wrapped protectively around my shoulders, I was informed by the ultrasound staff that I would need to go to the hospital because the pregnancy could not continue. Hours later, through tears so thick that I could not make myself out in the emergency room's washroom mirror, I ran over and over the nurse's insistence that I must be in substantial physical discomfort, although there was none. Then I sat on the edge of the bed with family and friends huddled silently in the corners and signed papers that exempted the hospital from liability were something to go wrong during the surgery. It was a deluge of information that no one should ever have to process.
As the anesthesia mask was pulled over my face, wet with tears, I whispered, "I'm sorry. I am so sorry," and the bright overhead lights became hazy.
I was sent home with typed advice on dull, green pamphlets and given insistent instructions at every follow-up blood test. By the culmination of the ordeal, I felt like a verifiable expert on ectopics.
But I wasn't.
I was choking on my own ignorance of how to travel through the emotional pain. And there was no one who could explain how to make that journey.
I searched bookstores and libraries for any hint of literature that might touch on pregnancy loss, having given up early on trying to find anything illuminating the specifics of ectopics. I wanted to armour myself in pages dedicated to the stories of people like me; to build a stronghold around my heart of leather-bound covers and binding adhesive. I wanted a word to pin my sadness on. But I found nothing.
When friends and family asked after me, I was grateful for their questions, although this often came out in a gush of despair that left them as spent as it left me. When I met strangers with whom I sensed an interest in such matters, I would briefly outline my tale and then nod solemnly as they returned my small confidence with an equivalent one of their own. Slowly, there began a softening of my resignation that I was alone.
Online, my search for kinship was an overgrown labyrinth. Manoeuvring my way between expired forum threads and outdated internet links doubled my frustration. The stories of loss I found posted by other people fuelled my grief. The resources – which, thankfully, have since improved greatly – were thin, uncomforting places that left me wanting so much more.
Which brings me to "bairnlorn."
I needed to have a name for my plight – to describe the harrowing state of being a parent who has lost a child. I needed to define myself by my loss, as might an orphan or a widow. My heart demanded a title for my pain, for how else was I to address it?
But, at least in English, no such word exists.
There were a myriad of websites echoing my pursuit and numerous conversations that noted the linguistic omission. Many people offered suggestions and I spent a few sleepless nights weighing the semantic and sentimental accuracy of such proposals, all the while utterly disheartened by the lack of a simple term.
I was not placated by the assurance that such a word does not exist because the hurt is too great to name. That view only reinforced the impossible weight that pressed down on me every morning I stretched into consciousness. I pondered more thoughtful offerings that sought to classify the agony I felt, words such as "ungraced" and "vilomah." Yet I was never able to make them curl up in the space where my baby should have been growing.
But I have finally named my torment. Bairnlorn. Child-lost.
For me, this is the right word. It fills my mouth with both the sacred and the familiar. There is reverence and history, understanding and grief, nuance and identity all tied up in those nine letters. I don't care that I invented it and that I will always have to explain what it means when I speak it in conversation. It works for me. It is one more stone lifted off my soul and laid gently upon the earth – a rock for me to stand on as I continue to climb my way out of the jagged pit I fell in 6 1/2 years ago.
In February, 2011, I became bairnlorn. Yes.
I am a bairnlorn mother with a wounded heart that is bent on healing. Absolutely.
My infertility journey eventually had a happy ending. My 13-month-old son is asleep in the next room as I write this account. But the road from that first glimpse of blood and the gut punch that told me something was wrong, to being able to lay my son down in his crib without compulsively checking on him every 15 minutes was the cobbled street of an ancient pilgrimage. I came away dirty and bruised and scarred. I stitched guilt and grief into the pack of my wanderings and for years it never occurred to me to put it down.
I was, and always will be, bairnlorn.
But I feel lighter with that acknowledgment. Creating this word has finally allowed me to name my pain. It has enabled me to cease my wayfaring and set down my load, to stretch and turn my face upward, to wave and say, "Goodbye. I'll see you again, my loves."
Jennifer Pownall lives in Port Coquitlam, B.C.