I Feel The Stigma of Miscarriage & It’s Not Fair

You go, girl. I’ve had two miscarriages and one stillborn child of a surviving twin. I have four healthy children, but I miss my other three, especially the one I gave birth to and held.

When I was 18 I miscarried my first pregnancy. I was young, but that baby was planned and wanted. My asshat boss wouldn’t let me leave work early to go to the hospital. When I finally finished cleaning and closing the restaurant and got to the ER, they left me sitting in a room for hours before someone finally came in. By that time, it was pretty much over.

The doctor did an exam and removed the fetus, which was already outside my cervix. He put it into a bottle and the nurse held it up for a moment to look at it. I looked over, in that moment, and I saw. I wish I had asked to hold the bottle. To get a closer look. To examine what would never be my child. To say goodbye. But the moment passed so quickly and I didn’t think to.

Then the doctor told me — and my parents, who had arrived by then — that they had to examine the “tissue” he had removed to determine whether or not it was, indeed, “products of conception”.

I was SO ANGRY. First because he was so insensitive. He figured that since I was young, I should be GLAD to lose that baby. HE was certainly glad. And second, because he couldn’t even be bothered to have enough respect for me to be honest. I knew I couldn’t realistically expect him to call it a baby, but there was NO denying that what I’d lost was a *fetus*. Even from across the room, I could tell that. There were arms. Legs. Eyes. It looked just like all the pictures you have ever seen of an 8 or 9 week fetus. “Tissue”??? I knew the real reason they needed to examine it was to make sure it was all there, and nothing likely left inside me to cause an infection. He could have been straightforward about that. The idea that they needed to confirm what it was was just so idiotic and condescending. I couldn’t believe how badly they — the people who are supposed to be there to HELP — had treated me.

I wrote a poem, soon after. I remember it started with:

“Conceived in mother’s love for child, not man,
And raised in love by gentle mother’s hand,
This child shall live the love from whence she came
And dance the dance inspired by given name:
Terpsichore! The daughter of the dance…”

Hey, I didn’t say it was a GOOD poem.

This was the ’80’s. Terpsichore (Terp-SIH-coar-ee) was the muse of the dance, and the never-quite-spoken name of the Olivia Newton-John’s character in the movie Xanadu. I had the idea at the time to name my children, regardless of gender, all after the 9 Greek muses. I did wind up glad later that by the time I actually had my first baby (about a year and a half later), I had different ideas for names. But that first baby, the lost one, will always be Teri to me.

At the time, I very much hoped for a girl first, so I chose to believe that my lost one was a girl. Later, after I’d borne 4 daughters and no sons, I switched to thinking that maybe my first conceived was a boy after all.

Anyway, the poem went on to talk about the mother’s deepest fear, that the dreamed-of child never would come at all. I’m pretty sure I rhymed “never have the chance” with “dance” in there somewhere. And it ended with:

“And none to turn to, for who could console
A mother who a mother’s not, as yet,
O’er a child she never knew,
But can’t forget?”

You never do forget. But it does get better.
You never do forget. But it does get better.