On my drive home from work tonight, I turned the radio to NPR and heard Ken Harbaugh reading a beautiful, touching essay titled, “After Miscarriage, Missing The Luxury of Grieving.” Harbaugh said, “A miscarriage is tragic enough by itself. What makes it worse is the fact that no social custom has evolved to help us through the loss. There is no ceremony, no coming together, no ritualized support.”
Comparing his private grieving post miscarriage to the more public and communal grieving he experienced after his grandfather’s passing, he said, “In the months since, I have learned something about this kind of grief. It is not a luxury, but an essential part of healing.” Harbraugh’s story moved me and inspired me to share my own experience post-miscarriage. I too grieved silently for months until I eventually found a way to heal. Here’s how:
“I know just how you feel.”
Those six simple words meant so much to me even though I had no idea who had written them. They were posted in a chat room and the writer’s screen name held no meaning for me.
For weeks, well-intentioned friends and family had been telling me they knew someone who went through exactly what I went through and that I would soon get over it.
“Exactly?” I would think. “They went through the exact same thing?”
I found it hard to believe that anyone could know what I new; that anyone could feel what I felt. My cheeks would burn and my chest would constrict. I was so angry that my feelings were trivialized and compared to those of a friend-of-a-friend or someone’s neighbor.
But when a complete stranger posted her message to me on a bulletin board, I knew without a doubt, that she did indeed know exactly how I felt. That stranger, and six others, became my salvation for the next nine months.
Two months prior to reading that message, I had miscarried. It had been my first pregnancy. Initially, I was reluctant to get pregnant. I wanted to have children someday, but I had no idea when someday would come. But my husband had recently turned 35, I was 34, and we didn’t want to wait too much longer. In just two weeks of learning I was pregnant, my feelings changed from ambivalence to joy. I fell madly in love with my baby and went to the Ob/Gyn excited to pee in a cup and start my new adventure.
The doctor answered my questions, gave me some diet guidelines, and listened for the heartbeat. “We’re going to give you an ultrasound,” she said.
“Cool,” I thought. I had no idea that wasn’t routine.
My baby had a very week heartbeat. The doctor told me to come back in two weeks and they would do another ultrasound. Either the heartbeat would get stronger or it would stop. I sobbed all the way home. For the next fourteen days I tried to stop falling in love. I tried not to blame the baby’s condition on my ambivalence. I tried to completely block out the fact that I was pregnant because I was so anxious I felt I would snap.
When I went back to the doctor, the ultrasound showed that my baby’s heart had stopped beating. My doctor told me I had what was referred to as a “missed miscarriage”. For unknown reasons, the fetus just hadn’t been viable. This shouldn’t affect my ability to get pregnant and have a child in the future she told me. She recommended I wait at least two months before trying to conceive again. Then she handed me a box of Kleenex.
“I hate it when they cry,” she said.
Two months later I was pregnant again. And I was scared because I didn’t want this baby to die. I was angry because the doctor wouldn’t give me an ultrasound. I thought it was cruel that I couldn’t confirm daily that the heart was beating. The technology existed, why weren’t they using it? I was excited because I couldn’t resist planning my baby’s life. And I was disappointed because I didn’t feel the sheer joy, the incredible optimism, of being pregnant. I had lost my innocence the first time around. No matter how many pregnancies I would go on to have, they would always be tainted by the first.
Mostly, I was irritable. My friends and family kept telling me to relax. They said it as if it were a choice. One relative even cautioned me that being tense was bad for the baby. So not only could I not mourn my first baby, I couldn’t worry about my second. If I did, I might cause harm to this one too. I added guilt to the long list of emotions I was cycling through. I didn’t want to think about this baby; to think about it was pure agony.
“Do you feel okay?” people would ask me when I told them I was worried. They wanted to know if I had any pains or strange sensations.
I felt absolutely fine. That was the problem. Maybe if I had morning sickness or sore breasts or any symptom at all I would know that the baby inside me was growing. But instead I felt perfectly normal. It was terrifying.
Frustrated by my friends and family who were focused on reassuring me but failing to listen to me, I went online looking for comfort. On some pregnancy website that tracked a baby’s development week by week, I discovered the term PAM: pregnancy after miscarriage. The site had a bulletin board where PAMs talked about their concerns. For a few days I lurked on the site; reading the discussions but never posting my own comments. And then finally I sent a message.
“I am so scared,” I said to nobody in particular. I explained that I had no symptoms and it was making me crazy.
A few hours later I saw the response: “I know just how you feel.”
Reading those six simple words, I felt such an incredible sense of relief, such a strong sense of belonging, I started to cry.
The writer invited me to join a group of PAMs called the JuneBugs, who were all expecting babies in June, like me. For the next few months the JuneBugs became my lifeline. There were eight of us who posted daily and a few others who participated less frequently. Three of the JuneBugs already had children. Two others, like me, were on their second pregnancy and hoping for their first child. One woman was on her third pregnancy but had no living children. She had had a miscarriage and then she had given birth to a baby who died from SIDS. Now she was pregnant again. Her posts made me feel a mix of fear, shame and awe. The coward in me wanted to avoid knowing her story as if I could protect myself from that happening to me if I didn’t think about it. Another part of me was so impressed with her strength and her willingness to try again. If she was brave enough to take a risk again, I could do it too.
I couldn’t help comparing stories and ranking the situations among the JuneBugs. The woman who had lost two babies, one in vitro and one a few months after birth, had the number one story and outranked the rest of us. Those of us who had had one miscarriage and no children trumped those who had healthy babies already. At least they knew they were capable of producing life. What if I just couldn’t grow a baby inside me? That would be the ultimate failure.
As the months went on, I stopped comparing stories and started listening to the other JuneBugs. We formed a strong bond. We were a diverse group made up of a liberal feminist from the Northeast, two Southern Christian Conservatives, two career women and three stay-at-home moms. And we were friends. Every day we would go online and share our pregnancy stories. We’d update each other on our monthly checkups, our weight gain, and what items we purchased at Babies-R-Us. And we would talk about our lives: our husbands, our mother-in-laws, and our jobs. During the pregnancies, one of us moved to a new city, one of us lost a job, and one of us divorced.
In April we threw ourselves a baby shower. One woman assigned each of us a name. Then we exchanged addresses with our online partner and sent each other a gift. I received a Winnie the Pooh cotton sleeper for my future son. Many years later, it is tucked away in the attic, one of only a few baby items I’ve kept.
In June the babies started arriving. Husbands would email the rest of us with names, weight and time of arrival. I had the latest due date and I prayed I would have a happy ending like my friends who went ahead of me. I don’t know if it was luck or a miracle or the power of friendship and love, but each one of us delivered a healthy baby that June.
For almost six months after my son was born, I continued to chat with the JuneBugs daily. But when I went back to work full-time, and the charm of diapers and midnight feedings wore off, I went online less and less.
A few years ago I went back to the site and saw that several of the JuneBugs were still talking regularly. I lurked for a few nights, catching up on their lives, but I never posted. Just seeing their comments and knowing that some of them were still good friends, made me smile. If I were to submit a post, it would simply have three words:
“Thank you JuneBugs.
Like what you’ve read? Then sign up here to receive future posts by email or RSS.
