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

that had simply maneuvered around me that fateful day on the sidewalk, when I clutched the plastic bag holding the remains of my daughter and squeezed the blood-soaked towels between my thighs. A world that doesn’t much like talking about miscarriage, let alone a baby dying and falling out of your body in your home. I didn’t feel like I belonged to this world. I didn’t believe this world wanted to belong to me.

My forlorn body—on display as I ventured into requisite pleasantries at preschool pickup—slumped as I said my hellos. Still bleeding and required to wear a clunky pad, I felt like a teenager again—a gawky stranger in my own skin, confused by a body I didn’t fully understand. Excruciating reminders of what was and then what wasn’t, and also, what definitely shouldn’t be: belly hollowing, hormones blazing, blood continuing. Smiling fellow-mom acquaintances uttered niceties—the usual hellos and how are yous—as, unbeknown to them, the aftereffects of my loss ravaged my should-be pregnant body.

In more ways than one, I was still stuck on that sidewalk, shouting the details of my loss to my sister over the phone as people simply carried on around me. This time, it was my body shouting. In pain. In anguish. In anger. Soon, my voice would follow.

• • •

As I not-so-gingerly shared my story with other friends, family, and random people who remembered I was pregnant, I increasingly became more stunned by the reactions—the actions and inactions of people around me. All I yearned for were authentic yet simple pleasantries. Even just a plain “How are you feeling?” would suffice. Four words. Nothing more. Instead, I heard variations on “You’re so strong, you’ll be fine. You’ll get through this.”

I didn’t want pity or saccharine sympathy, of course. And I certainly didn’t want to enter into a trauma-off, which so often seemed to be the outcome—women comparing their loss stories to mine. Examples abound, but there’s one in particular that sticks out: A woman I didn’t know messaged me on Instagram following her scheduled D&C to extract a pregnancy she lost at eight weeks. She said something to the effect of, “My D&C went smoothly. It was not as big of a deal as I thought it would be at all. I went to sleep; didn’t feel a thing. Woke up and it was done. Just like yours but two months earlier.” I was taken aback and naturally thought that she must’ve messaged the wrong person. But she didn’t. She meant to reach out to me.

It was a human mistake, of course, to assume our experiences were similar. But it alerted me yet again to the ways in which we reflexively compare and contrast loss experiences—an outcome of our painfully inadequate understanding of death, grief, and trauma. Because in the absence of understanding, it seems, we’re left to rely on the context of our own experiences, and often make the mistake of using what we’ve endured as a way to gauge what we believe other people should endure as well. The common refrain is “I made it through this, so you can too.” What is meant to come off as support is in actuality dismissive.

Let’s aim to refrain from assumptions and, most especially, from minimizing or magnifying these grief-stricken journeys. I’ve seen this so many times in my office, women saying some variants of: “I feel like I should be over my loss by now. I was only six weeks along. It could have been so much worse.” “At least it was early.” “At least I know I can get pregnant.” “At least my milk didn’t come in.” “At least I didn’t feel the baby move.” “At least I wasn’t overly attached.” “At least my grieving process won’t go on and on like theirs might.” “It feels indulgent to feel this.” It’s a base impulse, to compare, but it really doesn’t serve anyone. Why does it matter whose suffering is “worse”? And is this even a thing, comparing and contrasting pain? Pain is pain. Grief is grief. Incalculable at their best, sadistic at their worst, pregnancy outcomes surely don’t lend themselves to a discrete or linear hierarchy. No one wants to find themselves atop a mountain of pain, shouting, “I win! My loss is the worst-possible scenario. Worse than yours and yours and also yours!”

With patients, I used—and still use—a careful response: “Your pain is just as real and valid and important as anybody else’s. Your loss matters because it is your loss. Your hope, dashed. Your body, grieving. Your sadness. Your love. Try to resist the urge to compare and contrast. There needn’t be a loss/grief hierarchy. It only serves to minimize your experience. Face your pain without distracting it by somehow making it less than. Or too much. You are significant. Your heart is shattered. Lean into the ache. It’s yours.” Within the safety of my practice, I felt comfortable parsing out this innate reaction to pain and loss more thoroughly. I could push back on the notion that one’s level of grief needn’t be dictated by another’s, especially because in doing so I was also doing my job.

But in my personal life, I felt like I had no choice but to stem the tide and cut off these types of conversations. Instead of wading into vulnerable territory to disprove the belief that our traumas must be measured against the size and significance of someone else’s, I amped up my boundaries, repeating my own version of the “I’m good” refrain, somewhat defensively: “I wasn’t even sure I wanted a second child anyway.” “I was terrified to raise a girl in this culture.” Probably my most frequent utterance was “I’m okay, really.”

But just as I’d seen countless times before—yet somehow still wasn’t prepared for in my own life—the sticky tendrils of my trauma began to strangulate. Flashbacks, numbness, avoidance, sweat-soaked night terrors, anxiety, hypervigilance—you name it. Berated by a cacophony of discordant thoughts, I was officially rendered compassless.

And though I’d heard from patients about