Greater than Catharsis
How losing a pregnancy made me discover one of the last great taboos and an urgency to write about loss
The injections weren’t working. My body wasn’t working.
A week earlier, we had seen several follicles measuring in the “get-me-pregnant” zone on the ultrasound, which meant it was Go Time. Unfortunately, there seemed to be an inverse correlation between the dosing and my libido.
Lying on the exam table, a gel-capped wand gliding over my belly, I asked the nurse about side effects.
“Oh, honey,” she said, in between mumbled follicle measurements, “they’re very common.”
“I’m tired all the time. Constantly bloated. I have no sex drive whatsoever.” As my eyes closed, I felt a cold tear slide down to my ear. “How are we supposed to have a baby like this? Is this normal?”
She smiled at me, then looked back at the screen. “The medication is making all these big, happy follicles — and lots of them, see?” She gestured with her head. “So your ovaries are blowing up like a balloon to make room for all those guys. That’s the bloating.”
“And what about the libido and exhaustion?”
“Well, isn’t that just typical?” She turned to me with a raised eyebrow. “Can you imagine men doing any of this?”
No, I could not. I could scarcely imagine myself doing this much longer–cycling through hope and disappointment and adjusting meds, then hope and disappointment… I felt more like a petri dish than a fleshy woman with desires.
We were only four months into this fertility journey, and I was starting to wonder whether it was time to pull the plug. The cumulative disappointment of not getting pregnant conspired with the mounting doubts I had about both my ability and my longing to conceive. I loved my freedom and valued being able to pick up and go wherever, whenever. All those years of not wanting a child then, BOOM, baby fever! Maybe it was as simple as hormones. What was I even doing here? The phrase that kept coming to mind was “square peg in a round hole.”
My younger self could have seen this coming. As a vegetarian twenty-something, I vehemently opposed having kids because of the obvious threats of overpopulation. The youngest of three, plus my half-brother, I felt my parents had already done enough damage by out-spawning themselves. It didn’t help that I married a deeply cynical German who reveled in late-night discussions over Nietzsche and suicide, and had made it abundantly clear the summer we met that he never wished to be a father.
Things began to change shortly after the divorce, when those first hormonal tides washed their baby-craving waves over me. I was in my early thirties, running a thriving cafe business, and dating someone who may have been marriage material.
My brother and his wife had just had their first baby, and I relished watching Frances. I’d strap on the Baby Björn and walk through their leafy Oakland neighborhood, cooing in Frances’ ear, playing with her tiny doll fingers, kissing her impossibly soft head. Mm…that intoxicating scent of baby!
Changing her diapers wasn’t a chore, it was a love act. When she kicked and screamed, shaking her little fists in the air, I would wiggle my features into a silly face and sing her to a state of quiet calm. These mundane efforts felt like my womanly calling, my life’s ultimate purpose. To be recognized by this perfect little peanut and see her angelic face light up for me, to make her laugh — was there anything more precious?
The baby fever extended to complete strangers. I watched a mother in a coffee shop, dressed like me and probably drinking the same hipster pour-over, as she danced with her baby daughter who flopped about on a bistro table like a marionette, giggling and drooling with delight. This reverie was interrupted when I heard my own tears hit the pages of the journal I’d been writing in.
I was fevering so badly I fantasized about my older gay cousin and his partner as my baby-daddies.
I mulled over their offer. Did I want to be a single mother? No. An emphatic No. I wanted romance. I wanted the magic of combining my DNA with the love of my life’s. I wanted my partner to worship my pregnant body and help deliver the baby. I wanted to peek through the bedroom door and see my partner snuggling up to our child as they read bedtime stories. I wanted us all to go camping, make s’mores, and stargaze from our shared tent. I craved that partner.
And there I was, with the partner, my fiancé, walking out of the fertility clinic and questioning our path forward.
We could keep going with the injections for another few months or look at other options, like intrauterine insemination (IUI) or in vitro fertilization (IVF)–none of which appealed to me. It became clear that I needed to stop or, at the very least, press pause. Give myself a break and an opportunity to process.
I made an appointment to see an old astro-therapist friend, who took one look at my horoscope and said,
“You know, some women aren’t meant to be mothers.”
Her comment would have crushed me weeks earlier, but I took it as validation of the ambiguity and anguish I was experiencing.
After discussing the change of heart with Joe, ever the quiet cheerleader and supportive partner, my entire being relaxed as I sank into possibility space. I would get my body back. With my ovaries no longer in charge of scheduling, I would get my life back, too. Sex could be fun again. I wouldn’t have to wonder if I would be a good mother or what I’d have to sacrifice to have a family. Joe and I would remain strong; we agreed we didn’t need a child to chart a meaningful life together. I was more than ready to embrace this next chapter of Not Trying, subtitle Moving On.
Joe and I got married and bought a house, and I started a new real-estate venture. But the greatest achievement of 2016 may have been (drum roll, please) that I got my first natural period in fourteen years.The previous five years had been a series of failed attempts of reactivating my menstrual cycle after a decade of being on the pill and running a stressful business.
Joe and I joked about the expensive non-baby we had made with our fertility experiment, but maybe it was worth it to have finally woken up those ovaries that had pulled a Rip Van Winkle on me. At last, I felt like a woman again.
Not two years later, in April 2018, I had The Period From Hell. After a solid week of intense bleeding and clotting, I began to wonder if The Period might actually be something else. But if I was miscarrying, then I must have been pregnant. Was that even possible? Despite the obvious evidence of increasingly regular menstrual cycles, I was still dubious about my ability to conceive, and that doubt stubbornly fed back into the possibility of miscarriage. Yet I wasn’t entirely blind.
I went to see my friend Reba that afternoon, and she was her usual mix of cheery and crazed. After dancing about, clearing clutter from her office table, she sat down across from me. “Whew, that was a day!” she exclaimed, bursting into that infectious Reba grin. “Sooo,” she said, leaning toward me, letting out a long sigh, “how have you been?”
I choked up. Words weren’t forming.
“Oh, dear. You’ve had a day too,” she said, handing me a tissue. Right on cue, I began sobbing.
I had no idea I was holding so much tension and emotion around the pregnancy and, what I was starting to grasp as, my loss. There was no denying it anymore. How clichéd it felt to finally get pregnant once the urgency to make a baby had fizzled out. I’d rolled my eyes at so many friends and relatives who’d told me it would happen that way. “Just relax with all this fertility stuff. Go on a vacation, forget about it, and next thing you know…” I didn’t believe it then, and I still don’t believe it magically happens like that now.
I felt duped by some perverse higher power.
All the dust that had settled was kicked back up now. Did this mean we should be trying again? We had just started high-fiving each other over our DINKs (Double Income No Kids) status. We were enjoying our life–taking risks, starting new ventures, traveling. Now that we knew it was possible, should we reconsider?
Ultimately, we chose to stay on our path and enjoy the childfree life we were building for ourselves. We still weren’t using protection. I figured if I had miscarried without knowing I was pregnant, then it was unlikely my body would carry another pregnancy.
We went through a rocky phase around our two-year anniversary and started seeing a couples therapist. Despite our moments of celebrating life without kids, a part of me felt estranged in the relationship without the shared goal of parenthood.
Around this time, I began to notice subtle changes in my body. I was tender, more sensitive to smell, and especially prone to crying. My hips swelled. My breasts suddenly burst out of my bra. I went into a CVS and almost bought a pregnancy test but ended up with a bag of makeup I still haven’t worn. I told myself it was just the relationship stress. I was probably overeating and not getting enough exercise.
The next day, I bought a test and a bar of chocolate. I peed on the stick and immediately both lines appeared bright blue. I had to double check the instructions to make sure I was reading it right. My heart pounded. I took a few deep breaths and went out to share the news.
When I presented the stick to Joe, he broke into a smile and pulled me close. “Babe! Congratulations?” he asked.
“It’s so crazy,” I said, my fingernails clawing at my pants leg. “Can you believe it?”
“I know!” he said, his green eyes welling up. “But I knew something was up. Your tits, geez!” We laughed, wiping away tears.
My phone buzzed in my pants pocket. It was my bestie calling from abroad. She shrieked her congratulations through WhatsApp’s compressed line before admonishing me to get back to talking with my husband. Before we hung up, I confessed, “I’m just so confused…but it’s like I finally have this affirmation of my womanhood.”
She immediately rebuked me. “Frie, you were just as much of a woman before, whether or not you could have a baby. Don’t make it about gender.” I realized I had been conflating these things all along and hated myself for it.
I became stuck in an ambiguous space. The timing was awful. Could our relationship survive having kids? Would a baby bring us closer together? What ever happened to rejoicing in our DINKsdom?
The next morning, I ran into an old friend on my way to work. I immediately shared the news, along with my doubts about mothering and the viability of the pregnancy. I didn’t mention that Joe and I weren’t in a great place.
“Aw, man,” he gushed, shaking his head. “I just can’t wait to see your belly get all big!” Hugging him goodbye, I felt a pang in my heart. Right. If it ever gets big. I walked on, dabbing away tears of joy and anxiety, and decided to stop telling people I was pregnant.
When I started miscarrying later that week, only two people besides me and my husband knew of the pregnancy. A week in, I still hadn’t told anyone (besides the dozen hospital staff who’d attended to me), not even my mom.
I knew I should reach out, but I felt too dark, too distraught. I didn’t want anyone to have to bear my burden. I looked online for support around the ever-changing physical symptoms and was shocked at how little was out there. I didn’t want WebMD or some random lady’s frenzied blog post. I had no stomach for reading about God’s will or how my child would be waiting for me up in Heaven. Where were regular women with real experiences and wisdom?
I felt a hollowness at my core. I’d never felt so sad or so alone in my sadness. I cancelled plans, making up excuses, and felt irresponsible for doing so, like I was somehow a slacker for having a miscarriage.
Eleven days after leaving the hospital, the cramping suddenly returned.
I wailed in agony as Joe asked me where the pain was, on a scale from one to ten, a whiff of irritation in his voice. It was nearly midnight.
It was an eight. No amount of ibuprofen, CBD oil, or deep breathing could quell the pain.
Joe massaged my back for a while, then fell asleep. I knew he was reaching his limit and I felt guilty for adding onto his stress.
I woke the next morning to find my pajamas damp and red. I sighed and tossed my underwear in the trash bin. At least the cramping had stopped.
Days later, the gushing became a trickle and the HCG levels the doctors had been monitoring finally bottomed out. Then came the hospital bill–over $3000, despite having health insurance–and the slow crawl out of isolation into healing.
Even with my background in social work and psychology, I struggled to reach out to close friends and relatives. I would sit on the couch, an endless pot of steeping herbs and a stack of magazines beside me, listening to moody women croon through the speakers. Countless solitary walks in the hills and at the dog park. I found myself pacing our small backyard, pulling young weeds after the rain, my core still sore and tender from the cramping.
I began opening up to friends and family, including my mother, who suddenly remembered that she, too, had suffered a miscarriage before my oldest brother was born. The more I shared, the more I understood that I was not alone. The empathy from others came flooding in, along with a resounding chorus of “Me too” and “I’m here if you want to talk.”
But why weren’t we talking about it in the first place? Why do so many women suffer alone?
A growing number of women’s health advocates question the so-called 12-week ‘rule’ of not announcing a pregnancy until the second trimester. Secrecy around early pregnancy means women who miscarry tend to grieve in hushed isolation, stripped of support from healthcare providers and their own social networks.
That was certainly the case for me: no aftercare, no social support. Not until I found the courage to speak up and share my story of loss.
You probably know dozens of women who have had a miscarriage, although you may not know this detail about your friend, partner, sister, favorite barista, colleague, or mother because we’re not talking about it. Miscarriage remains one of the last great taboos.
October is Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Month. Is there a curious and compassionate conversation you could have with someone you know has lost a pregnancy? Perhaps you could tell that woman (or male partner) in your life that you’ll be there to listen with open arms if she ever wants to talk about that possible or actual lived experience.
Your words have the potential to comfort and heal. The act of bearing witness to someone’s grief is vital to the healing process. We all need to be seen and heard (and many of us held) through our pain and loss. Then we can do it for someone else.
The statistic most often cited is one in four. #1in4 #ihadamiscarriage
According to some estimates, up to a third of all pregnancies end in loss when accounting for losses that go unreported or remain unknown to women because of early termination. That’s roughly 2–2.5 million pregnancy losses per year in the US alone, affecting not just would-be mothers, but their partners and support networks as well. Nearly everyone knows somebody affected by pregnancy loss. Yet, we’re not comfortable as a society, or even in the relative safety of friends and sisters, to discuss this serious and widely prevalent health issue.
It’s time to end the silence and start supporting women.
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This post was adapted from the book Carry Me: Stories about Pregnancy Loss to Heal, Inform, and Break the Silence, slated for publication in Spring 2022 by She Writes Press. Read more at miscarriagestoryproject.com or follow me on Instagram @miscarriagestoryproject.
