I am so sorry this has to be a topic. I am also sorry that you felt some connection to the topic and wanted to read it enough to click on it. But mostly, I am sorry that miscarriage exists. What a heartbreaking experience for anyone going through it. I never considered the possibility of a miscarriage before it happened; then it was so overwhelming, I had no idea how to get through it. If that’s you, hopefully my experience and how I survived my first miscarriage will help you.
I had to learn how I grieved
This was my first major loss in my life. I mean, my childhood dog had died, and I’d lost some great-aunts. But I’d never felt deep, soul-wrenching, don’t-know-how-to-breathe-anymore grief until I knew I was losing my baby. We wanted that baby so much, celebrated so much, told everybody we knew. And then it all crashed into tiny shards around us.
I started out feeling like I needed to do something. I needed to be busy. My parents came, and I decided we were going to plant a garden. Something beautiful was going to come from this. I got about an hour into the garden-planting before I needed to go throw up and cry on the bathroom floor. My mom cleaned me up, got me on the couch, and I just sat and cried. I felt like a failure. It’s kind of a lot of work to be pregnant, lose that pregnancy, and then the next day try to plant a garden, but I didn’t see that. I just saw one more thing I started but couldn’t finish. Those awful thoughts circled my mind for days. I don’t know that everybody feels like that, or that anybody knows what “normal” grief is supposed to look like. It’s different for everyone.
My grief comes in waves
I learned that my grief came in waves. At first, it was just hit after hit of waves of grief, and I was drowning in it. Then as I found lifelines, the waves would still come knock me down and crash over my head. Sometimes, I’d feel like I was just finding my footing again when another wave would come out of nowhere. Other times, I’d see it coming. As I worked through it and made my way toward peace, I found that the waves still came. But they were smaller. Not that it hurt less, just it overturned my life less when it hit. I was stronger, and I was ready for it. When it came,I knew how to handle it.
I had to learn how to allow myself to feel happy when I felt happy, or cry when I needed to cry. And honestly, almost a decade later, I still have days when I get hit and just need to take a minute and grieve again. I’ve given myself permission to do that because that loss matters to me. Anything worth loving is worth grieving, so I’m going to always allow myself to grieve the children I never knew but loved so very much.
I could find lifelines
Finding lifelines to anchor myself amidst those waves of grief was an essential part of surviving the miscarriage. I spent the first few days throwing up and crying. That’s it. But my mom was there. My mom had never had a miscarriage, so she didn’t really know what to say. I found the silence very comforting. Silence became a lifeline for me. Finding quiet places where nobody wanted anything from me or was telling me how to improve anything, just getting to BE…because just continuing to exist was hard in that moment. So the fact that I could feel myself still breathing, feel my heart still beating, and hear the life continuing around me was assuring that I, too, would keep going.
I went back to work after the throwing up ended. I was quiet and subdued, so everybody pretty much left me alone. But when I was able to share what was going on, I found out that several women in my office had gone through the same thing and understood.
It helped to know I wasn’t alone
Miscarriages are more common than the pregnancy commercials and movies make it seem. According to the March of Dimes, for women who know they are pregnant, about 10-15% of those pregnancies will end in miscarriage. Not 10-15% of women will have a miscarriage. It’s 10-15% of pregnancies. That’s a huge number when you consider the number of times one woman may get pregnant.
I wasn’t the only one who lost a baby I wanted so much. I was a member of a much larger group of women that nobody seemed to talk about. A group that large must mean that I’m not the only person who doesn’t understand, who feels like everything is collapsing around me, who doesn’t know what to do next. And most importantly, a group that large must mean that there’s not necessarily something wrong with ME, since I’m not the only one. There’s always safety in numbers.
I had to reach a point where knowing “why” wasn’t important
Some women know or can find out the reason for their miscarriage. Not all miscarriages have a known reason. Mine didn’t. That was hard for me to accept at first, until I realized that not having a reason for it to go wrong meant that there was every reason in the world to have a successful pregnancy next time. It’s not without hope.
Initially, I wanted to know all the why’s. I’m a lawyer. I was an English major in college. I do research for fun. For fun. Just to know the answer. So you know when my hopes and dreams for my baby were destroyed overnight, I started up the research machine. I don’t recommend that. It gets really scary, and it’s not worth it.
After a point, I realized that a definite reason for the miscarriage would not change the hurt, the loss, the weird looks from friends. Needing to know why when there wasn’t going to be an answer that would satisfy me (because no such reason existed) was just a mental torture I was inflicting on myself. Law school taught me that if there can’t be a satisfactory answer, then it is best to find a different question. This practice applies to more than just the law. I taught my mind that every time I started to think “why” about my miscarriage, I’d instead ask “is there a reason it would happen again?” Then I would remind myself that my doctor assured me that no, there was no reason it would happen again. This mind-training brought much-needed peace.
I limited the people I spoke to
I found quickly that there were people I wanted to talk to and people I didn’t. My mom’s friend who meant well, but wanted to start a whole conversation about what was wrong with me and how doctors can fix things nowadays…thanks for calling, I gotta go. The people who say all the wrong things or the right things the wrong way, I let it go to voicemail. My husband filtered what I heard and saw in my messages so I could just thank the no-thanks people for their thoughts (because southerners can’t just let a message go unacknowledged) without actually hearing/seeing what they said.
I limited myself to only listen to people who spoke peace, who spoke love, or who didn’t speak at all but were willing to just sit with me. It was so important to not let myself be alone in that time, but I didn’t want to be around people who made me feel worse. I had so many negative thoughts during that time, that any implied negativity–intended or not–was more than I could handle. (For suggestions on how to help a friend going through a miscarriage, including what NOT to say, see my post here.)
I limited myself to work conversations or people who knew how to be careful with their words. If a person didn’t fit into those categories, I didn’t speak to them. Not rudely, just not available to converse. Not everybody needs an explanation, either. I needed to survive. And that meant I needed boundaries. And I don’t have to explain to my mom’s friend why she was on the outside of that boundary–or even mention that the boundary existed. I just picked right back up when I was ready (and pregnant again) with, “Oh, yeah, I had a rough time, but let me tell you about our new joy!” and moved that conversation right along without ever discussing the time of silence.
I survived my first miscarriage by continuing life
Sometimes, there wasn’t really much desire to go anywhere or do anything. I didn’t want to go to a restaurant because a pregnant woman or a baby might be there. Didn’t want to go anywhere I might see someone who knew I’d had a miscarriage because I didn’t want any pitying looks–or worse, I didn’t want any judgmental looks. I just didn’t want to do anything. This wasn’t the solution.
Getting out and going, doing, and seeing that there was so much more to life than what was in my uterus or not was critical to healing. It took time, it took persistence, and it took giving myself grace and second chances to get there.
But once I got there…it still hurt. It hurt to go to my friend’s birthday party and hear one of her friends complaining of pregnancy pains. To go to church and walk past the nursery windows full of babies. Life just hurt.
But over time, I was able to see how much bigger my life was. When I zoomed in my focus on my self-portrait to seeing only the woman who’d had a miscarriage–the hurt was insurmountable. But the miscarriage and accompanying grief were just a few pixels comprising the total picture of who I was. Resuming life let me see that whole person again. I could see myself the way other people saw me–as a lawyer, a wife, a friend, a daughter, a girl obsessed with red high heels (now four kids in, not so much that part). The mourning and the loss were still there, a dark shadow making the bright points that much brighter.
It sounds so cliche, that without pain, there’s no real joy. But there’s a reason it’s a cliche. Because I’d felt that deep agonizing pain, and survived it, I was able to come out on the other side with a more powerful appreciation of every joyful moment than I’d ever experienced before. A journey over flat land is easy, but not beautiful. The mountains are more beautiful because they stand out from the valleys. That climb is painful, but so worth it.
If you, my friend, are in the middle of a valley, or on either side of it, please keep going. Know that there is a huge community of women to grieve with you. Know you can try again. There will be more valleys, but there will be more mountain views. Just keep going.
As always, I’m here if you want to reach out or share!