Dead Babies & Brutal Fuckin Honesty…

• This is an old post from Live More Awesome which had a massive reach and impact and that I am proud of, so I am reposting it here.

I have just spent the past 5 hours in the hospital waiting for my partner Libby to get out of surgery. She had a D&C. What does D&C stand for? I’ve got no idea, all I know is that they basically suck the baby out of her.

Libby has just had her second missed miscarriage. Even though they were five years apart, they both happened at the six and a half week mark. The doctors give no reason for this to happen and most importantly, they say that there is no reason that it should happen again. It is very common.

My friend Mark is having a baby and he said to me that he told his friends before the obligatory 13 week mark. He said that he did this because if something happened to the baby he didn’t want him and his partner going through it alone. I decided that he was 100% right.

This was the first time I ever got anyone pregnant. We were trying and it happened right away. I was very very happy. I told all the people that I love.

At our 8 week scan the lady told us that the fetus was only 6 weeks old. We knew it should be 8. Libby did blood tests that were somewhat inconclusive and it was the second scan a week and a half later that showed it still hadn’t grown past 6 weeks. Our baby was dead.

Unfortunately the ordeal doesn’t end after the two weeks of waiting, now there are consults and operations to have in order to remove it. This is traumatic.

Libby has done amazingly well. She has been so strong, but she has also had times when she’s fallen apart. That’s ok too.
I have done amazingly well in showing her as much love and support as possible. What people also need to remember is that this hurts not only the woman, but the man as well. I cried almost as much as her because this child was made of love from it’s inception.
What really helped was having all the love and support from my family and our friends, because we had talked about it. What else really helped was the doctor telling us just how common it is. Very. Because Libby has started talking about it, her friends have started telling her their miscarriage stories as well. As it turns out, a few of her friends have had almost EXACTLY the same experiences, talking about them together has made them both feel better.

This is why this article is important. Depression is something that we don’t talk about enough. Events like this can cause situational depression, not only babies that don’t make it, but babies that do. Post-natal depression is a major issue that gets swept under the rug. Like I said, apparently miscarriages are VERY common. I know a wonderful woman who has had three children but also had about 10 miscarriages. This is not something that is spoken about in the mainstream media, social media or most importantly, with friends. This is simply another occasion where the social taboo takes over and we feel like we have to ‘harden up’ and deal with it ourselves.

Part of the reason that this is the case is that people ‘don’t know what to say’… Here is Libby’s advice… Just say hello. Send love. Tell them that you’re thinking about them. That’s all it takes to make someone feel like they are not alone.

About six months ago at a talk I was doing, a woman asked me, “Jimi, how do you inspire people?” I stopped, thought about it for a second and replied…

Brutal fuckin honesty.

A problem shared is a problem halved. When I tell the story of my depression, my relationships and my experiences openly and honestly, people come up to me and say, “me too.” The same thing has happened with Libby. This is because we all think that we have to be super people all the time. We tend to think that we’re the only ones that have problems, we’re not. If anyone tells you different they’re straight up lying.

Life is amazing, but it also sucks. There will be times in your life when everything is shit and it’s those times that you need to know that you’re not alone, you’re not the only one that’s had to go through something like this and that all you have to do is ask for help and it will be there.