IAB Australia has partnered with The Women in Programmatic Network (TWIPN) to launch the Seat at the Table Series. The series will dive into the personal stories and professional perspectives of those from the local advertising community, and give these role models a seat at the table to share their story. Each article will feature a different topic and guest speaker.
We’ve taken a different approach for this special issue in honour of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day (October 15th). Instead of our typical interview format, we are sharing the anonymous personal story of an individual from The Women in Programmatic Network community on her experience with the early stages of carrying a pregnancy and experiencing pregnancy loss while navigating her work commitments. While her account is not intended to represent a universal experience, it is intended to shine a light on aspects that aren’t talked about widely but do have a profound impact on how women experience work while going through a huge health event. With that in mind, this piece has content warnings for pregnancy loss/miscarriage and fertility issues. Please read with care if these are sensitive topics for you.
Our hope is that this story will bring greater awareness of the need for miscarriage leave for Australian families, cultivate more empathy to women (and men) who have endured the devastation of pregnancy loss and how to best support in these circumstances, as well as a sense of connection for those who have personally encountered the same heartbreak.
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I was on holiday overseas when I found out I was pregnant. Under the beating hot sun of the northern hemisphere summer I made vague excuses for not drinking alcohol with family and friends, ate as much watermelon as I could get my hands on and improvised fashion choices to counteract the endothermic reaction of a body in overdrive to sustain a new life.
This was the fun bubble my partner and I with a handful of family stayed in – a secret shared during our vacation and that we would continue to hold onto as we returned to work in Australia. This wasn’t to uphold any superstition or tradition. It was a measure to guard our hearts if things did not progress as they should, but also an attempt to not disrupt the fine balance of our work life and our personal life.
I had been a bit naive about this. Disruption seemed unavoidable for me, even when things were going well. In fact, it seems that if things are going well, then disruption is a feature and not a bug.
Re-entry to work was a contrast between me and my spouse. His work life picked up right where he left off. As a head of department in the business I work with, I needed to jam in blood tests, ultrasounds and obstetrician (OB) appointments around getting up to speed with emails, handle back-to-back meetings, business announcements and quarterly planning meetings. Like the supportive spouse he is and the involved dad he is determined to be, my partner happily joined me on those appointments where he could. But they were always optional for him and he didn’t carry the mental load of needing to remember to schedule those appointments, when/if to fast before a blood test, when to drink 750ml of water before the ultrasound, and what paperwork to chase down before the OB appointment.
Back in the office with my team, I shared the news with a handful of close colleagues since they would be affected by my absences for appointments more than others. It also felt like a sensible thing in case something happened to me while at the office and I required urgent medical attention. Even at this early stage, I could feel the emotional wear and tear at the edges of work. The way I needed to attend to my pregnancy as if I do not work, and work as if I am not pregnant, was a preview of the tightrope I would soon walk as a career-driven mother.
There was the frequent tactical pause at my desk in the middle of a task to decide if I needed to make a rush for the bathroom as nausea moved through me. I was careful to double check that every sensitive medical appointment in my calendar was set to private (and felt self-conscious that too many items in my calendar were set to private). More than ever before, I had to over communicate with work mates when I was held up at the doctors and would need to move a meeting. While I didn’t want to rush through this pregnancy, I was already holding on by a thread at 7 weeks and wishing we could get to 12 weeks and have the news out in the open.
And then, a follow-up ultrasound at 9 weeks showed no growth from the last. The heartbeat was a blip and not the gallop I’d heard before. I noticed my symptoms fade over the subsequent days. My already guarded hopes were dashed.
This was by no means my first pregnancy loss. But 9 weeks was the furthest I’ve ever carried a pregnancy. The 6 months before this pregnancy alone were marked by losses of a couple of chemical pregnancies and labelled by my OB as “late periods''. At the time, that felt dismissive. But, with hindsight, it’s perhaps reasonable for the size of their impact on the way I lived my life and how I experienced their loss.
In many ways, I was reaching new milestones with this pregnancy. This allowed my hope to grow and shine through a little more each day and I think it was noticeable to those around me.
I took a half-day of sick leave to absorb the impact of this news. Soon my body would realise this pregnancy wasn’t viable and its release would be brutal both physically and emotionally. I had no timeline to work with. No action I could take except to give myself over to nature.
If you knew me, you’d know how I struggled with that limbo. The notion of resting on hope as my only strategy and having to be passive was unacceptable to me. I called my OB to ask for average timelines. I plotted contingencies so work could keep going if I had to be away. I researched preparation and recovery times for potential surgical interventions.
And then, on a Saturday afternoon, things started to proceed as I knew they eventually would. My OB’s guidance was to present to my local emergency department (ED), and I did that. Once there, I encountered a 7-hour wait during which I had a couple of blood draws before I was taken to an ED bed. While I waited, sitting cross-legged on the bed in the cocoon of my ED bay, enjoying some privacy after hours in the very public waiting room, I pressed a hand over my heart and one on my stomach. I closed my eyes, bowed my head and whispered a mourner's prayer over and over. I wouldn’t call myself a prayerful person and my religion does not require us to mourn the unborn. But it felt like what I needed to do for some serenity and strength because I thought I was on the precipice of what would become concrete action to end this pregnancy.
As it turned out, I was nowhere near crossing that threshold.
A couple of hours waiting in the ED bed yielded a conversation at 3am on a Sunday to come back that same afternoon for an ultrasound. The ultrasound led to a confirmation of my miscarriage, a prescription for strong pain relief, a referral to the hospital’s early pregnancy unit, (which was only open business hours Monday to Friday) and a medical certificate to take the full week off.
And once again my work life butted up against my personal life and my need to manage a major health event. I struggled to accept that I would need that whole week off. Being blessed with a strong immune system meant I was basically never sick and never had to put parts of my life on hold before. I struggled to accept needing the pain medication and thought mostly of how it would make me drowsy and basically useless in a work context.
I struggled to accept that what was already two days of hospital visits and consults would expand into a then-unknown amount of time to get an action plan for managing this miscarriage. While being grateful for the access to healthcare that we have in this country, I also found myself wondering “how could this be the case for something that happens to 1 in 6 pregnancies in Australia?” This is what exacerbated my grief. I was stuck waiting for a human-made process to catch up with what Mother Nature had already put into action.
I had mentally and emotionally prepared myself for the loss almost a week before it came. But experiencing this health system where I encountered the dark comedy of four separate, lovely, but misguided, healthcare workers acting as if they’re the first to break the news to me of my miscarriage made it hard for me to feel closure, and I was so ready to end this chapter.
Eventually the physical part of my miscarriage did end. My husband and I focused on piecing ourselves back together emotionally. We took as many days as we needed off work when we needed them and let tears flow whenever they started to burst through. We returned to our hobbies, we talked about what happened with the handful of family and friends we felt comfortable sharing with and eventually that circle widened as we adjusted to this reality.
We consoled ourselves with the belief that someday a different pregnancy will have a different outcome.
At work, my manager was kind enough to not pry when I took that initial half day. And knowing when I told them I’d need a whole week they wouldn’t have forced me to talk about it, I did still feel the need to offer a tactful explanation for the size of disruption it was to the business. I struggled to vocalise it because I hadn’t let them in on what was happening in the first place. I knew I would only be met with empathy and support in the same way I would treat any of my colleagues/direct reports and yet, I still felt guilt for this affecting my work life.
I’m not sure I would do anything differently, however. I share this experience only to illuminate to the industry a path many before me have quietly walked and many after me will, unfortunately, tread in similar silence. I hope those who came before me find some validation of their experience in these words. I hope those who come after me see a clearer way forward armed with the knowledge of what I’ve shared here, and some feel strong enough to not move in silence.
With the benefit of some time and distance from this experience, I’ve come to realise that when you’re in the middle of a journey, it’s hard to know its purpose. When you are action-oriented, it’s hard to hang everything on hope alone. But I’ve built a resolve to continue balancing my professional job with my personal job in pursuit of this goal. I must stay the course in both worlds and believe that I can continue to perform at the standard needed in my profession and in my family life, that I will deliver a soul, a song of joy, into this world.
There is no right way or wrong way for an individual to move through this. The only right thing in this situation is when a woman faces this experience, they are given the same grace as I experienced in the workplace.
I’m sure I’m not sharing anything groundbreaking here, but my closing affirmation for anyone going through this is: Sick leave is there for you to use, and it is safe to take. I hope over time we see progress towards formal leave policies for miscarriage and pregnancy loss so there is no question of women taking the time they need to heal.
If you need support for pregnancy loss please refer to these resources:
- SANDS: https://www.sands.org.au or their 24 hour support line: 1300 072 637
- Miscarriage Australia: https://miscarriageaustralia.com.au
- Beyond Blue: https://www.beyondblue.org.au