The Silent Grief of Miscarriage
I had just started a new job as a Sales Executive in New York City, selling digital marketing solutions to large, Fortune 500 companies. It was 2002, when targeted email campaigns were relatively new. I was excited, and preparing to fly out to San Bruno, CA to the company headquarters with other new hires for training.
My excitement was two-fold, as just a few weeks earlier I found out I was pregnant for the first time. My husband and I were married for two years and looked forward to starting a family. We knew we had to start right away due to our age; we were both 38 years old. I was thrilled! So many new beginnings and so much to look forward to! I kept quiet about my pregnancy since it was so early, and because I was in a sales role in an aggressive, fast paced field, where most organizations would choose not to invest in a pregnant woman. But I was determined to make it all work; I was going to be a new Mom and successful in my career.
I was just one day into my training on the west coast, when I started to spot. I called my doctor, who said it could be normal and nothing to worry about, but I should go and get things checked out. I shared my news with a colleague, and after we finished the day’s training, she dropped me off at Stanford Medical Center before heading out to visit some college friends living in CA. I was worried. I called my best friend and my husband, both of whom offered reassurance that everything would be alright.
Since my condition was not an emergency, I waited in the ER until I finally was able to see a female gynecologist on call at 2:00 a.m. “I’m not detecting a heartbeat”, she said. I did not know that the baby’s heartbeat could be detected that early. “But can’t I still be pregnant?” I honestly did not know how this all worked. The doctor was kind. She looked at me, gently held my hand and said, “I want you to know that it is nothing you did or didn’t do that could make this happen”. Make what happen? I didn’t fully understand. I took a cab back to my hotel room at 3 a.m. to try and get some sleep. I woke up soon after and miscarried.
What exactly does it mean to have a miscarriage?
Physically, it depends on how far along the pregnancy is. No one ever talks about it. For me, I bled the equivalent of three menstrual cycles all at once, alone in my hotel room bathroom. I was scared and I was alone. I called my husband to tell him. He did his best to process and understand, but what could he do so far away? “Come home”, he said. I had to get up for work. I didn’t want to say I was sick. Since I hid the pregnancy, I now had to hide the miscarriage. These stranger in my new company would not understand. And the fact that if I hoped to get pregnant again, I needed and wanted to stay with this company for at least a year, especially if I wanted to receive maternity benefits and time off once the baby is born. I did tell my new colleague what had happened. “You should keep drinking some orange juice”, she suggested. “To help with your blood sugar”. It’s strange sometimes, the things that people say and what stays in your mind. That and the fact that access to maternity leave and other parental benefits are another form of open mine field that women must navigate. Thank goodness parental leave and family benefits have evolved!
I made it through the day’s training in a state of shock and exhaustion and flew back home to the east coast the next day. Waiting for me when I arrived where a dozen red roses. My husband knew my sadness and grief, (he didn’t want to know any of the miscarriage details) and did his best, but he couldn’t help me. I was examined by my regular gynecologist, and she confirmed the miscarriage, however my visit focused on the medical issues of miscarriage, not the emotional ones. My sadness was overwhelming. I was desolate, empty inside. The loss was cellular on both a physical and emotional level. I couldn’t seem to get over it, and no one seemed to understand. “Why?”, I wondered. What about all the dreams and hopes I developed in that short a period for my baby? Could I even call it a baby because everyone else is calling it a pregnancy? And what is the difference?
It sure felt like a baby to me, even without the big belly and developed fetus. But not to everyone else. It was a major loss and I felt it, yet why didn’t the rest of the world, or anyone else in MY world see it? “You can get pregnant again”, they said. “That’s the good news; at your age you now know that you can conceive on your own. You’ll have a baby.” How does anyone know that? And what about ‘that one’? I wanted that pregnancy. I had hopes and dreams for that baby. It was a part of me.
After a couple of weeks, my husband said to me, “Maybe you should talk to someone. Professionally, you know?” But who do you talk to about this? People don’t talk about miscarriage, and unless you experience one, you don’t understand. It’s hidden, or if spoken, always in whispers, as an afterthought. The look of knowing when I find out from long term friends that they too have suffered a miscarriage. How do I not know this about you? It appears no one wants to know. It’s a ‘woman’s issue’.
Thank goodness today there are support groups for women who have suffered a miscarriage, yet many of these groups are geared towards infertility. And I cannot begin to image how women can possibly endure the heartbreak and suffering of repeated miscarriages and the years spent and money invested in trying to conceive a child. The emotional toll must be crushing, and I grieve for them.
What I also found interested is that the miscarriage was something that happened to me, not my husband. I’m sure he was sad, and mostly sad for me, but I’m not sure how he felt. He could distance himself from it. It didn’t happen to him, and it was something that I would figure out. So much unspoken.
I am blessed to have eventually become pregnant again two more times and am the mother of two beautiful and healthy sons, now 18 and 20 years old. Truly, they are the greatest gifts of my life. Their existence allows me to keep my miscarriage in the past. However I am reminded every year at my annual gynecological exam. “Three pregnancies, and two children, right?”, the nurse/technician asks me as she reviews my medical history prior to seeing the doctor. “Yes, three pregnancies, two children”, I respond, as though it were simply another medical statistic: height, weight, blood pressure. And for a moment I am reminded of the grief in losing that pregnancy, and all the hope and joy and love and dreams that belonged to it.
More resources:
https://www.pregnancyloss.org/
https://miscarriagehurts.com/en/find-help/support
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