My Reasons for Brokenness in Miscarriage
I will start this post with one statement… TRIGGER WARNING! I begin with this because had I casually strolled upon it four to five years ago, it would have set me back in my therapy journey. See, I have had my fair share of miscarriages. And it took me or rather, it is still taking me over 13 years to realize I’m not broken. Why would women who had miscarriages think they’re broken? Let’s dive into the reasons why.
#1 We (Black People) don’t talk about it Miscarriages are very common within the Black community. Research suggests that Black women face a significantly higher risk of having a miscarriage than white women. Even in my own family, I didn’t realize how common it was, because no one ever spoke about it. I totally understood their “why”, after suffering my first miscarriage. Who do you speak to when you don’t know anyone else that has suffered such loss? It wasn’t like there were any support groups being publicized about miscarriages. I literally searched “support groups in DFW, TX for women who have miscarried” when I got home in August 2008. There was nothing I saw that would link me to other women that would understand the pain I was feeling in that moment. So I internalized it, prayed nightly for God to not take my baby away from me and started slipping into a depression that I wouldn’t identify until 2010.
#2 Trauma Incurred from the Medical Community After returning home from a cruise celebrating my aunt’s nuptials and our one-year anniversary, my husband and I found out via a home pregnancy test that we were with child. I followed up with my OBGYN to schedule my first prenatal appointment. Because we were ecstatic and had three positive home pregnancy test confirmations, we called and told our immediate family. Before my scheduled appointment, I started spotting, so I followed up with a call to my OBGYN office. I had done my own google search and read it could be implantation that was causing the spotting, so I never once thought of the possibility of miscarriage. We got our appointment bumped up and off to the office we went. The nurse did the usual urine analysis to confirm pregnancy and then additional blood work to identify my HCG levels. The doctor came in and notified me, I would need to come back a week later to see if my levels were increasing or not, so they could identify if I was in fact miscarrying. When those words escaped her lips, I felt like I had been gut punched. My husband and I both left the office in silence. What do you say to one another when you’ve heard news that you couldn’t fathom hearing on what you thought would be a confirmation visit of the beginning stage of your parenthood journey? I completed my two blood draws and then one day I got that dreaded call. The nurse from my OBGYN office called during a work day and casually told me I was miscarrying and needed to come back in next week for another blood draw to make sure my levels were decreasing as expected. She didn’t ask me any leading questions to ensure I had the necessary support available to receive such news. She dropped that shit like I would be pleased with it. I walked outside of my office building and internally screamed, fought back tears that stung my eyes to be released and tried to quiet the voice in my head asking how I was supposed to call home and tell everyone, I’m miscarrying. My mind was frozen and I couldn’t fathom calling my husband and telling him the news during his work day. My fingers immediately dialed my best friend that happened to work in the same building. She came and gathered me and took me home. The next day after gathering my thoughts, I called to share just how dissatisfied I was with the way my situation was handled with the medical staff at my OBGYN office and released her of any future services for me. I then contacted my trusted primary care physician (PCP) whom had me come in for an immediate visit and started doing everything in her power to assist us in saving the pregnancy. If it wasn’t for this woman, I don’t know where I’d be. She got me in with another OBGYN the next day, who did a vaginal ultrasound and told me I needed to go in for emergency surgery. I had a tubal pregnancy and my spotting was internal bleeding from an ectopic pregnancy.
#3 You have to now tell everyone this Tragic News I called my parents from the doctor’s office as they were scheduling me for emergency surgery to now tell them I officially was NOT pregnant. At first, they thought I was joking, but when I broke down crying they understood this was a serious matter. My heart hurt, I felt inadequate. Even though the current OBGYN and staff assured me it wasn’t anything I did, my body was attempting to abort an unhealthy embryo/fetus, I still felt like I was the problem. We then contacted additional family that we’d shared the news with because I knew once I came out of surgery, I’d have to deal with my own emotions about the loss of the child I had already loved and planned for. To say, my village is an all-star team, is an understatement. Some were at the hospital to be with my husband as I was in surgery. Others were in prayer closets or at my home trying to create a space I could come home to recover. But no matter how strong my village was, I felt alone in this journey. I woke up to the news that due to the ectopic pregnancy, I was now only operating with one fallopian tube as the other had ruptured and could not be saved. Imagine already experiencing the loss of a pregnancy and then finding out your journey to motherhood would be even harder. I now had to share this unsettling news with those I felt needed to know. It was a select few but sharing to other “whole” women that now, not only are you having issues bringing forth life, now you really are broken because you are functioning on one tube. For those that know the biology of a woman and the egg’s journey through our fallopian tubes, you also know that we don’t get alternating sides, it is what it is. If the egg opted to travel the journey of my missing tube every ovulation period, then that would be it. There was nothing I could do about it, it would just be “luck of the draw.”
#4 The consoling words, no matter how well intended, just never lands right If one more person called, texted or dropped by and told me ‘it wasn’t meant to be’ or ‘there will always be a next time’ I was going to be in jail for assault and battery. Listen to me when I say this, “sometimes it’s best not to say anything at all and just listen;”. especially if you’re foreign to that particular situation. There was nothing anyone could say that would make me feel better. No words were comforting, even though I constantly shared the “I’m okay” face, I was not. I was PISSED. How could I have done everything in order (I went to college, got a job, got married and then tried for kids) and here I am dealing with the trauma of losing a child I had loved from the first positive pregnancy test? If you can only sympathize with a grieving mother, just listen. I have learned to do that when attempting to console people that have lost a parent. I can only sympathize with them and nt empathize with them because I have not experienced that yet. I say this with sincerity, don’t get phucked up due to poor word choices when speaking to someone working through a trauma such as this.
#5 We suffer in silence This is a result of the first statement; we don’t talk about it. In 2008, I attempted to move on as if this trauma didn’t impact and change me. I had resentment towards my husband because my belief was he couldn’t fathom the brokenness I felt in my body rejecting bringing forth life. So, in late February 2009, when we found out we were pregnant again, we didn’t say anything to anyone. I didn’t want a repeat of last year’s trauma. I walked around as if I wasn’t and held my breath for every passing week, saying prayers to make it through the first twelve weeks. I had found a new OBGYN that I loved and she had given me the green light to walk during a Victory Over Violence event with the young girls from my church. I completed the walk with no issues, but during the festivities at the arcade/bowling/go cart facility, my body kept saying something wasn’t right. I called my husband and asked him to pick me up early so I could go home and get some rest. I thought I was possibly just tired from the events of the day. Within two days, I started spotting again and immediately braced myself for a repeat of last year. Since I had experienced an ectopic pregnancy that resulted in the loss of a tube, my doctor didn’t want to chance it being another ectopic and got me in the very next day. I was nearing week ten, so we were almost at the end of our first trimester when I got the dreaded news. I was in fact miscarrying but thankfully, this time it wasn’t in my tubes. My doctor felt no medical intervention was necessary, I would pass the fetus on my own, naturally. We were gearing up to visit my family during spring break and that would have been the time frame which we shared with everyone that we were expecting. I went home and raged the phuck out. I threw what I could, I cursed, I screamed, I yelled, and then I sunk down and sat in disbelief that I was here again, defeated. My body didn’t want me to be a mother. There were countless teens I watched on 16 and Pregnant doing this with no problem. Yet here I stood, an educated and employed 29-year-old, and my body was like PHUCK YOU. I passed the fetus two days before I boarded a plane to pretend as though I was fine with my family. They were clueless that I had just miscarried when I arrived. In some ways, I needed that trip. I needed to be near my mother, just in close proximity to her. She didn’t need to know, but I needed to breathe and feel her in that mental space I was in. I put on a “happy face” and made it through the weekend when inside I was tormented. I was questioning my womanhood, my health, my faith, my marriage… how could he want a broken woman that couldn’t bear a child. He didn’t sign up for that; would he stay once he realized it was me that was the problem? My mental health needed help but I was so unaware of it.
#6 Lack of Resources How could I know that I was in the mist of a mental health crisis? I didn’t have a support system who had experienced this fate so I had no one to walk this journey with. No one was casually strolling up to me at work or in my social setting to say, hey I had a miscarriage and you may want to be aware of the signs of a mental health crisis. It wasn’t until I had my first son, on my first day back to work, where the onboarding therapist told me she couldn’t approve my return. She referred me to an outpatient clinic for postpartum care for a formal diagnosis. That’s when I found out I suffered from separation anxiety that stemmed from the two previous losses. I was not truly experiencing motherhood. Instead, with bated breath, I was waiting on the other shoe to drop. I had a whole child and still couldn’t breathe or take joy in it. Every night I checked his breathing, being overly cautious about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) to the point that I was holding my son all day so I could see and feel him breathing. It wasn’t until the medical staff at our onboarding facility at work noticed that I wasn’t a mother returning to work but a frantic woman who didn’t know if the miracle of her son was that or just an extension of her loss journey that would soon reveal itself. This made me wonder how the medical staff didn’t recognize my mental state the first time I returned to work following my emergency surgery and first miscarriage. Did they see me as just an employee returning to work from surgery and not as an employee that had just lost a child? What was different after I gave birth, that made the medical staff look a bit more closely at me and my fragile mental state? I’m thankful that someone took notice because I met so many other mothers during my outpatient treatment who experienced and were dealing with the same untreated grief/trauma. Before therapy, I didn’t see my emotional state as grief. These pregnancies weren’t even what others would consider a child yet. I had felt stupid for thinking I could equate this to what others dealt with after the death of their loved ones. That’s what my small mind had limited grief to.
All those thoughts, feelings, and emotions led me to a state of BROKENNESS. I felt inadequate as a woman, that I couldn’t bring forth life. I felt like less of a woman because of my journey to motherhood. Social media wasn’t what it is today, in 2008. We were just transitioning from MySpace into Facebook. What sane person would jump on a platform and tell the world that they are having fertility issues? Not a one. We didn’t have all the groups we have available today. We didn’t have the authenticity and transparency about medical and mental health issues we have today. I share my brokenness today, to hopefully help someone know that miscarriages are common, and most importantly, you are NOT alone. You’re not a rare species or an inadequate woman. You are just a woman. And for some of us, the journey to motherhood will have some peaks and valleys. But don’t, for even one second, tell yourself that you are broken. You are not… Hell WE are NOT!
