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

on them. Reveal nuance. When someone’s go-to mantra is “I fail,” I gingerly work to interject other possible options and outcomes.

Taylor sat quietly, mulling things over. “I don’t know,” they eventually said, defeat rising in their voice. “My body has let me down so many times. It’s like my body and mind fail to sync up, and I want more than anything for this to be different. I deserve to have something come easily. I deserve to have an experience so many people do.”

As Taylor awaited news about the outcome of their IUI, we continued on in our discussions about their fear of “failure,” “not being good enough,” and bubbling “self-hate.” Interspersed with moments of forecasting what parenthood might look like, Taylor was pretty unequivocal about things not working out.

The following day I received a voicemail first thing in the morning. “Hi Dr. Zucker. It’s Taylor. I’m not pregnant. I knew it. I knew this wouldn’t happen easily for me. My body doesn’t work. Any chance I can come see you today?”

Click.

This disappointing outcome is a loss of another sort. The loss of potential. The loss of control. The loss of plans. This loss—the loss of what could have been—is yet another type of reproductive loss that American culture is not adept at speaking about with candor, nuance, or compassion.

I worried about the ways in which Taylor might use this opportunity to flagrantly heave harsh comments at themselves, further driving home the historical narrative that was already so firmly embedded. “My body fails”: the refrain.

Though Taylor’s exact experience is not necessarily common, their line of thinking absolutely is. After any kind of loss, or multiple losses, it’s completely understandable how one could go from seeing their body as working the way it “should” to being downright traitorous. The body and failure become conflated, and as a result, a sense of alienation ensues. It’s a complicated coupling.

But these bodies are our homes—whether we like it or not—and they are the only ones we have. I choose to believe my body works, that my miscarriage in no way was evidence that it doesn’t. In fact, my body proved it was working the way it should be by releasing what it did. My body housed my babies, including the one I did not have the chance to know. It has labored to bring children into the world, and it has weathered the storm of a sixteen-week loss. My body also went on to become a home to my rainbow baby. If we say our bodies have failed us, we leave out all the wisdom, all the health, the transformation.

Whenever I hear about feelings of bodily alienation, failure, or body-image struggles pre- and post–pregnancy loss from patients, I listen for historical information or clues from the past that might better help me understand what’s informing their current impressions. I know culture is complicit here, too, of course. And I am also keenly aware that explaining to a bereaved patient that they mustn’t hate their bodies, or breaking down the very science of conception to prove these losses are no one’s fault, is futile. Feelings aren’t facts, and so I go where they are, while holding the hope that these feelings will evolve compassionately in time and with effort. I also know that urging someone to feel positively about their body when they simply don’t can be harmful. The pressure to embody something that is not authentic—like forcing body positivity—can impede the healing process. If and when people feel like they can’t disclose negative feelings, be it about their bodies or anything else, those feelings are left to fester.

We can’t control how our bodies will respond to a pregnancy, nor can we dictate how they will react to a loss. All we can do is try to treat them with compassion.

8

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

“So, what are your plans for today?” Jason asked as he haphazardly shoved a sesame bagel toppling with lox into his mouth before taking off for work.

The nonchalant way in which he spoke stung to the core; it had been all of six days since losing the pregnancy, and I couldn’t quite understand how he was able to wake up fresh-faced each day and approach the ensuing twenty-four hours with such relative ease and familiarity. As if nothing had happened. As if I hadn’t been fundamentally changed.

“Not sure. Bleeding, I guess,” I replied insipidly.

Of course, I probably had a laundry list of things I needed to get done—“plans” for my day that I have no doubt my husband would have much rather discussed than the blood still being collected between my legs. But each of those daily tasks felt more insignificant than the one before it. Grief’s disbelief hovered full-time, and that alone was enough to manage. I was visibly defeated.

“What can I do to make this better—or at least easier—for you?” Jason asked as he moved toward me, his eager words rich with care and concern.

I was grateful for this moment of recognition. Of connection.

He seemed so himself, so normal. It didn’t seem possible. It didn’t seem to make sense—not to me, anyway. It certainly didn’t seem fair. There I was, entangled in this wretched grief, all my usual energy oozed from my worn and weeping body, and Jason’s demeanor was so seemingly unaffected. I desperately longed for the partner I knew Jason to be—loving, connected, there. And perhaps selfishly, I wanted him to ache as I was aching—to feel as if I was not alone in my despair but had a partner who could feel, to some extent, the physical ramifications of a pregnancy lost, of a trauma endured. I needed us, now more than ever, in these newfound depths of mourning.

So why did it feel as though this loss had only happened to me? It didn’t, of course, it happened to us. Together, we had a vision for our imagined family of four; a vision now marred. We had an