It was November, the day before Thanksgiving. People everywhere were busy preparing their fancy dinners and making last-minute preparations before their company arrived -- everyone, that is, except for the young girl who sat in a hospital bed, thriving in pain with each contraction, watching the blood fall as she lost her baby, wishing that, more than anything, she would wake up and the pain, the blood and the loss would all be just a nightmare.
She was only just 20 years old. She wasn't married, or even dating the person would have been her baby's father. Her pregnancy wasn't planned, and it definitely wasn't expected. She knew that she was too young to have a baby, and yet there she was, begging the doctor through broken sobs to save her baby.
This is what miscarriage is.
The truth about what miscarriage is often goes overlooked, with very little acknowledgement or support for those who have had the misfortune of experiencing it. Maybe this is because miscarriage can be hard to talk about, not only for the men and woman who experience it firsthand, but also for their friends and family, as sometimes people just don't know what to say. While miscarriage is a very personal and private loss, it is, nonetheless, still a loss. That young girl, who sat in the emergency room alone on the day before Thanksgiving, would go on to blame herself for months, to spend her nights crying, wishing that she had known earlier, that she could have done something to prevent her miscarriage from ever happening. However, the truth is that miscarriage is something that just happens, and sometimes there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it.
It seems as though society accepts and promotes the discussion of all things intimate, from sexually transmitted diseases to IVF, so why then, when the word "miscarriage" is mentioned, is there radio silence?Miscarriage is so rarely talked about that most people don't actually know what it is and what it involves, other than the obvious loss of a pregnancy. It's important to know and understand the most basic facts about miscarriage. First, people should recognize just how common miscarriages are. According to the American Pregnancy Association, 10-25 percent of clinically recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. That's up to one in every four, the majority of which happen during the first 13 weeks of pregnancy. There are several factors that can cause miscarriage, but it is almost impossible to identify specifically what exactly causes them. Hormones or chromosome defects are reported to be the leading causes of miscarriage; however, aside from biological factors, there are some environment factors that can do so as well, such as smoking, drinking alcohol, malnutrition and even excessive exercise.
It wouldn't be until August that the young girl who lost her baby in November would acknowledge these most basic facts, and once she did, she started to accept that her baby was gone, and that it wasn't her fault.
Her story is just one of many, but one that should be told. It is her hope that, through telling her story and sharing the most basic facts about miscarriage, that the stigma around neonatal death will be broken and miscarriage will become something more naturally talked about, and less of a taboo.
She has asked me to keep her name private, but this is her story:
"I remember what happened like it was yesterday. It's something I will never be able to forget, no matter how badly I want to. I woke up unusually early that day, and even though I felt exhausted, I couldn't fall back asleep, so I went downstairs and turned on the television. That's when the pain started. It was sharp, contraction-like pain that only lasted for a few moments before becoming dull again. I felt dizzy and very nauseous; then I started throwing up. I thought that maybe I just had to go to the bathroom, maybe something I ate wasn't agreeing with my stomach, or maybe I just had one of those 24 hour stomach viruses. It wasn't until I sat down on the toilet upstairs and saw all the blood that I realized something was very, very wrong.
Everything after that is kind of blurry. At the hospital, the doctor told me I lost a lot of blood and asked if I knew that I was pregnant.
I didn't.
At first, my heart sank. I thought, how on earth could I have a baby right now? I'm too young, I'm still in college, I can't raise a baby, especially not by myself. The doctor interrupted my thoughts,
'I'm so sorry," she began. 'You lost it. Your baby is gone.'
And just like that, any reservations or regrets I had about getting pregnant disappeared and I wished that, more than anything, there was something that could be done to bring my baby back.
There wasn't.
This is what miscarriage is.
It's August now, and I have accepted the loss of my baby. I no longer cry, nor do I find myself holding my stomach or looking at my empty arms, but I still find myself being silenced by the unfair stigma that surrounds miscarriage. This is the first time I've told my story, and it is my hope that after reading it, others will be encourage to share theirs as well."
