Many more readers are writing in:
Thanks for your series of posts on miscarriage. I’ve had four miscarriages and have no living children. In clinical terms, I am a “habitual aborter” – it actually says that on my chart! It’s my worst habit and I would quite like to break it.
One of the most baffling parts of miscarriage is the enforced silence around the loss and grief. As you are no doubt discovering, once you write or speak the word miscarriage, people emerge from the woodwork. It seems like everyone has either had one, or has a sister, friend, or mother who has had one. When I had my fourth miscarriage this February, I knew I couldn’t just go back to work again and pretend like everything was normal, as I had for the first three. So, I wrote an email very clearly explaining to my colleagues what I was going through and asking for their understanding. In an instant, I became the person to go to talk about miscarriage. I had a series of coffee dates and after work drinks during which I heard horror stories in hushed tones about babies born in toilets on Christmas Eve, gushing blood before scheduled lectures and during meetings, bosses who demanded a return to work while miscarriage was ongoing, and altogether too many stories of my colleagues’ husbands or mothers who were eager for a quick recovery from the grief over what wasn’t a “real baby anyway”.
It was like I was the un-elected president of a new secret society – the Spontaneous Aborters Club. Seemingly all of my female colleagues had miscarried. It felt so good to finally be talking about it, to be matter of fact about it. The understanding we have as a culture is that miscarriage is not spoken of, which explains the rule that we don’t tell anyone we are expecting until at least 12 weeks. When you crack open this vault to let a bit of light in, stories of darkness come pouring out.
As an aside, I have wondered if our modern reluctance to acknowledge miscarriage has something to do with our struggles over how to think about abortion. I used to worry that if I admitted that my embryo or fetus was a baby that I would have to admit that the embryos and fetuses of women who chose abortion were just as “real”. I’ve come to realize, however, this is actually the crux of what it means to be pro-choice. My husband and I want these babies and so their brief existence and their passing is tangible to me. They are babies because I feel their loss so deeply. I would never deny someone the choice of whether or not to form this most human of attachments.
Another reader:
I have had three miscarriages and I have had three beautiful healthy children, so I have experienced both the amazing highs and hellish lows of pregnancy. What I discovered through my experiences is that many people just don’t think at all before they let words come out of their mouths. Yes, you could suggest that they mean well, but that doesn’t make up for the stupid and hurtful things they say.
The first miscarriage was also our first pregnancy and we waited until eight weeks to tell our families. Within a week I was having a D&C to remove whatever was left of my pregnancy because my body even failed me when it came to miscarrying.
Whilst waiting for the procedure to begin, a nurse told me it could have been a still birth, which is worse. Though I agree, it wasn’t in any way a comfort to me to consider that my degree of loss could have been higher. Some friends and family members wanted to know what had caused the miscarriage and helpfully suggested things to do or avoid next time. Yes, what we definitely needed to cope with our loss was for people to suggest how we had caused the miscarriage. Believe me when I say that every woman who has had a miscarriage wonders if it was her fault somehow. And the best was my sister-in-law telling me that she knew exactly how I felt because her health issues prevented her from having any more children than the two she already had. Yes, losing a child and not knowing if you will ever be able to have a child at all is the same as not being able to have a third.
Comfort came from those who did actually know how we felt because they had experienced a miscarriage – and often more than one, like us. Miscarriage is a lot more common than one might think and yet still is almost a taboo subject. For a time I felt like the tainted one. Friends who were getting pregnant for the first time didn’t want me around because I was living proof of what can go wrong. And I never got to experience a pregnancy without fear because every one that ended with a healthy baby was preceded by one that ended with tears.
It has been more than ten years since the last miscarriage and my youngest just turned 9. You would think that I would be over the losses by now and for the most part I am. But sometimes you are reminded such as when you fill out medical forms and it asks how many pregnancies and live births you have had.
Thank you for this thread, because sometimes all you need to help healing is knowing that you aren’t the only one.
Another:
My wife and I have been trying to get pregnant for years and, after multiple rounds of fertility treatment that failed, we were just about ready to give up. Then, in the break between treatments this year, we found out that she had gotten pregnant (the old-fashioned way). We were elated and started planning immediately for the new arrival.
However, after the first scan we were told that there was no baby present (at 7 weeks) and that she had had a miscarriage. This was not a huge surprise given the amount of bleeding that had happened in the few days before the scan, but it was still devastating – even more so because we had told no one and although we could provide some support for each other, we were both in a dark place.
The next week, there was a follow-up scan to see whether a procedure would be needed to remove the products of conception. The nurse turned to my wife and said “and there’s the baby’s heartbeat”. The baby was missed on the first scan. You can imagine how we felt.
Our stress levels have been enormous for the last few months, but as the pregnancy has progressed (showing now with little kicks daily) we have slowly started to relax – that is until I read the New Yorker article and your updates of miscarriage stories. I have warned my wife to stay away from your blog until the baby is born and I am FREAKING OUT. I obviously feel terrible for those women, and the statistical likelihood of something like that happening this late in pregnancy is low, but at this point I won’t be happy until I’m holding my baby in my arms.
(Photo by Flickr user romana klee)
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