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

stared at the ceiling and felt everything I had prepared for—the sleepless nights breastfeeding my infant, the anxiety-ridden moments in which I would stare at my sleeping baby’s chest rising and falling, the moment my son held his baby sister for the first time, the extra place setting at the dinner table—tugged from my body. As I clenched the nurse’s hand and tears streamed down my face, I shifted my gaze to her—my stare piercing her soulful, almond-shaped eyes. And in her eyes I remained, until it was over. It took the full estimate—a brutal fifteen minutes—to ensure nothing had been left behind, save the part of me that still resides in that kind nurse’s deep-brown eyes. The part of me desperate for a future I never had, a life I have never known. The part I knew I had to learn to live without.

At some point, my midwife friend, who had come over just the night before with her reassuring fetal doppler, also arrived. Like my husband, I cannot recall when or how. The only proof of her presence were the snapshots of the fetus she had the presence of mind to take. She just knew—an outcome of her education in birth and pregnancy loss, no doubt—that these pictures would prove useful in the future. That I would need them. That, eventually, I would want them.

After a few inhales of smelling salts and bites of salted crackers, and with nothing but those snapshots, my husband and I returned home. Assaulted by this new reality, I went blank.

• • •

The furthest thing from my mind following this incomprehensible trauma was to feel ashamed of it, as if I had done something wrong or like I should keep it secret. But I quickly found—both in my memory of so many of my patients’ experiences, and prevalent in the research on women’s feelings after pregnancy loss—that somehow shame is expected. It doesn’t exactly make sense: One in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage—and that’s just of the pregnancies that are known. (The number is probably much higher, due to chemical pregnancies, for example, where the expectant person may not have been aware a pregnancy even existed, much less that a miscarriage occurred.) Approximately one in one hundred pregnancies results in stillbirth. Others learn their developing babies are ill or won’t make it to term, and therefore terminate for medical reasons. Still others must terminate based on health risk—in lieu of their own demise. One in eight couples struggles with conceiving a baby at all.

The medical facts are clear: A majority of miscarriages are due to chromosomal abnormalities, fetal complications, or other genetic issues. There are reportedly more than three million cases of miscarriage in the United States per year. This common occurrence is therefore a normative, albeit often difficult, outcome of pregnancy. But here’s the thing: We are not in charge of chromosomes. And we ultimately have no control over genetics either.

Still, research has shown that more than half of people who have been through these ordeals feel guilty. More than a quarter feel shame.1 And indeed, these concepts somehow have been ingrained in the psyches of countless people who’ve lost pregnancies—that their bodies were defective, that they failed, that they somehow did something bad, something wrong. Our culture literally adds insult to injury.

I couldn’t tell you exactly why I didn’t feel this way. I just didn’t. Maybe it was because of my career, talking formerly pregnant people away from this very line of thinking, even though I had not yet experienced it firsthand. Maybe it was because I’d never believed miscarriage was the fault of any person. Regardless of the reasons why I was able to sidestep this self-destructive line of thought, I never once considered that I did something to prompt this traumatic loss.

But I also kept thinking, through the maze of grief and despair, how much worse it would be to also feel ashamed, guilty, or self-blaming. Amazing, the places our minds go. How much more agonizing it would be if I subscribed to the stigma, bought into society’s expectations of women, and considered myself some kind of a defunct model solely because I couldn’t carry this specific pregnancy to term. I shuddered to think how exponentially worse my suffering would be if I chose to stay silent.

I didn’t want that for myself. And I didn’t want it for anyone else either.

In time, I realized I wanted to make a dent in this taboo topic. I wanted to inspire women to question why they would turn this excruciating experience in on themselves. And I wanted to educate those who would blame women and other people capable of becoming pregnant for a reproductive outcome that was and is beyond their control. The best way I could think to reach the masses and provoke societal change was through words. Starting with my own.

I wasn’t ready to share my story immediately after my loss. I had told countless patients prior to my own pregnancy loss experience that grief doesn’t adhere to a timeline, and that healing from any traumatic experience is a cyclical event with no beginning or definitive end. So in the days, weeks, and months that followed, I tried to practice what I preached. Sometimes I felt like I was ready, only to sit in front of a computer and become excruciatingly aware that I was not. Other times, I simply knew it was too soon, and in those moments I had to remind myself that sharing my loss with anyone should be a choice, not a requirement. I wanted to eventually divulge this information publicly, yes, but on my own terms and when it felt “right” for me and me alone.

Eventually, in early October 2014, two years after my loss, I plopped down at my desk and began writing what turned out to be a searing piece detailing what I’d lived through. Once completed, I sent it into the largest, most influential outlet I could think of, with the hope