I Had a Miscarriage by Jessica Zucker (classic books to read .TXT) 📗

and Infertility at Columbia University Medical Center

“Jessica Zucker’s #IHadaMiscarriage campaign gave voice to the unspeakable reality of miscarriage; now, her book goes deeper to explore what she names the trifecta of silence, shame, and stigma women experience following a reproductive loss. Even identifying that miscarriage is a real loss, worthy of real grief, is radical in a society that denies this fact, and Zucker slyly laces her relatable personal story with this bold feminist argument. Her story is as wrenching as it is healing, and the narrative is made even richer by her expertise as a maternal mental health professional. Thus, we get raw storytelling alongside brilliant advice for helping ourselves, and those we love, grieve. It is a book that will mean a lot to so many people, and one I won’t forget.”

—ALLISON YARROW, author of 90s Bitch: Media, Culture, and the Failed Promise of Gender Equality

I HAD A MISCARRIAGE

A Memoir, a Movement

• • •

JESSICA ZUCKER, PhD

Published in 2021 by the Feminist Press

at the City University of New York

The Graduate Center

365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406

New York, NY 10016

feministpress.org

First Feminist Press edition 2021

Copyright © 2021 by Jessica Zucker

All rights reserved.

This book was made possible thanks to a grant from New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

This book is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First printing March 2021

Cover design by Samantha Hahn

Text design by Drew Stevens

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Zucker, Jessica, author.

Title: I had a miscarriage : a memoir, a movement / Jessica Zucker.

Description: First Feminist Press edition. | New York, NY : The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2021.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020029350 (print) | LCCN 2020029351 (ebook) | ISBN 9781558612884 (paperback) | ISBN 9781558612891 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Zucker, Jessica. | Miscarriage--Psychological aspects. | Pregnant women--United States--Biography. | Clinical psychologists--United States--Biography. | Parental grief.

Classification: LCC RG648 .Z83 2021 (print) | LCC RG648 (ebook) | DDC 618.3/920651--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029350

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029351

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contents

Cover

Advance Priase for I Had A Miscarriage: A Memoir, a Movement

Title Page

Copyright

Contents

Dedication

Preface

1. “I thought I was out of the woods.”

2. “I failed to give myself the space to fall apart.”

3. “The strident trifecta: silence, stigma, and shame.”

4. “I was understanding grief from a corporeal—not simply a theoretical—perspective.”

5. “If only it could have continued on this way.”

6. “I don’t know what I expected her to say, but it wasn’t that.”

7. “The body and failure become conflated. It’s a complicated coupling.”

8. “Why did it feel as though this loss had only happened to me?”

9. “Can pleasure and grief coexist?”

10. “We are not going down on this note.”

11. “The discordant refrain of what-if what-if what-if?”

12. “Sometimes rainbows follow storms. Sometimes they don’t.”

13. “Things. Things to have, and to hold, and to see, and to treasure.”

14. “Sometimes, a witness is precisely what we need.”

Epilogue

Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Feminist Press

More Nonfiction from the Feminist Press

Also Available from the Feminist Press

For those who know this ache too well.

And of course,

for Olive.

Preface

This, like nearly all stories about pregnancy and pregnancy loss, is really a story about motherhood. How we define it. How we arrive at it. If we do. And how we’re impacted by it all.

There is no singular path to motherhood. We don’t always become mothers through pregnancy. Maybe we do, through our own eggs, donor eggs, donor sperm, intrauterine insemination (IUI), in vitro fertilization (IVF), or other methods. Or maybe we’ve fostered, adopted, or gone the surrogacy route. Some mothers have children teeming underfoot; others hold them in memory without tangible proof. There’s childlessness, too. In conversations about pregnancy and loss, including in this book, it behooves us to look at the entire spectrum of pregnancies, births, and the myriad ways we become mothers.

There is no universal pregnancy experience, outcome, or emotional reaction. As each one of us navigates the unpredictable outcomes of the reproductive spectrum, we are often faced with the need to acknowledge or come to terms with our own emotional and/or physical edge that shapes the very aspects that are within our control. How long to try, how far to go, how much to endure—on a multitude of levels. Maybe we stop trying to get pregnant altogether. Maybe we never try at all. Either way, it’s incumbent upon us to honor and respect the diversity of these situations, whether they are by choice or by circumstance. There are countless potential stumbling blocks: infertility, secondary infertility, not conceiving again after loss, health problems, medical complications, relational concerns, financial constraints related to insurance, reproductive technologies and family building, and so on.

The pregnancy/motherhood/loss community should aim to be inclusive of all experiences and all perspectives: miscarriage, early loss, later loss, recurrent loss, stillbirth, twin loss, termination for medical reasons, neonatal and infant loss, not getting pregnant in the first place, and others. All are profoundly important and all are a part of this story. And in here, all are welcome. As loss moms, we understand too well that pregnancy and the loss of it affects us and our families in complex ways. It can change us for good. I know it changed me.

And just as the variety of reproductive outcomes and their possible physical, mental, and emotional implications are honored here, so are the array of people who experience them. Throughout these pages, I will use “woman” or “women” to describe people who’ve experienced a miscarriage, stillbirth, infant loss, or infertility. This isn’t because these losses only happen to cisgender women. One’s gender does not dictate what reproductive outcomes one