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

nor are our feelings about what we’ve lost replaced by the overwhelming love of those resting safely in our arms. Life doesn’t replace death. It doesn’t need to, and it simply can’t. And since the existence of one child does not negate the loss of another, why does culture—with its wonted way of focusing on happy endings—demand that we turn our backs on our grief to serve our well-being? We needn’t succumb to this insidious unspoken pressure.

And so was the case with me. Noa’s arrival was a monumental turning point, but the months that preceded her birth were sullied by an awareness that anything could go wrong at any time, and my resulting worry that surely something would, even after she entered the world. Noa’s birth was pivotal and deeply healing in that sense, as was the subsequent opportunity to reflect on the fact that we’d made it through every single one of those harrowing weeks of her development, and that I’d done so without having to relive the horrors of what had happened to me such a short time ago. There’d been no blood, no early labor, no unassisted home birth, no traumatic loss. Instead, only the good, the predictable, and the expected transpired in that pregnancy and there in that hospital room. Noa’s birth was physically intense, of course, but I had welcomed the opportunity to feel every twinge of pain. I’d gotten the reparative birth experience I’d yearned for and trusted my body through it. This pain is purposeful. I had the chance to be present in mind and body with a positive outcome, the way I was when the outcome was bleak, with no choice in the matter. An outcome so confounding it is still hard to find the perfect words to sum up. This time was different.

One of the most insufferable and surprising parts of grief is that one moment we can’t stand to feel our sadness for another second, and the next we are scared of ever losing the intensity of that feeling. That somehow the passage of time, and the eventual lessening of the sting, is an affront to the memory of the one we lost. This thought pattern is common among the bereaved, but the dichotomy is even more intense after a pregnancy loss, because there are so few who knew the lost one—sometimes, of course, the pregnancy isn’t even known until after the loss occurs. To let go of grief can feel like letting go of memory, and if we alone bear the burden of those memories, that can be a terrifying thought. So then why not allow grief to stay, even as time moves forward and joy returns? The pain is purposeful. I learned that I didn’t have to choose.

In acknowledging that death is as big a part of life as birth, we recognize that sometimes intense gratitude and unconditional love commingle with fear, overwhelm, and angst. And in so doing, we let go of that strident, fantastical notion embedded in our culture that the birth of one baby somehow erases the complex feelings of having lost another. Replacement isn’t a thing when it comes to pregnancy and human beings. We find, then, that it’s imperative to extinguish the idea that the existence of good negates all that which has been painful in the past. Trauma is like tar, sticking to our innards, affecting so many things, from the way we physically move through our environment to the way we psychologically process the world. We must hold both. Even if we don’t feel capable of managing both, we can and we will.

Moving into this headspace ever so subtly changed the way I practiced as a therapist. I relished the three-month maternity leave: to bond with Noa, to foster a connection between my children as siblings, and to familiarize myself with my reformed mind, now mothering two. In that still-inchoate time—milky and sleep deprived as I was—I knew that steadying my anxious tremor was paramount to a successful return to the workforce. Clearly visible in my rearview mirror was the hasty return I had made after my miscarriage, and I wasn’t about to do that again. So I made sure not to rush. And I made sure to sink into this new life of mine—as a family of four—with the deep imprint of what had come before and the grief that was born of it.

• • •

When I made my way back to work, I felt well—a much-welcomed and marked distinction from the way I walked back in after my loss. Interactions with my patients felt measured, and I was back to being focused on their stories without a recent and similar narrative of my own hovering in the background.

Compared to the return following my miscarriage—that abbreviated moment where I hardly even took in what had happened—this time, in hearing their stories and sharing their grief, I felt sturdy. I felt encouraged and validated by the way my experience had changed me. My loss quite literally helped bolster my ability to understand and relate to my patients in ways previously relegated strictly to the theoretical. After Noa was born, sitting with my patients—no longer pregnant, with no plans to be again—I was able to sink into my work with aplomb. And, I noted, the fact that new patients meeting me for the first time would not have to encounter my burgeoning belly (or the chaos of my loss) no longer rendered me as a potential trigger for those walking through my door. This brought enormous relief. A new chapter was underway.

12

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

My mother-in-law’s first pregnancy was smooth, much wanted, and a girl. Toward the end of her pregnancy, movement lightened. She told her doctor. He assured her that everything was okay. Upon giving birth, they learned that their darling daughter Chaya had spina bifida—a birth defect that occurs when the spine and spinal cord don’t form properly. She died within ten days, never having made it