For Pa­tri­cia Em­manuel, watch­ing parts of her ba­by go down the drain was prob­a­bly the hard­est part of her mis­car­riage she can ever re­call.

A few weeks ear­li­er, a pos­i­tive preg­nan­cy test sent Em­manuel to the moon and back. She was ec­sta­t­ic about hav­ing a ba­by—her first.

Through a re­flec­tive smile, she says, “I was so hap­py. I just knew I was go­ing to have a girl so I went ahead and even named her.”

Her ob­ste­tri­cian and gy­nae­col­o­gist (OBG­YN) con­firmed her preg­nan­cy, but a sub­se­quent vis­it to the sono­g­ra­ph­er’s of­fice to have an ul­tra­sound done brought some bur­den­some news to Em­manuel. Though the ul­tra­sound af­firmed a four-week-old em­bryo, no heart­beat could be found.

“At the time I did not know what that meant. I mean I knew it did not sound good, but I need­ed the doc­tor to tell me more,” Em­manuel rec­ol­lect­ed.

An ex­pla­na­tion, which in­volved hope, was giv­en to then 30-year-old. Both the sono­g­ra­ph­er and her OBG­YN told Em­manuel, it was still very ear­ly in her preg­nan­cy and there lied the pos­si­bil­i­ty for the heart­beat to de­vel­op a bit lat­er.

Though these words should have been com­fort­ing to Em­manuel, she said, in her ‘spir­it’ some­thing did not feel right.

“I don’t know if they were just try­ing not to scare me or if they were be­ing hon­est, but I just felt like that would be it—that there was not go­ing to be a ba­by af­ter all, but I knew noth­ing of be­ing preg­nant pri­or, so I had to just trust the process,” she re­solved.

A few search­es on the in­ter­net did cor­rob­o­rate her doc­tor and the sono­g­ra­ph­er’s ex­pla­na­tion, but they al­so re­vealed to Em­manuel, such could sig­nal a mis­car­riage.

A sec­ond trip to the sono­g­ra­ph­er in keep­ing with her one-week time to re­vis­it deemed noth­ing changed—an em­bryo is seen but no heart­beat.

Again she was told to wait it out. A fi­nal vis­it one week lat­er re­vealed what Em­manuel felt all along since that first day she was told her ba­by did not have a heart­beat—she had mis­car­ried.

“The sono­g­ra­ph­er said the ul­tra­sound was show­ing the em­bryo had be­gun to de­tach,” Em­manuel re­calls.

In the days to come, she would ex­pe­ri­ence a mo­ment in her life she would nev­er for­get. On her doc­tor’s ad­vice, ex­pul­sion of the em­bryo was in­duced.

“I was at home when I en­gaged the method for ex­pul­sion. With­in a mat­ter of three hours of in­sert­ing the pills, I was in pain and felt like I need­ed to use the toi­let. But when I sat on the toi­let, all I saw was blood and then I heard the sound of some­thing drop­ping in the toi­let. At that point, I knew what it was,” Em­manuel said.

She spent the rest of that mo­ment that day, stand­ing in her bath­room, with tears stream­ing down her face as she help­less­ly watched the wa­ter wash her ba­by down the drain.

“Her name was Calian. I al­ways think of her and even to this day I say a prayer for her and I wish her hap­py birth­day,” Em­manuel con­clud­ed through teary eyes and a side­ways smile.

On Oc­to­ber 15, sev­er­al coun­tries cel­e­brat­ed Preg­nan­cy and In­fant Loss Aware­ness Day.

While it is not ob­served glob­al­ly and not in Trinidad and To­ba­go, di­rec­tor of Mam­a­to­to Re­source and Birth Cen­tre, De­brah Lewis said she wished it was, as too of­ten the sen­ti­ment of mis­car­riages im­plied one should just get over it as one could have an­oth­er ba­by. She said while one might be able to have an­oth­er child, it could nev­er re­place the loss of that par­tic­u­lar child.

Lewis added, “The oth­er com­mon mis­con­cep­tion is that if it is an ear­ly loss that it is eas­i­er than if it was a preg­nan­cy that was fur­ther along. That is not so at all. Any loss is a loss with all the griev­ing that goes along with it.”

Lewis said women and their fam­i­lies must be al­lowed the time and space to grieve the loss as they need too.

“Most women re­port re­mem­ber­ing every year on the date of the loss, what would have been the birth­day or Moth­ers Day or when they see a child that is the same age as that ba­by would have been,” Lewis ex­plained.

As such, Lewis said Mam­a­to­to formed a cost-free month­ly sup­port group called “Ba­bies Who Live On­ly In Our Hearts.”

Moth­ers who have al­so suf­fered a loss fa­cil­i­tate the group and help oth­ers cope with their loss.