On Miscarriage.
October is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. This creates the opportunity to bring to light some hard topics that we just don’t talk about.
Our society prizes childbearing, and we are taught from childhood both implicitly and explicitly that motherhood is the ultimate prize of being a woman. So when that path is a struggle, whether it is through infertility, miscarriage, or stillbirth, it’s easy to feel that shame creeping in again. It is easy to blame your body, to feel that it is failing you, that it is not working the way it was meant to.
I haven’t shared a lot about my own infertility because I am still in the midst of the struggle. All the feelings I’m sharing here are my own, and I know I am not alone. I struggle to believe that I can truly be a full woman when my body seems to not be able to carry a child. Over my years of navigating infertility, I have often felt broken. I know this is a lie, but it’s a lie that is whispered in my ear over and over again. Maybe you can relate. Maybe you’ve heard those whispers yourself. Know that you are not alone, either.
I want to share a little more about my story.
After years of navigating infertility and trying all-of-the-things, my husband and I finally had a positive pregnancy test earlier this year. We were elated. This was the one. We had been working so hard and waiting for so long for this. We celebrated every moment of being pregnant and tried to push down the fears and what-if’s that came with it after such a long wait.
Six weeks later, I started spotting. We had an ultrasound that showed the baby was a week behind. My doctor recommended “cautious hope,” but within a day I knew we were losing it. We had a miscarriage.
I have spent the past few months in various stages of rage and grief and sadness and even still joy at times. We had already told our families and several friends, and now had to share the heartbreaking news that we lost the baby. I ran out of emotional capacity to keep telling the story. I wanted people to know, but it has taken some time to share the story. It’s hard to know how much is too much to share.
I want to share my story because I want to remind myself that I’m not alone. I want others to know that they aren’t alone. And I want the friends and family and coworkers who are witness to the grief of a miscarriage or infertility to know how to hold that person with sensitivity and kindness.
Even if you can’t relate personally, you probably know someone who has lost an infant or a pregnancy. 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage, yet it is still something we rarely talk openly about. 1 in 8 couples in the US struggle to conceive, and we talk even less about infertility. It is a lonely struggle, but you are not alone. Your loved one is not alone either.
As I said at the beginning, October is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. The next two weeks will bring you blog posts about what to to say or do and what to avoid when you find out someone close to you has lost a pregnancy. If you have experience with this yourself, I’d love to hear your story. Comment below or find me on Instagram. We are truly stronger together, and you and I are not alone in this.