Things I Wish I Knew After Miscarriage
My Second Miscarriage
After I had miscarried my baby, I assumed the physical pain would subside. But that didn’t happen. I experienced severe cramps. My first pregnancy loss was painful as I miscarried, but the pain subsided after the baby was no longer in my uterus. My doctor hadn’t warned me that cramps, bleeding, and contractions would continue as the remaining built layers of my uterus shed themselves.
It became impossible to soothe myself from the pain. I wandered our small Brooklyn apartment trying to find the perfect spot to sit and experience the pain. But nowhere felt comfortable. I moved to the bathroom and lied on the cold tile floor. It only offered a few moments of respite. I switched to my soft mattress and let it envelop me. But it quickly because too soft to support the weight of my waves of cramps. I moved to the hardwood dining room floor, which felt supportive. Then suddenly it was too hard. I wanted respite, pain relief.
Actually, no. I wanted a baby that would become a living, breathing human being, one that could survive outside of my womb. And that wasn’t going to happen this time.
The waves of pain crested for four days. I could feel it inching up. I imagined the pain chart at a doctor’s office: On a scale of one to ten, how intense is your pain? In this second, it’s a two. Now it’s a three. The next moment, it’s a four. I would feel it climb all the way to a 10, linger at that intensity for a few moments, and then the pain would start a gradual decline, from a 10 to a nine, to an eight, all the way down to a zero. My pain would only stay at a zero for a moment. Long enough for me to recognize I could breathe, pain-free, but definitely not long enough to linger there. Because the pain would start its immediate rise once again.
Somedays were so physically painful that I couldn’t even feel my emotions. I had to simply ride the wave of pain. Miscarriages are not a moment in time. It is a labor and delivery experience. It wasn’t until my fourth miscarriage that a doctor told me to prepare for a painful experience that could last a few days. At that point, I wanted to laugh at her: Yes, I’m aware. I’ve been here three times before. This would have been nice to know the first time around.
Yes, it took four miscarriages before a doctor fully disclosed what I would most likely be physically experiencing over the next few days.
Not only was it painful, but the bleeding was heavy and lasted for days. Just when I thought I was going to stop bleeding, I started again. Just when I felt my body had passed all of the tissue that could possibly exist in this pregnancy, I passed another big clot.
During my second miscarriage, I returned to work once I thought the pain and bleeding had officially subsided. It was the first day I hadn’t woken up writhing in pain. It felt good to be back to work. Seeing my clients felt like a wonderful distraction. And then, suddenly, at 4pm, a wave began. My next client wasn’t until 4:15, so I hoped this cramp would pass. I assumed it would be small, like a cramp you get when you’re on your period. But this wasn’t that. I lay on my office floor, in the fetal position. Was it unprofessional to cancel an appointment this late? Was it unprofessional to have an appointment when I was in this much pain? Luckily, Motrin kicked in at just the right moment, and I felt able to carry on. During the appointment, however, a clot passed, and it stained my chair. I had to immediately get rid of my office chair.
My Third Miscarriage
Our third miscarriage took place at a hospital. I had prepared myself for the pain, but because we were farther along in our pregnancy, I was supposed to get a D&C. The miscarriage began happening before they could start the procedure, and instead I delivered our baby naturally. It was painful, and the morphine the emergency room doctor administered barely diminished the immense pain.
Because this was the first time I miscarried at a hospital, in front of a doctor, this was the first time I saw any paperwork giving me a diagnosis and outlining follow-up care. Our hospital records read “abortion.” I started crying. I hadn’t had an abortion. I had a miscarriage. I equated the word abortion with a voluntary termination of pregnancy. My experience was not voluntary. An abortion, I thought, meant that medical intervention was involved. I had no medical intervention.
The medical term for a miscarriage is spontaneous abortion. It can also be referred to as a complete abortion, in which all of the pregnancy tissue has left the body, or an incomplete abortion, when there is still tissue to be expelled. Words are so important. Labels matter. I wish I had learned these medical terms before I saw them written on a paper.
To be clear, I fully support a women’s right to choose, and recognize that a voluntary decision to end a pregnancy, wanted or unwanted, can be an incredibly challenging and painful experience. There are also women and couples who have to make the heart-wrenching decision to terminate their pregnancies due to medical reasons. I in no way felt that I was being put with a group of people I had judgments about. That was not the case. My thoughts were instead focused on naming my experience properly. I had a similar feeling after my first miscarriage when people referred to it as a “chemical pregnancy.” Just because it was a chemical pregnancy did not make the experience any less painful. Our words matter, and if providers don’t use the words we are using, we can feel invalidated, unseen, and unheard.
My Fourth Miscarriage
By my fourth loss, I was prepared for the physical pain. I was ready to see terms on my medical forms that maybe I hadn’t expected.
I wasn’t expecting the fourth loss to hurt emotionally as much as the first three. When I got pregnant for the fourth time, I thought that if this pregnancy ended in loss, I would be prepared to handle it because I had been there three times before.
But that wasn’t the case. After our fourth pregnancy loss, I cried just as hard. I took just as much time off work. I had time to fall apart and slowly put myself back together. And this is because loss is loss, no matter when it happens, no matter how it happens. Like my other three losses, I needed to give myself space and time to heal. I needed to redefine myself as someone with four recurrent consecutive pregnancy losses, not three.
In her book Rising Strong, Brené Brown defines grief in three ways: loss, longing, and feeling lost. After my fourth miscarriage, I felt lost. My hope in identifying as a mother was quickly slipping away from me. It was starting to feel hopeless, like a pipe dream. I had lost my driving identity in life, the identity I had hoped to have since I was a small child. I needed space to find myself again. I needed to re-identify who I was, and that required time.
When we experience any loss at any stage, we are going to have surprises. Feelings will arise that we weren’t aware of. Physical sensations will knock us over. And responses, both from the professionals, as well as our friends and family, will leave us speechless. Be prepared to not be prepared at all. And know that in your unpreparedness, there are countless women who have been right where you are, supporting you and lifting you up in your time of need.