I’ve been thinking about miscarriage lately. A cluster of women I know have shared their stories of recent pregnancy loss. Then I read Isis the Scientist’s article about her current miscarriage:
What I haven’t told you is that toward the end of July I saw two blue lines. I told Mr. Isis, some friends, and Dr. Triple Threat, who I tell most things. Then on Friday my lower back started to hurt. On Saturday I felt generally like ass. On Sunday I started to have some bleeding, and by this morning I looked like Carrie.
Among the many condolences and expressions of heartfelt kindness, stories of loss bloomed like a field of wildflowers. They were everywhere. I alluded to my own:
Ugh. Dammit. So very sorry. I’ve had two miscarriages and always thought it would be theoretically possible for me to survive up to three, but not more than that. Thank FSM I haven’t had to test this theory.
One thing I discovered the first time was that it’s like sexual assault in that many, many more of our sisters have experienced this type of tragedy than we realize. Not that it helps when you’re going through it, but many of us know what it’s like and are with you in spirit. Hugs.
Following this, I received a poignant email from a woman who recently experienced her own miscarriage and needed to hear the accounts of others. She had read my comment and followed the link to my email address. I can totally relate. For me the experience felt isolating and lonely. There seems to be some sort of unspoken taboo surrounding talking about this, which I suspect exacerbates the pain. Sharing stories softens the stigma and lessens the burden of grief.
I found solace in joking a bit about evolutionary biology. I once wrote:
During the years of frustration and loss, I found some comfort in the thought that I was a vessel for microevolution. Descent with modification requires descendants. Natural Selection acts on deleterious modifications reducing the likelihood that an individual will produce viable offspring who pass along the deleterious gene. Weeding out maladaptive genes and their resulting traits increases the likelihood that a species will survive. Clearly something was going on that rendered me unable or possibly evolutionarily unfit to reproduce. By failing to procreate, perhaps I was advancing the genetic fitness of our species.
Last year Skepchick published an article about a woman who was publicly grateful for her miscarriage. Again, stories of loss peppered the comments. It seems to me that women are often eager to tell their own stories and to hear those of others. I don’t know how to change the culture that irrationally shrouds miscarriage in shame and mystery, but I think openness is a good place to start. Having access to other women’s diverse experiences and varied responses might help those going through it feel less isolated. Open discussion might also bring miscarriage into the public discourse in the same clinical way we think of heart disease or prostate health.
I’ll go first:
After over a year of infertility, my first pregnancy ended when the baby’s heart stopped at 11.5 weeks. This was horrible–exacerbated by a jerk of an OB. (I’m actually writing a poem about this for a poetry contest. I’m no poet, but it feels therapeutic. Almost a decade later and I’m still mad at that guy.) I had a D&C just because I couldn’t stand the thought of a prolonged miscarriage at home. Plus the gestational age was at the threshold where they recommend D&C. This was devastating, and I think I was a total mess for several months after.
The OB told me it wasn’t my fault. I stared at him. It hadn’t occurred to me that I could be at fault. If it was that easy, then access to abortion would be a non-issue.
When I was finally ready to try again, I had no period, so no way to track or even know if I was ovulating. The OB’s solution was to draw blood once/month to see if I was pregnant yet. Every month he’d draw blood. Nothing else. No drugs to start my cycle, not tests, nothing. Just neglect punctuated by blood draws, and if I was lucky, a belated call from his nurse telling me the result was negative. Again.
So I found an awesome new doctor. She took action right away, and having a plan took my focus away from the loss and onto a hopeful strategy. I was really grateful to be doing something–anything–to move on. She prescribed some hormones to start my period and ran some tests.
Almost exactly a year later, I got pregnant again and had another miscarriage. In addition to a blighted ovum in my uterus, there was a cyst on my ovary that mimicked an ectopic pregnancy. I had major abdominal surgery along with another D&C. This experience, while terribly sad and taking much longer to physically recover, was infinitely better because I had a compassionate doctor. She was very upbeat and positive. She offered Clomid when I was ready to try again. Two days before I was supposed to start taking it, I discovered I was pregnant.
I went on to have a healthy son, who is now almost seven, and two years ago I birthed a daughter. I feel incredibly lucky to have two healthy children!
When I had my first miscarriage, I discovered that around 70% of the women I knew had experienced miscarriages. I don’t know what the actual statistics are for the population as a whole, but for my group of friends it was pretty common. I don’t know why women don’t talk about this more.
If you’re comfortable sharing your thoughts and experiences, I would love to read them.
I guess I’m in the majority and I will also volunteer my take on this. A year before I had my first daughter, I also miscarried. It was obviously traumatic but I did not really wish to talk about it. Others, like people in my workplace, expressed sympathy and the usual nonsense about God’s plan. It was never a baby, a ball of cells just derailed on the development track. What I and others felt sad about was disappointment about what should have been.
Society sets up an idealized version of sex, marriage, pregnancy and motherhood for women. But, it’s never ideal. Nature and our relationships are messy and complex. We never have the opportunity to discuss how often things go wrong until after the fact and then people say, “Oh, that’s very common.” I wish I’d been better prepared for life’s pitfalls.
Thanks Sharon.
Great point about the messy complexity of reality vs. the fantasy. I know what you mean about it never being a baby, and yet how hard it is to keep that in perspective as we grieve for an imagined future with a child.
I have not had a miscarriage as such, but several rounds of IVF including two chemical pregnancies. So two little embies that I know hung on long enough to mess with the hormones, but not long enough to become. A part of me grieves for every little embryo we made – not because they were babies, but because they could have been. We have two amazing little girls and luckily no embryos left, our lives could have been very different. Like you, I take some comfort in the thought that the ones who didn’t make it probably had a reason. We also had counselling after several failed attempts which helped a lot.
I cannot compare my physical experiences with women who go thorugh miscarriage. I am just overwhelmingly grateful I haven’t had to do that, because I know how upsetting the things that have happened have been. To add in weeks of pregnancy and reality would be hard to bear, I have the utmost emphathy for anyone who has done it.
Thank you for writing this. It’s so moving. With both my pregnancies I had early bleeding.
WIth my second daughter I was 7 months along and had heavy bleeding. I went to the little local hospital. My family practice doctor gave me a choice, I could go to Green Bay to a hospital that could deal with this issue, or he could try the “old fashioned” method and if that failed the baby would probably be born and die. My husband and I were in horror, but the doctor – a good family friend – said he had to be honest. “Sometimes, you miscarry because the baby has something wrong with it. Plus a premature baby, this premature, will have many problems. I don’t want to see that for you two.” So we stayed, and the doctor did the old fashioned “cure” which was to pump me full of water and wait.
In the end, I delivered a full term baby. As she has grown, we found she has many disabilites. So maybe mother nature was trying to tell us something. But on the other hand, as difficult as raising her and facing caring for her as an adult for the rest of her life, I am still glad I didn’t miscarry. I’ve learned that we are all important in life and just being born gives us a right to be here and taken care of.
Still, while I didnt’ miscarry, spending days in that little Wisconsin hospital, bleeding and waiting to miscarry or not, are among the worst I can remember.
I never had a miscarriage, but just wanted to thank all of you for talking about this. I wish more women knew it could happen, and that it was not because they had a cup of coffee or gave the pregnancy “bad vibes!”
Thanks Deb,
One positive thing about my miscarriages was that both happened relatively early. I have friend whose baby died around six months gestation. I imagine that was far worse than my experience. I guess it’s all relative.
IVF sounds like an extreme emotional roller-coaster in its own right, and I have a ton of empathy for you for going through that.
Thanks Kitty,
Bleeding during pregnancy is awful. I waited overnight at home with my first miscarriage–couldn’t see my OB until morning–and just those 12 hours or so were a nightmare.
I was very moved by your assertion that we are all important in life. So true!
Yeah Heidi, so hard not to feel like a “failure” even when you know better!
Just found this post via Heidi Anderson. Boy, are you right about miscarriage. Seems like most of my friends have been through it, too. After cervical/uterine cancer in 2002, I had five miscarriages until giving up and having a tubal ligation in 2007. My last miscarriage was at 28 weeks. It was awful. The other miscarriages all occurred at or around the end of the first trimester, so I wasn’t showing, hadn’t told anyone yet other than my partner. But at 28 weeks, my son had a name. I had ultrasound pictures of him, recognized the character of his kicks, knew what sort of music tended to get him moving, etc. My daughter, who was ten years old at the time, was looking forward to having a baby brother. Laying there in the hospital waiting for my suction “birth” to take place was the worst. Then, of course, my partner and I had to explain to all our friends and coworkers that we weren’t having a baby shower, after all. That was almost as bad — being asked how soon I was due by well-meaning friends who didn’t know yet.
Not believing in a god helped, though. Not needing to appeal to some higher power helped me focus on getting better and making the decision to stop trying to get pregnant. And that is one decision I have never regretted.
Plus, I have a beautiful teenaged daughter. She has rather severe special needs, but she’s pretty freaking awesome, and I’m lucky to have her!
Thanks for sharing your experiences. Looking forward to reading more of your posts!
Amy,
“But at 28 weeks, my son had a name.” What an amazing way to convey the weight of this event.
Thanks.
All the stories are incredibly powerful. I’m grateful to have a chance to read them.
My first pregnancy ended in miscarriage as well, which we determined at about 12 weeks. I, too, had a D&C for the same reason. If I wasn’t going to have a baby, I needed to get it over with and move on. Per the doc’s recommendation, we waited three months before trying again, and about 10 months after that, I gave birth to Richard.
It was early enough that I never really had much of a sense of being pregnant, but it was still very sad for me at the time.
Hugs.
I think it is hard for people to talk about having a miscarriage, becuase there is that uncomfortable silence when other people don’t know what to say or do. I went through the entire infertility/miscarriage roller coaster. I first began trying to concieve in 2004 and it was actully Heidi Anderson who dialed the number to a great reproductive endocrinologist and handed me the phone to make an appointment! I love that gal and her lack of boundaries! But it was for the best… With many rounds of medicines, injections, ultrasounds, and so forth; I was able to get pregnant. Of course, the first two pregnancies ended in miscarriage. The first one was a shell shock in the sense that I thought I was going to the doctor to have an ultrasound on my ovary. We were in the middle of a fertility cycle, I had had a negative pregnancy test and had begun another cycle of fertility drugs. When they did the ultrasound, they saw the embryo. I had been bleeding the whole time off and on, so I basically found out that I was pregnant and likely going to lose it in the same breath. I never really had a chance to adjust to the fact that this was a possibility. With the second pregnancy, I was being watched more closely/taking progesterone to support the pregnancy, etc. Basically it turned out to be a blighted ovum…in a weird way, that made it easier for me to cope with. I kept thinking that it wasn’t really an embryo, so that made it “okay”. I know that this was my way of rationalizing the experience to make it easier on myself, but in some way it did help me through the experiences. I had to have a D & C done and it was ironic to me that I had to be in the labor and delivery area of the hospital to have that procedure. That struck me as very odd to be having the “failure” dealt with next to the “success”. I have a beautiful 13 month old today (born nearly 5 years after we began trying), but I think you always wonder about what could have been or if things would have turned out differently. I appreciate everyone’s bravery in discussing their experiences. It is a good experience when women can share with this level of openness.
Naomi,
Thanks so much for sharing your story!
Karen,
Thanks. Shell shock seems to be a common thread. You bring up a great point about the uncomfortable silence because other people don’t know what to say or do.
“I appreciate everyone’s bravery in discussing their experiences. It’s a good experience when women can share with this level of openness.”
Seconded. Thanks!
I know that this is an older conversation, but I thought I’d share my story as well.
Almost a month ago, I was experiencing cramping and bleeding. I hadn’t had any spotting all 19 weeks and 5 days I had been pregnant. When we went to the ER, the doctor told me it was “common” and probably just my uterus stretching. 12 hours later, I was rushed in an ambulance across the provincial border for an emergency ultrasound. I will never forget the doctor walking through the door and saying there was no heartbeat and he was sorry. After my body tried for almost 2 hours to deliver, I was given Morphine and some pills to encourage uterine contractions. All night I laid in my own blood, wishing this whole thing would be over. In the morning, the OBGYN on call ordered a D&C for me. That night I was sent home.
I wish the hospital could’ve told me more before my operation…like that I could request pictures, or that I see the baby when I recover. I’ve been trying to use Google images for that purpose, but there aren’t many photos of 20-week-old babies.
We find out in 2 weeks whether we were expecting a Tanner or a Sarah, and what went wrong.
To anyone who has ever had a miscarriage of these circumstances; please understand that you are no less a mother. I know that I loved my baby deeply. I sacrificed for my baby without hesitation. I lived for my baby, and at the time of my miscarriage I’d have died for my baby. I am a mother, except I cannot hold my baby, nor feed my baby, nor hear my baby cry. I will never bathe my baby, nor clothe my baby, or kiss countless boo-boo’s better on his (or her) perfect knees. But rather then me watching over my baby, its my baby watching over me.