Why Women Weep

By Carmel Meehan

These stories follow a woman’s life from conception to old age, and include descriptions of many of the amazing, shocking milestones encountered along the way. These events are private and personal, yet there is a uniformity to the experience. We may speak another language, dress in different clothes, worship separately, but flowing across all these differences are similar experiences of love, rejection, ecstasy and depression.

These are real stories from real women. They focus on moments of deeply intimate individual happenings, incredible moments when we breakdown and cry. Some of us weep huge tears silently while some shudder and wail, but there are times when we are all reduced to tears, and it is often the same root cause.

We women are more united by what binds us, then divided by what separates us, and these individual stories represent universal events we all share.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9780994509000

Book preview

Singapore

The Very Beginning…

She

A little heart flutter

She tiptoes through trepidation

Into present

A short breath sweetens

She blossoms through bruises

Into future

A glancing touch stings

Her future footprints fade

Into past

One

She had peed on a stick and now she waited. She placed the stick on the bathroom bench and stepped back. Then she leaned forward to peek, and then too nervous to wait she opened the bathroom door and left. But she turned and walked straight back in. Nothing. She sighed. The minutes were lasting forever.

He knocked on the bathroom door and called to her, ‘Are you OK in there. It’s been a while.’

‘Come in,’ she responded, ‘I need to show you something.’

‘Nothing gross I hope,’ he grinned as he entered. ‘What is it?’

She showed him the stick. Her head was buzzing, filled with white noise. Her heart thumped. There was now a blue line on the stick. He didn’t get it.

‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.

She stared into the mirror behind him.

Saw her face - nervous, scared, excited, apprehensive.

His face - disbelief, confusion then excitement, joy.

She relaxed and her heart soared. ‘We’re pregnant!’

He grabbed the stick. ‘You’re sure?’ he asked. He stared at it. He looked intensely at her. And he laughed and he hugged and squeezed her, and said, ‘Look let’s do another one, just to be sure. I want to watch it, make sure it comes up positive.’

‘Well, you’ll have to wait a minute as I’ve used up all my available pee,’ she giggled. He laughed. And poured her a glass of water.

‘Come on,’ he urged, ‘Pee again.’

That night she peed on three sticks. Each time a line appeared, three times in a row she tested positive. She really was pregnant.

They sat on the sofa to talk. But he stood up and walked to the kitchen. ‘This is huge. There is so much to talk about. What happens next?’ He was overwhelmed, nervous, shocked. ‘Isn’t this a bit soon? I thought you said it would be months? Up to a year you said. Wow, should we phone someone, maybe your parents? Can’t wait to tell mine. What do you think – is it a girl or boy?’ He was opening cupboards, opening wine, needing to be busy.

‘Would you like a glass of wine? Oh no – you can’t have one.’ He held the glass in the air. He looked deflated. He really was unsure about what to do next.

She wasn’t listening. She was absorbed in a wonder world bridging the past and future. She was trying to absorb the magnitude of being herself, on her own, inhabiting her own body with her own thoughts one day, and sharing all of her with another life the next. How was it possible to create a new life within you without knowing? How could it just begin, anchor itself, exist and grow unannounced and without a fanfare?

She put her hand on her tummy. Reality hitting. Planning a pregnancy in the future and actually being pregnant in the present were vastly different experiences. Fantasy versus realism, daydreams versus actuality, uncertainty versus certainty. Knowing holding a real baby, her baby, their baby (!!) was just months away was a shock.

This was happening so easily and quickly. Far too easily and way too quickly. All the anecdotal advice, all the family evidence pointed to her not falling pregnant immediately. She had been on the pill for years and years, her periods were weird and she was stressed with work. This suited her as the ideal birth time would be in eighteen months to two years, giving her up to a year to become pregnant. Perfect. She was comfortable pretending to be enthusiastically anticipating parenthood, all the while secure in the knowledge it was an event far, far away in time. She had work goals to achieve, holidays to enjoy, romantic dinners, late night parties, spur of the moment indulgences to appreciate before creating another life and becoming a dedicated mother. No pressure and lots of time to practice, she had joked with friends.

She remained still. She was wondering what the baby would look like, would she be a good mum? Would it be a happy baby? For years she had been blissfully imagining life with a baby; happy daydreams of a cute, warm, make-believe perfect baby bundle in her arms, smiling sleepily into her eyes. Briefly she worried about her loss of independence, the changes to her body, their combined health. A million questions, answers, scenarios ran amok in her head.

Actually she realised, she didn’t know that much about being pregnant or giving birth or being a mum. How did you learn that stuff? Would it come naturally or were there classes? Panic filled her.

But the joy of being pregnant dominated. Such an insane, inexplicable joy filled her. They were going to have the perfect baby and be the perfect family. He would be such a wonderful dad, trendy and cool yet firm and disciplined. He would be one of those hands-on dads, changing nappies and calming the baby in the middle of the night when she was too exhausted to move.

She looked up. Now she was excited, because she knew they would be brilliant parents and their baby would be the most loved, indulged, spoilt, wonderful baby ever. She let the happy daydreams win and toasted to the future with her wine glass of bubbly water.

Two

She cuddled her beautiful, dead baby in her arms. Dead. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, couldn’t spit it out. She mumbled, but couldn’t form the sound. She searched for the emotion attached to it, but felt like she was wandering in the dark, blind, her arms held in front of her. It was like it was a foreign word, ‘mort….’ Incomprehensible. It was like the word was irrelevant, had no meaning. A word that clanged when you said it, fell flat. Dead. It was like running headlong into a brick wall, and stopping. It just halted. No feeling, no meaning. Just dead. She wanted to shake her head in confusion, and walk away muttering, ‘Sorry I don’t understand.’

She looked at her baby and waited for him to move. He had been moving inside her just hours ago; they were in tune, in sync, intuitively she had known he was preparing for birth. His movements had been softer, slower as he rested and prepared. She had felt him calming himself, becoming cantered, knowing this monumental change was coming. He was conserving energy, that’s what she had felt.

And he had needed all his reserves to endure the birth. It had been so much more primal than she expected, animalistic. She had been on all fours grunting and squealing, sweating, puffing, panting. The contractions had gripped her whole body, the waves forcing her to concentrate only on riding them through. The world had ceased to exist. There was only her body, this pain, this rhythm.

The breaks had been welcome, but fraught. The next contraction building, her awareness of its build at the front of her consciousness, but the breathing space gave her time to regroup. She looked to the father for support, strength, courage. This was by far the strongest challenge of her life. She had never been physically tested like this. The sense of powerlessness was overwhelming for a woman always in control. She could not control what was happening to her body and it was frightening, so she was pleased he was there. And the shock on his face was strangely reassuring. It confirmed how hard this was and how much he admired her resilience.

And then it had all gone horribly wrong. Her poor baby had become distressed. He was moving too slowly although the contractions were regular and strong. He couldn’t make his way through the canal easily and he was suffocating. She could feel his panic. It was her panic. She knew it was going wrong and she couldn’t fix it. She couldn’t reach him, she couldn’t soothe him, she couldn’t save him. He was stuck.

And the calm and understated efficiency broke down. There was a rush of staff, her legs in stirrups, consultations between her thighs, the father at her head holding her hand, biting his lip, kissing her eyes. There were machines, equipment, gowns, masks. And then there was quiet. No background music, but barked commands, quick responses. And pain. There were still the contractions rippling down through her body causing her to try to draw her knees, pull up her torso, the overwhelming need to push, to empty, evacuate with urgent pleas to relax, to breathe, trust the experts, don’t fight.

He was dragged out of her. Impossible to think hands were in her, pulling her apart, pushing back her lips to ease through his head. And he was held there, didn’t move, through wave after wave of contractions swamping her, crushing her as she couldn’t pant her way through her tears, couldn’t puff without breath. Could only wail when she had air. She wanted to die, for it to finish, she was too exhausted to help.

And then with a rush he was out. It was as though her body had suddenly rejected him, discovered he was of no use, no benefit in keeping him inside, and it ejected him with a final contraction that wrecked her. She would not have been surprised to see all her organs splattered on the floor. All that was good in her was spewed out. She was a void.

And then there was no one. She was alone on the bed, her legs in the air, laid bare and forgotten. They were with the baby. The father, the specialists, the nurses, concerned and intent and concentrated. She hadn’t heard the baby cry. The father reeled back his hands to his face, knees bent, one groan, and then he turned to look at her. His eyes filled and he stood in the no man’s land between her and his baby and looked at her.

The noise suddenly rushed back into her awareness. All of a sudden she was being repositioned, tidied, face and neck washed, hands squeezed. The specialist held her wrapped baby and handed him to the father, placed his hand on his back and urged him towards the bed. The nurses disappeared and just as suddenly the room was empty.

He came to her with their baby and handed her the most beautiful boy she had ever seen. Perfect, just dead. Her beautiful, perfect, dead baby.

Three

She held her newborns, one in each arm. One alive, one dead. One creating joyous celebration, one departing unimaginable sorrow. Motherhood. The elation juxtaposed against the grief, cancelling each other out, leaving her abandoned, alone in an emotional wasteland. Bereft she gazed into a black hole of emptiness, a syrupy, seductive silence, enticing her to forfeit all hope.

She felt negated. She lacked substance, density, connection.

‘Probably for the best,’ one nurse sympathised. ‘Better he goes now when you barely know him.’ (But she did know him. She had nurtured him, felt him grow, stretch, turn, her body responding to his kicks. With the doctor she had listened to his heartbeat, felt his shape. She had hummed happy songs echoing the joy of her pregnancy. She had known him, and now she grieved for him).

‘Nice for a mother to have a little girl,’ chirped another (if she had a choice, would that be it? Would she be happier with the survival of her daughter and the death of her son? Was this happiness? This absence?)

‘You will come out of this stronger, wiser,’ reassured another (could she go back and preempt this moment by stating her preference for remaining weak and ignorant? Why was being strong a desirable asset, justifying the death