Health Parenting SPM/MM

Why I’m Calling Bullsh*t on Miscarriages

By Jennifer Philp

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her eyes lingering a moment too long on my stomach. “Things like this happen for a reason.”

I caught her gaze while announcing, perhaps a bit loudly, “That’s fine! I’m fine! It’s okay!”

She turned to fill her coffee cup and left the break room. It was my third post-miscarriage awkward exchange with a co-worker, which I internally threatened to abbreviate to PMAEWAC if it happened again. It was my third attempt to comfort someone after receiving my third innocuous comment, the stuff you can usually safely say to any pregnant woman:

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Your stomach is so flat; you can barely tell you’re pregnant!

You look great! Simply glowing. 

Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?

Usually, these comments are okay. Sometimes, they are not. In this case, my response was a canned explanation of the events of the past few weeks: I was 13 weeks pregnant. I passed the news along to my entire school. I then promptly had a miscarriage.

I told a few of my favorite co-workers to just go ahead and tell everyone.

“Don’t hold back! Stop them in the hallways if you have to. And yes, please especially share the news with the custodian who steals Lysol wipes from my filing cabinet.”

I took a week off to recover, and my intentions were to create an environment that would be free of all blundering encounters in the break room. My naivety towards the situation became clear the first week back, when I found myself still thwarting congratulatory comments with “I had a miscarriage.” I guess news didn’t travel as fast as expected.

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The automatic responses started to dwindle, eventually disappearing altogether when I became pregnant 5 months later. I was able to look at pregnant bellies in the grocery store without crying, and I was finally able to unblock any pregnant friends from my Facebook feed.

But there was one comment I just couldn’t forget. It lingered every time I looked at my firstborn son, who was 2 years old at the time. He was born with a rare genetic condition.

These things happen for a reason.

When I found out I was pregnant with my son, my very first pregnancy, I assumed if something were dramatically wrong with my kid’s DNA or body or whatever that I would be told about it. They would surely pick it up at some point during the routine ultrasounds. I mean, humans can build brain cells in a lab and print buildings in 3-D and ride cars driven by a computer. They would know if something was up with my baby.

But I was wrong. My son was born with a few minor health issues, but it took a full genome sequencing 4 months later to show that he had a genetic difference. And this wasn’t something like, He has a gene that might or might not turn off this small, insignificant thing in the body. It was a chunk – very scientific, I know – missing from a chromosome. This means that a multitude of genes have been deleted, genes that will help his skeleton grow properly and enable him to build strong bone. Needless to say, he has many challenges ahead.

Having prefaced this miscarriage by having and loving a kid with a genetic difference made it difficult to find comfort in the fact that I may have lost a baby due to a genetic difference. Was I supposed to jump up and down, shouting hooray, because my body “fixed” a mistake?

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Let me be clear: I understand what my co-worker actually wanted to say. In a perfect world where we could be totally honest, she would have said, “I hope your miscarriage occurred because the fetus had absolutely no chance of survival.” Instead, we spit out tropes that are fast and easy and allow you to get the heck out of the room.

But I’m calling bullshit on miscarriages. More specifically, I’m calling bullshit on the antiquated and insensitive idea that our bodies can totally just “fix” a genetic “mistake.”

Don’t get me wrong; I understand biology and how mothereffing complicated the whole thing can be. I know that some genetic abnormalities are simply incompatible with life, and a miscarriage will be the inevitable result very early on in the pregnancy. But the fact is, scientists still can’t agree on an exact percentage of chromosomal abnormalities that actually end in miscarriage, since estimates range between 40 and 75%. The bottom line is: the whole reproductive process, especially early on, is still a big freaking mystery.

Miscarriages just happen, and they happen more frequently than most might think. We know what doesn’t cause them – exercise, heavy lifting, and stress are no longer considered culprits  – but scientists still don’t have a definitive list of reasons for why miscarriages occur.

My body is a wonderful thing. It carried two babies to term. It fed them; it was strong for them. But my uterus does not have an automatic disposal button that kicks in every time something doesn’t go perfectly. Nope. It is completely insensitive to label this traumatic and life-changing event as “quality control.”

And for those who take solace in these statements, in “it was for the best, something was probably wrong with your baby” statements, well, have fun with that. Feeling relieved by the fact that you may have dodged a bullet speaks volumes to how you really feel about imperfections and disability, about the value you place on the lives of others who have differences.

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When we tell people who have just lost a pregnancy that “it happened for a reason,” we are saying other things. We should feel better, because our baby may have been imperfect. We should feel lucky, because we avoided an experience that is scary and difficult and strange.

Society has created a stigma surrounding miscarriage, and that’s why we don’t talk about it as openly as we should. We want to say something comforting, but it’s likely that an insensitive and awkward comment might come out instead.

There are no words that can take away the pain after a pregnancy loss. We should remember that every experience is different, but I think all women need acknowledgment that their loss matters, that their baby existed, and most importantly, that it was loved.

*****

About the Author

Jennifer is a teacher and mother of two children. She writes at Mother of Bones and can be followed on Twitter, Facebook, and Medium.